Local labor activists’ offensive rhetoric demeans the very people they claim to champion
By Dillon Honcoop, Communications Director for Whatcom Family Farmers and Save Family Farming
Originally published in Cascadia Daily News on August 20, 2025.
Suggesting an employer treats their employees like slaves is on par with using other nasty, divisive, politically-charged slurs like ‘Nazi,’ ‘fascist,’ or ‘communist.’ Considering the horrific history behind each of these terms, you’d be hard-pressed to think of harsher insults.
Yet in a recent Cascadia Daily News article, local labor activist Rosalinda Guillén of Community To Community Development, the group behind the formation of independent farmworker labor union Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ), drops such an angry verbal bomb on farmers employing legal guest workers via the federal H-2A guest worker visa program.
“‘It’s like a quasi-slave labor force,’” the article quoted Guillén, using her oft-repeated false characterization of the program that she and her connected organizations have attacked for years.
Not only does that kind of rhetoric insult the good farmers who hire foreign workers to help grow the crops that feed all of us, but it’s obviously offensive to people whose families to this day carry the scars of the awful legacy of actual slavery and human trafficking.
And, it’s terribly demeaning to the good people who come from foreign nations to work here legally during busy seasons in an effort to better themselves economically: the very farmworkers for whom Community To Community Development and FUJ claim to advocate.
Sadly, this isn’t these labor activists’ only foray into verbal attacks on the farming community using misinformation and false accusations. After a guest worker at a Whatcom County farm tragically died as a result of a medical emergency in 2017, the groups repeatedly accused the farm of killing the worker.
The activists used angry public accusations like “corporate murder,” and even staged a mock “tribunal” in a publicity stunt to “convict” the farm of the alleged crime, all despite thorough Washington Department of Labor and Industries investigations finding the farm was not to blame for the worker’s death.
In the Aug. 3 Cascadia Daily News article, Guillén again plays fast and loose with the facts, insinuating that “‘there’s no rules for safety that can be enforced or monitored,’” and further suggesting that “the employer can do whatever they want.”
The facts don’t support any of this.
In reality, the H-2A guest worker visa program for farm work not only requires that all already-existing federal, state and local labor rules and regulations for any worker must be followed, but it sets the bar even higher, with specific, stringent rules for the workplace and wages as well as mandates for farm-provided worker housing and transportation to and from the worker’s home country.
Before a farm can even apply to hire guest workers via the program, they must follow detailed requirements to advertise the available positions and be able to certify that no qualified local or domestic workers are available, and if they later become available, they must also be hired, even while the guest workers’ contract is already underway.
Farm jobs that employ guest workers are also subject to a special, higher minimum wage that applies to all workers on that job, whether foreign or domestic. This so-called “Adverse Effect Wage Rate” is in place to prevent foreign workers from undercutting domestic workers’ wages, and is set state-by-state via a complex federal process. Right now, this wage rate in Washington state is the second highest in the nation at $19.82 an hour, driving many farms, even without guest workers and not under this extra requirement, to pay that much–or often more–to be able to compete for scarce workers.
The program, with all of these rules and many more, are overseen and enforced here in Washington by at least 8 separate layers of government: the US State Department, the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Department of Labor, the state Employment Security Department, the state Department of Health, the state Department of Labor and Industries, and local regulators at both the county and municipal level. Participating farms are subject to extensive inspections before and during guest workers’ contracts.
The costs and burdens of employing H-2A guest workers are more than many farms can afford, and those that can only choose to take part as a last resort, when they simply cannot otherwise find enough workers to bring in the harvest.
Given even just this partial listing of the program’s rules and worker safeguards, it’s hard to imagine how anyone could claim H-2A guest workers are unprotected, no less call it a “quasi-slave labor force.”
How long will our community continue to accept such mean-spirited, unfounded attacks as a legitimate means of advocating for farmworkers, even as they continue to demean those very people?
Including such divisive language and disinformation in news coverage of important issues in our local community doesn’t provide balance. It doesn’t help anyone understand diverse perspectives with more nuance. It only serves to amplify division and hatred.
Related: What is the H-2A Program? (video)