During a difficult time, when the history of the U.S. farm worker movement is under intense scrutiny due to revelations of sexual abuse allegations by the late labor leader Cesar Chavez, the United Farm Workers (UFW) and UFW Foundation have been in court seeking to overturn a federal program change that drastically cuts wages for migrant farm workers.
They are suing the Donald Trump administration over a new wage rule for the H-2A agricultural visa program, which would undercut pay across the board for domestic farm workers nationwide.
They are also supporting a resolution introduced last week by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) to block the Trump administration’s new Department of Labor rule, which cuts wages by $3 to $7 dollars per hour, depending on the state, for H-2A temporary or seasonal migrant farm workers.
The wage cuts would take at least $2.46 billion annually away from farm workers and put it into the pockets of employers, according to government estimates. This would represent one of the biggest transfers of wealth in U.S. agricultural history. A similar rule implemented during Trump’s first presidential term was ruled unlawful in federal court in 2020.
The new wage rule, which went into effect last October, is already having a detrimental effect on domestic farm workers, said Antonio De Loera-Brust, communications director for the UFW.
“By lowering the [hourly] wages for these [migrant] labor workers so dramatically and unilaterally, it cannot help but have a negative impact on local workers,” De Loera-Brust told the San Fernando Valley Sun/el Sol. “In fact, we’ve already shown that one of our plaintiffs, who is working the same job as they were working last year – who is a U.S. citizen, by the way – their [hourly] wage went from almost $19 an hour to $16-something an hour.”
De Loera-Brust said the wage rule violates the statutory requirement that H‑2A wages not have an “adverse effect” on local worker wages. The UFW and UFW Foundation are currently awaiting a decision from a federal judge regarding a possible stay or injunction on the wage cuts.
The decision could be handed down this month or later in the year, according to De Loera-Brust.
“We already had our first hearing, and in that hearing we asked the judge to grant either a stay or preliminary injunction on the wage [cuts], to basically reverse them … until the legality of the actual rule can be determined,” said De Loera-Brust, noting they expect to eventually prevail. But for now, “What we’re asking for is don’t hurt people’s bottom line – don’t make it harder for farm workers to make ends meet in the meantime, while we sort this out in court,” he added.
“The nature of the H‑2A program is very exploitative, because [migrant] workers can’t change jobs and [there’s no] pathway [to] citizenship. … That just creates a power dynamic that is inevitably going to be abused,” said De Loera-Brust. He said the H-2A migrant workers are further exploited by being forced to reside in “cramped and unsanitary housing.”
In addition, recent H-2A rules allow employers to deduct housing costs – up to 30% of hourly pay – from migrant workers’ wages, which could push down their minimum wages and collectively reduce their pay by $1.7 billion in 2026 alone, routing it to the growers.
There is currently no cap or limit on the total number of H-2A workers that can be brought into the U.S. every year. In fact, noted De Loera-Brust, the number of visas being issued annually has grown from about 250,000 during the pandemic in 2020 to an estimated 525,000 in 2026.
He described H-2A as a modern version of the “Bracero” foreign farm labor program, which ran from World War II until the mid-1960s. UFW founder Chavez opposed the government’s Bracero program for similar reasons – it exploited migrant farmworkers, suppressed domestic worker wages and undermined their collective bargaining efforts. The H-2A program in its current form turns back the progress made. Years ago, Chavez and the union fought against the growers’ efforts to bring undocumented migrant workers as “scab labor” to break their strike, which would circumvent their efforts to improve wages and working conditions.
Now currently confronted with a similar battle the union fought against years ago, a better solution to the H-2A program – and the recent wage cuts – would be to “legalize the workers who are already here, who have been doing this work for decades,” said De Loera-Brust.
“Across the country, farm workers, including U.S. citizens, are already suffering the direct and indirect impacts of Trump’s illegal wage cut,” said UFW President Teresa Romero in a statement. The results have been “smaller paychecks for the same work and greater competition with foreign guest workers, who are cheaper than ever to hire. … We proudly support Rep. Lofgren … fighting to reverse this illegal rule and restore fairer wages to farm workers.”
Editor Diana Martinez contributed to this story.
Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that H-2A rules “could push down their pay below minimum wage.” The article has been corrected to state “could push down their minimum wages.”