Bruce Goldstein joined Farmworker Justice as a staff attorney in 1988, then served as Co-Executive Director starting in September 1995, and was named Executive Director in July 2005

     He received his bachelor’s degree in 1977 from the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, and his law degree from Washington University in St. Louis (1980). He has worked at the National Labor Relations Board, at a legal services office in East St. Louis, Illinois, and in private law practice concentrating in labor law, personal injury and civil rights.

   At Farmworker Justice, Bruce has focused on litigation and advocacy on immigration issues and labor law, with a special emphasis on the H-2A temporary foreign agricultural worker program.  Bruce's activities on "guestworker" issues have included litigation against private employers and the government, advocacy in administrative agencies and Congress, training of lawyers and paralegals, building nation-wide coalitions, advising grassroots organizations, and testifying before Congress.

   His writing on these topics includes:  "Migrant Farmworkers at the Cutting Edge of Immigration Policy," Perspectives on  Work, Summer 2004 (Industrial Relations Research Association);  "Recent Temporary Worker Proposals in Agriculture," in L.F. Tomasi (ed.), In Defense of the Alien, Volume XXIII, pp. 69-85, Center for Migration Studies, New York, 2001 (Proceedings of the 2000 Annual National Legal Conference on Immigration and Refugee Policy).

     Bruce has also sought to address the problem of "farm labor contractors" and other labor intermediaries used by farming operations, often in an attempt to avoid responsibility for complying with labor laws. Bruce’s advocacy, litigation and coalition-building on this issue have been accompanied by several publications, including "Enforcing Fair Labor Standards in the Modern American Sweatshop: Rediscovering the Statutory Definition of Employment," 46 UCLA Law Review 983-1163 (April 1999), with Marc Linder, Laurence E. Norton, and Catherine K. Ruckelshaus. 

     In 2002, Bruce co-authored a report,: From Orchards to the Internet: Confronting Contingent Worker Abuses, with Catherine K. Ruckelshaus of the National Employment Law Project; which was funded by the Ford Foundation and was based on the Farmworker Justice-NELP Subcontracted Worker Initiative Strategy Forums.  The Rosenberg Foundation generously funded one of the two strategy forums.

    Because farmworkers are part of a transnational labor force, Bruce has been working in the areas of  international labor law and responses to globalization.  With the American University School of Law, Farmworker Justice sponsored a strategy conference on international labor law for farmworker advocates.  At the request of the AFL-CIO, Bruce served as the labor delegate to the International Labor Organization Conference in Geneva, Switzerland in June 2001, where he helped negotiate a new international convention on agricultural safety and health.  He also has spoken at several international conferences sponsored by the U.S., Mexico and Canada under the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation, also known as the NAFTA labor side agreement.