United Farm Workers backs Biden's bid for second term

Reminding voters that President Joe Biden’s labor advocacy priorities extend beyond the auto industry, the United Farm Workers this week endorsed Biden’s 2024 reelection bid, praising the president as an “authentic champion for workers and their families”, according to a statement.

“The United Farm Workers has seen firsthand the positive impact that President Biden has made in the economic standing, labor rights and daily lives of farm workers across America,” UFW President Teresa Romero said in the statement. 

What’s more, according to the organization, elevating Julie Chavez Rodriguez — granddaughter of UFW founder Cesar Chavez and daughter of UFW President Emeritus Arturo Rodriguez — to the role of election campaign manager, “is yet another expression of President Biden’s commitment to and personal relationship with the farm worker movement, its history, and our ongoing struggle for justice."

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“We look forward to working to ensure that farm workers and their communities become an integral part of the President’s reelection in 2024, and to the greater progress for farm workers that a second Biden-Harris term will bring,” Romero said. “¡Con Biden, si se puede!”

Farmworker issues prioritized in first term

The UFW statement credits the Biden-Harris administration with advancing several key agricultural labor issues in its first term to date, with highlights including:

• Launching an efficient COVID-19 vaccine campaign that prioritized marginalized communities and frontline essential workers like farmworkers.

• Authorizing the USDA’s historic Food and Farm Workers Relief Program.

• Pushing critical reforms via the rulemaking process on the H2A visa program.

• Updating the Department of Labor’s methodology for the Adverse Effect Wage Rule.

• Speaking out in support of critical legislation to strengthen agricultural workers’ rights in California and Washington.

• Using prosecutorial discretion to create new deferred action protections for undocumented workers involved in labor disputes.

• Investing in the communities where farmworkers live.

• Began the federal rulemaking process to establish nationwide heat safety standards for outdoor workers.

• Fighting to pass just immigration reform legislation that includes a pathway to citizenship for farmworkers.

• Intentionally including the viewpoints of farm workers throughout the administration.

On Biden's 2024 presidential campaign trail, UFW said it plans to deploy its organizers, Spanish-speaking farmworker membership and activists to critical battleground states such as in Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Michigan and Georgia, according to the statement.