Excerpt from Certified Exploitation: How Equitable Food Initiative and Fair Trade USA Fail to Protect Farmworkers in the Mexican Produce Industry by James Daria and Anna Canning, 2023.

Two independent farmworker unions formed simultaneously in the 2010s, one in Washington state and one in Baja California, developing cross-border solidarity as they each fought farms that supplied fruit to Driscolls. Their fights for union recognition played out in parallel, with each one targeting a fair trade certifier who their employers brought in to avoid negotiating with workers. These struggles were loosely connected with DFTA through Community to Community Development, a farmworker organization and member of DFTA that provided organizing support to the unions, and they formed the backdrop for conflicts within DFTA over accountability to farmworkers. As Daria and Canning recount:

The San Quintín [Mexico] farmworker strike began early in the morning on March 17, 2015. In addition to stopping work, thousands of farmworkers blockaded over 100 kilometers of the trans-peninsular highway connecting San Quintín to Tijuana and US markets, effectively cutting off strawberry shipments in the middle of harvest season.

This militant action finally brought the workers some success when, in June 2015, representatives of la Alianza [la Alianza de Organizaciones Nacional, Estatal y Municipal por la Justicia Social, an independent workers’ organization founded in 2012 which spearheaded the strike], growers, and the government signed an agreement to end the strike and grant the farmworker movement significant concessions, although many were short-lived. Many of la Alianza’s demands are still being called for and are incorporated in this report’s recommendations.

Several months later, on November 28, 2015, the constitutive assembly of the Sindicato Independiente Nacional Democrática de Jornaleros Agrícolas (SINDJA) was held in Tijuana. SINDJA is Mexico’s first truly democratic grassroots farmworker union. Unlike the company unions, SINDJA’s leadership came from the ranks of farmworkers. SINDJA’s formation represents a historic event in the history of Mexican unionism as for the first time in history, popular pressure forced the federal government to recognize an independent farmworker union.

Meanwhile, to the north in Washington state, the independent union Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ) was also organizing with Indigenous migrant farmworkers. Both independent unions were campaigning for union contracts within Driscoll’s supply chain, organizing a cross-border “Boycott Driscoll’s” campaign. The result: what labor journalist David Bacon dubbed the “Pacific Coast Farmworker Rebellion” of 2015 that connected Indigenous migrant farmworkers from Baja California to Washington.

In the fall of 2016, as a result of the global Boycott Driscoll’s campaign, the FUJ won its collective bargaining agreement with the Sakuma Brothers Farm in Washington and concluded its participation in the boycott. Meanwhile, no grower large or small has agreed to a collective bargaining agreement with the SINDJA union. However, the strike of 2015 has had another lasting consequence: when confronted with the possibility of disruption and facing broad solidarity, transnational brands Driscoll’s and A&W moved quickly to partner with ethical certifiers [the Equitable Food Initiative (EFI) and FairTrade USA (FTUSA)] to help rehabilitate their images to the public….

© 2023 Corporate Accountability Lab. Reprinted with permission.

See also “Response to ‘Certified Exploitation’/Respuesta a ‘Explotación Certificada’” by Equitable Food Initiative, 2024. On present conditions in San Quintín, see “Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and the San Quintín Justice Plan” by David Bacon, 2026.