MARLBORO — For the last decade, a Jamaican farmworker has harvested apples at Porpiglia Farms. He shares his living quarters with eight others. They wash their laundry by hand. And if they perform poorly, they may be sent to live in a cramped garage.
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Recently, the laborer, 42, who comes to work on an H-2A temporary visa, was among 500 farmworkers who have voted to join the United Farm Workers union. It marked one of the first instances of farm laborers organizing in New York. At least five farms have voted to join UFW in New York, with another pending.
While the unionization would affect all farm laborers, the migrants would make up an essential bloc of any potential union — that is, if a state employment board allows them to be included as members.
The New York Farm Bureau and owners at the farms where the unions have formed are challenging whether temporary workers can organize or bargain collectively. The issue has become ripe following 2019 changes to the state’s farm labor laws, ushered in by the Democrat-controlled state Legislature.
The fierce opposition includes assertions from the farm owners that the organizers are simply trying to garnish their incomes for union dues, while the union claims the owners are engaging in an unsavory delay tactic to prevent the organizing efforts.
The standoff is unfolding in the backdrop of a visa system that gives farm owners great sway over the control of their migrant workers, whose numbers in the...
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