Retired Farm Workers Get $1,000 Bonus From Union

At 79, Oxnard resident Juan Medina has a hard time remembering exactly how long he worked in the fields or when he retired.

But he remembers when he joined the United Farm Workers union. It was 1962, the year Cesar Chavez founded the organization.

For more than three decades, the Oxnard field hand helped build the union, contributing plenty of hard work and monthly dues to keep it afloat. Now the UFW is paying him back, at least in a small way.

Medina was among more than 100 Ventura County farm workers who were handed $1,000 bonuses on Thursday as the UFW seeks to share a surplus built up in its pension plan.

Leaning heavily on a single crutch he uses to nurse an old workplace injury, the retired field hand said he didn’t know what he would do with the money but he was sure he could put it to good use.

“I’ve struggled for the union for many years,” said Medina, taking a long look at the bonus check--$800 after taxes--handed to him by UFW President Arturo Rodriguez. “And see, it’s still paying off.”

At a time when the UFW is stepping up organizing efforts and whipping up support for new contracts, nearly 2,000 retired farm workers across the nation, including 165 in Ventura County, are receiving bonus payments.

Good investments and a bull market helped build a $2-million surplus in the pension plan, created specifically for farm workers. Over the past decade, that plan has more than doubled in size to $100 million.

Bonuses of $1,000 are going to all retirees. In addition, $500 payments are going to surviving spouses of farm workers who were under UFW contracts.

Checks were handed out last week in Coachella and Calexico. In coming weeks UFW officials will visit workers in Salinas, Delano, Modesto and Napa.

Rodriguez, who was in Oxnard on Thursday to hand out checks to pensioners, said it is the first time the union has paid out bonuses of this kind.

“These are the people who really sacrificed in the early days of the movement to build this union into what it is today,” Rodriguez said. “They gave the best years of their lives to this union so they deserve to get something back.”