The fight for $26.
By: Miguel Hernandez
(Listen to the audio in Spanish and Mixteco, variant from Guadalupe Nundaca, 6 min)
Community organizers from the nonprofit Mixteco/Indigena Community Organizing Project, or MICOP for short, brought together community members and leaders from Ventura and Santa Barbara counties to speak in front of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. At this event, community leaders advocated for an increase in the minimum wage for county farmworkers. The goal is to achieve a salary increase of $26 per hour of work.
This 63 percent wage increase is a direct response to the food, housing, and financial insecurities that the farmworker community has been experiencing due to inflation and rising housing prices in the central coast over the past decade.
The farmers who participated in this public hearing were supported by the coalition “Alianza Campesina,” which the non-profit organizations Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy, CAUSE, and MICOP created.
CAUSE Co-Executive Hazel Dávalos described this alliance as “an alliance of farmworker leaders with the mission of increasing wages for farmworkers throughout Santa Barbara County.”
Dávalos also made a public comment at the hearing and stated
“Yet, despite our efforts, if you ask any farmworker in our county, what is the biggest challenge they face? They say it is low wages: not earning enough to pay high rents on the Coast. Central, live in overcrowded housing, persevere to pay for food and medical care and support their children”
“In our meetings, workers have expressed the pain of being called essential workers and yet being paid and treated as if they were disposable.”
“The owners of these companies can and need to do this, the agricultural industry faces labor shortages due to the low wages provided by this backbreaking work.”
This fight for a higher salary was later supported by testimonies from the community such as that of Marcos Cervantes. Marcos shared how difficult it is to provide for his family. He has worked for more than thirty years picking strawberries in Santa Maria and shared how difficult it has been to provide for his family since he is the head of the household and the father of 5 children. Marcos concluded by mentioning that workers like him simply deserve a “decent wage.”
Other community members identified with the importance of being an ally to the farmworker community. In addition, they commented that there are many “privileges that many of us enjoy… such as not having to work in difficult weather conditions such as extreme heat. “
In response to these arguments, Claire Wineman, president of the Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Growers and Shippers Association, shared
“We want jobs and businesses to stay in Santa Barbara County,” Wineman said. “This action would only further distance our local community from neighboring counties, not to mention Arizona and Mexico as growing regions.”
In closing, community members shared how a wage of $26 an hour is simply basic for survival today and a deserved wage for essential workers who put food on people’s tables day after day.