FJ Remembers Ted Kennedy
Farmworker Justice Remembers Senator Edward M. Kennedy
Newsletters - Fall 2009 Newsletter
Farmworker Justice Award 2007: Sen. Edward M. Kennedy
Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts will receive the Farmworker Justice Award for 2007 at a reception in his honor in Washington, D.C. on May 17. The Board of Directors of Farmworker Justice chose Sen. Kennedy for his strong commitment and successful advocacy on behalf of farmworkers during his four decades in the U.S. Congress. Few members of Congress have placed the betterment of farmworkers' conditions at the top of their legislative priorities in the manner of Sen. Kennedy.
After entering the Senate in 1963, Sen. Kennedy quickly became an advocate for farmworkers. He successfully opposed the Bracero guestworker program, which was finally ended in 1964, as well as related government policies that allowed employers to exploit vulnerable foreign workers and interfere with union organizing. During the mid-1980s, Sen. Kennedy criticized the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for refusing to issue a regulation requiring growers to provide toilets, hand-washing water and potable drinking water in the fields; the pressure on that issue helped force the resignation of the head of OSHA at the time. A lawsuit, Farmworker Justice Fund, Inc. v. Brock, eventually forced the issuance of the Field Sanitation Standard, which continues to this day. Sen. Kennedy's other accomplishments include successful advocacy to create the Public Health Service, which serves farmworkers through migrant health centers, and to add farmworkers to the federal minimum wage law in 1966.
When Farmworker Justice and other groups organized opposition to the Florida sugar cane industry's mistreatment of Jamaican citizens employed under the H-2A guestworker program, Sen. Kennedy was there, as on so many other occasions, to bring attention and remedies to the abuses. In 1990, for example, he cosponsored with FJ a Capitol Hill showing of the award-winning film, "H-2 Worker," which won the Sundance Film Festival Award for best documentary.
Sen. Kennedy's current positions include Chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and Member of the Judiciary Committee, where he is Chair of the Immigration Subcommittee. He has been a leading force on immigration for many years, and has long recognized the need to ensure that employers cannot take undue advantage of the legal status of new immigrants or guestworkers. During the mid-1980s, Sen. Kennedy played a key role in defeating a proposal by then-Sen. Pete Wilson of California for a harsh new agricultural guestworker program. His opposition helped create a compromise led by Rep. Howard Berman, then-Rep. Leon Panetta, and then-Rep. (now Senator) Chuck Schumer on the agricultural worker issue. The compromise, the Special Agricultural Worker Program of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, gave over one million undocumented farmworkers the opportunity to obtain permanent resident status and eventual citizenship.
In recent years, Sen. Kennedy has been a vigorous opponent of harsh guestworker legislation proposed by agribusiness supporters and an equally vigorous supporter of a responsible compromise on farmworker immigration policy. The Agricultural Job Opportunities, Benefits and Security Act, or "AgJOBS," has the support of Republicans and Democrats, as well as farmworker advocates (led by the United Farm Workers) and agricultural employers. Sen. Kennedy's renowned effectiveness as a legislator is evidenced in the coalition partners he has developed around AgJOBS, whose leadership includes Sen. Larry Craig (R.-Idaho) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D.-Cal.). Sen. Kennedy's commitment to this time-consuming legislative campaign, including his assignment of talented staff to the process, is a remarkable testament to his deep feeling for farmworkers and to his insight into achieving meaningful social change.
For these and many other reasons, the Board of Directors of Farmworker Justice is pleased to have the opportunity to present Sen. Kennedy with the Farmworker Justice Award for 2007.
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