Farm Worker Rights: Big Change Starts Small, Mónica Ramírez | MAKERS Moment

Farm Worker Rights: Big Change Starts Small, Mónica Ramírez | MAKERS Moment

Video Transcript

MÓNICA RAMÍREZ: Farm workers, domestic workers, and restaurant workers were excluded from some of the most basic employment protections in the 1930s. And still today, these groups of workers are not covered in the same way under federal laws.

Our organizing started with doing community education to farm worker women about their rights against sexual harassment and having small conversations in homes with five and six people about their issues and priorities. And little by little, we were able to bring farm worker women together to march, to speak publicly about the problem, and even to bring lawsuits against companies for the sexual harassment.

And it wasn't until 2015 that a farm worker woman actually had her case decided by a federal jury. The first farm worker woman had her case decided, you know, decades after the Civil Rights Law was actually passed in this country to prohibit sexual harassment.

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