Farmworkers: Protected concerted activity

Workers in Washington State have the right to organize with each other and ask for improvements in working conditions, no matter their job or immigration status. Laws protect the rights of 2 or more workers to act together to improve working conditions or wages, called “concerted activity” or “collective action.”

A federal law, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), protects the rights of most kinds of workers to organize to improve working conditions. The NLRA doesn’t cover the rights of most kinds of farmworkers only the rights of packing shed workers who pack fruit grown by more than one farmer. But Washington State’s Little Norris-LaGuardia Act protects agricultural workers who organize for better working conditions and wages.

None of these laws protect workers who act alone to ask for better working conditions, only groups of 2 or more workers acting together.

Washington’s Little Norris-LaGuardia Act protects the rights of farmworkers to collectively: 

• ask for higher wages, more benefits, or lower meal costs
• ask for improved treatment from supervisors
• ask for smaller work quotas and better work rules about meal and rest breaks
• bring complaints about working conditions to the employer or government agency
• express concerns about health and safety to the employer or Department of Labor and Industries (L&I)
• organize a union to bargain collectively or go on strike

The Little Norris-LaGuardia Act doesn’t protect all kinds of concerted activity. It doesn’t protect some requests to change management structure or hire and fire management level positions. For example, you can’t ask for a manager to be fired or replaced.