Gonzalez Fletcher is chief officer of the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, and lives in San Diego.
Imagine a group of workers doing essential and dangerous work. They don’t get overtime pay. They aren’t covered by federal labor laws. The wealthy companies that employ them argue that somehow these workers are different, they don’t need the same protections that apply to other workers.
This example may sound familiar. I have spent years arguing that app-based workers should be treated like all other workers and have the same basic rights to a guaranteed wage, a safe workplace and a union. Just because someone is hired through an app cannot mean they lose all labor rights.
But the exclusion of one set of workers from labor laws is nothing new. The workers I’ve described are not gig workers, but farmworkers, who were one of the original groups of workers historically carved out from labor laws. Even while rights were greatly expanded for most workers, these workers were left behind.
As we approach another Cesar Chavez Day, what have we learned from nearly 50 years of farmworker struggles? In 1975, Cesar Chavez helped to pass the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, a law allowing farmworkers to organize. In 2016, I authored a law extending overtime pay to farmworkers. Last year, the United Farm...
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