At issue is the president’s plan to employ 23 fifth-graders from nearby Bancroft Elementary school to dig, plant, weed and harvest everything from strawberries to arugula in the 1,100-square-foot plot.
An unnamed UFW spokesman said the project, driven by First Lady Michelle Obama, likely violates existing child labor laws, as well as “the spirit of collective bargaining upon which this great nation was founded — E Pluribus Unum — all for one.”
The UFW has demanded it be allowed to organize by means of a card-check vote, in which the 11-year-old laborers would be invited by their teachers to sign a card affirming their desire to unionize without a secret ballot.
“There’s a reason why vegetable harvesting is one of the many jobs that no American will do,” said the UFW source. “Hauling out those sheaves of arugula is back-breaking work. These little children aren’t smart enough to negotiate their own contracts, and so they need a father figure to decide what’s good for them. That’s what unions do for their members.”
“It is frankly shocking to most Americans,” he added, “that the first African-American president would send workers into the field without pay, to toil under the unforgiving sun, bearing the fruits of their labors to the table of the man in the big white house.”
