A Budding Movement : Labor: Women farm workers begin addressing issues of wage and promotion discrimination. They are at the vanguard of pushing for changes.

For Frances Guzman, the journey out of the shadows began with a simple question of equality.

Despite 15 years of sorting and packing lemons for an Oxnard company, Guzman said she saw men with less seniority being promoted ahead of her.

They were moving into higher paying positions as fruit loaders and forklift drivers while she was left to toil for near-minimum wages.

“When you’re all alone it’s kind of hard to say anything,” said Guzman, who in 1991 joined other women in filing a class-action, sex discrimination lawsuit against the company.

“Who’s going to speak for us?” she wanted to know. “Maybe we need to learn to speak for ourselves.”

To that end, Guzman heads the Ventura County chapter of the Farmworker Women’s Leadership Project, a statewide effort aimed at teaching female field laborers how to make changes in the workplace and in their communities.

The fledgling movement will mark its local kickoff Tuesday at the Oxnard office of California Rural Legal Assistance. The CRLA Foundation is sponsoring the effort.

More than 100 female farm workers from throughout the state, including about two dozen from Ventura County, participate in the program.

It is designed to create a statewide network of female farm workers who will identify the most pressing issues they face and learn how to improve the difficult conditions endured by many of the women who pick and pack the fruit and vegetables.

“What if someday the women got organized, what would the growers do?” Guzman wondered. “We pick their fruit, we bring in their money. If they wanted their work done, they would have to listen.”

According to a report released last year by a consortium of farm and social service agencies, female farm workers earn less than their male counterparts and are more likely to be relegated to seasonal harvesting jobs, which are among the lowest paying in the industry.

In addition, the report said women farm workers share a need for child care, health benefits and English language classes, and experience sex discrimination and sexual harassment on the job.

At home, many women farm workers said they are the victims of domestic violence and are forced to shoulder the responsibility of raising children and keeping house after eight hours or more in the fields.

“I think one of the major issues is the pressures these women face in balancing jobs and families,” said Karen Flock, an advocate for affordable housing and co-chairwoman of the Committee on Women in Agriculture, which commissioned the study. “In terms of what’s happening with the leadership project, that’s one way that women will be able to get organized and be able to take on some of these issues.”

Chris Taylor, president of the Ventura County Farm Bureau, said he believes that the countywide study left too many issues unexplored.

“It barely scratched the surface, it should have gone much deeper,” he said.

While acknowledging that some biases exist toward women in the workplace, Taylor cautioned against characterizing all farmers and packing plant managers as ready and willing to relegate women to second-class status.

“Most of us know we’re nothing without the worker,” he said. “It’s not a commodity you can use up and throw away, it’s something you have to nurture as much as your crops.”

The statewide women’s project was born out of a grass-roots effort in the Riverside County farming community of Coachella.

While helping a graduate student gather information for a thesis, a dozen women farm workers went door-to-door to document the experiences of their fellow workers.

They found that most of the women were unable to read or write in their native Spanish, let alone English. They found that many of the women suffered discrimination and harassment on the job.

Most importantly, they found that women farm workers felt as if they had to endure their struggle alone.

“We wanted to help the Mexican-American community, especially women,” said Millie Trevino-Sauceda, a founding member of the Coachella coalition and coordinator of CRLA’s statewide project. “It was about taking control of our lives.”

The group in Coachella blossomed into a political force that played a key role in school board decisions and local elections.

“We figured if we worked together we would be able to support each other and accomplish more,” said Trevino-Sauceda, who started working the fields when she was 8. “And our children are learning from us. They are learning that if we are out there, active and exercising our rights, they can do the same thing.”

With $13,000 from a national foundation and a private company, Trevino-Sauceda has been able to organize 13 chapters from the Imperial Valley to Santa Rosa.

Two others are being started in San Diego and San Bernardino counties, and there is talk of organizing another chapter in Madera County.

Guzman, who was elected representative of the Ventura County chapter a couple of months ago, said she never dreamed that she would be leading such an effort.

The 41-year-old laborer dropped out of high school in her junior year, and started working at an Oxnard packing plant a few years later. She said she was routinely turned down for jobs considered to be “men’s work.”

“I figured I had just as much rights as any man there,” she said. “As tired as I get, so do the men.”

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of several workers by CRLA and a Chicago-based law firm, accuses Oxnard Lemon Co. of refusing to hire or promote female employees to higher-paid positions held by men.

The lawsuit is expected to go to trial this summer.

Eventually Guzman was promoted from packer to general laborer, the only woman to hold such a position.

In meetings so far, she said women have discussed problems such as the lack of education and job security. They have expressed concerns about pesticides and their impact on reproduction and pregnancy.

Guzman said she wants to learn how to participate in politics and to teach others how to become citizens and vote.

“We’re missing information about a lot of things other people learn in school,” she said. “We’re going to learn a lot. I figure I’ve already won.”