TWO VETERAN MAQUILADORA WOMEN ORGANIZERS

TWO VETERAN MAQUILADORA WOMEN ORGANIZERS
By David Bacon
UCLA Center for Mexican Studies, UCLA Labor Center, 6/9/24
https://irle.ucla.edu/2024/03/20/two-veteran-women-organizers/

Members of the original independent union committee at the Mex Mode maquiladora.

Interviews with organizers Julia Quiñones and Julieta Morales offer their vision for a new era of labor solidarity.  These interviews forms part of a series of interviews with prominent Mexican labor leaders conducted by photojournalist, author, political activist and union organizer David Bacon. These interviews are a collaboration between IRLE, the Labor Center and the Center for Mexican Studies at UCLA.

Organizing among maquiladora workers, especially in the factories on the border, has gone in waves over the past four decades. In many cases, those efforts have led to the creation of cross-border relationships between unions and activists on both sides of the Mexico/U.S. border, and even to organizational structures that produced programs and actions beyond supporting individual campaigns. Because of the demographics of the maquiladora workforce, some of the most important organizers have been women.  

Today another wave of organizing activity is growing, and with it debates about how new independent unions should be organized, and the relationship they should have to established unions in both countries. Julia Quiñones and Julieta Morales are veterans of these efforts, and in these interviews offer their visions for a new era of labor activity and solidarity.

Julia Quiñones is the director of the Comite Fronteriza de Obreras (the Border Committee of Workers), one of the most important organizations in the long history of the efforts to organize workers in the maquiladoras on the Mexico/U.S. border. CFO began officially in '98, but Quiñones was doing basic work long before. She offers the perspective of a veteran of the border labor wars. When I interviewed her at a conference organized by the Solidarity Center and the UCLA Labor Center, she began by saying that this cross-border effort was happening "in a new era."

Julia Quiñones with a strike leader from the Audi assembly plant.

JULIA QUINONES

We need more than yesterday's ideas. A lot of things have changed in Mexico. There is a lot of movement now at the national level and changes are taking place. In Mexico we had the 2019 labor reform, and in the United States recently there was the big autoworkers strike. We've learned a great deal from both. Now many unions and organizations in Mexico are looking for ways we can influence this movement more effectively.   

This is also a cultural moment, where workers have to learn to work together because they work for the same companies. In the past the possibility of having independent unions on the border, in the maquilas, practically didn't exist. That was the situation for decades. Now I think that we are seeing the possibility of seeing real unions, if the charros don't take it away from us. I would like to be optimistic and say we still have the initiative, because the conditions are still there. But we have to deal with the history of so many years of oppression by corporate unions.

The change is not going to be easy, and the charros are defending themselves. On the other hand, we have the initiatives of many independent workers who are seeking to build new organizations, but they often lack a lot of confidence. Until recently there was a lot of apathy, and workers would say, no se puede, that things could not be changed. We have to develop new strategies and I believe that it can be done.

This is what we have been working on for 4 years. In 2019 CFO began a project to make workers aware of the labor reform. This is something that the Ministry of Labor was also doing, but at the CFO we believe that it is important to bring this information from person to person, through small group meetings, so that workers truly understand the opportunities they have now. The more they know, the more they spread the information through their social connections with co-workers.  

In the last three years we have supported four organizing campaigns. In one they were able to create an independent union, and in another it barely exists yet.  Workers were able to create an independent union (using the sponsorship of the Liga Sindical Obrera Mexicana) in a company called Delta Staff. This is a garment company that produces for brands like The Gap and Levi's. They make pants, belts and uniforms. Eighty-seven percent of the workers voted for an independent union against the CTM.

Things happen by systematically accompanying the workers, by training leaders, and by promoting gender empowerment. But nothing is going to happen just because the opportunity exists. You have to do a lot of organizational work. There has been a lot of talk about the TMEC and the labor reform, but they only create opportunity. You need to organize people.  

But the workers have to make the decisions, even if there is a lot of money and many organizers. We need to help workers make a comprehensive plan, that is, by giving them training in creating a strategy, and by looking for leaders. These are steps that have to be followed before we can make changes.

Union support for campaigns is also important, especially by unions on the other side of the border, like the UAW. In the past it was much easier to organize if we could use an existing registry of another union. CFO had a relationship with the miners and they had a relationship with the United Steel Workers (USW). In the Delta Staff campaign, CFO had the support of Workers United, which represents Levi's workers in the U.S.

Francisco Ortiz worked at Ken-Mex, a medical products plant built in Tijuana in the 1980s by Kendall International. He shared a small house, in a neighborhood below Otay Mesa, with three sons, who lived with him in the front room, with his uncle, his wife and children, and with his mother and grandmother.

Today workers have more options. Now there are ways workers can create their own independent union. This is something that will have to be explored. Solidarity and the work of exchanges within the independent labor movement are very important. It is very important that workers do not feel isolated, that those who want to organize have a network, a support system. That is also why international union solidarity is very important.

Companies that are in Mexico have headquarters in the United States or in other countries, so we need to make connections there with unions, with shareholders, with brands. That helps to neutralize the company when they try to intervene to stop workers from organizing.

Organizations on the border have always lacked resources. Today we really want to have an impact. In the past our organization has been very small, just 8 or 10 people. Now we have to grow. We have 30 people today, but of course having them creates new challenges. How do we guarantee the work of these teams will continue?

No fight is automatic, that is, it takes 2 or 3 years to have an impact. We have to create a stable basis for this work, because things may change in the future. Ten years down the line, who knows what the situation will be? That is why it is very important to create self-sufficient, self-managing organizations, and not depend always on international solidarity to develop organizing campaigns. If there is more self-sustainability, then organizational projects can continue.

Labor reform will have an impact on the labor movement in Mexico in general, not only in the export factories. The impact is going to be general. It is going to take longer than we had expected and we truly hope that with the coming change in government this reform will be sustained and not thrown out. If the same policy continues, at least of the current President, we hope there will be no setback in what's already been achieved.

Now there is a new attitude on the part of the automobile union in the United States. We have already had several meetings with UAW unions, and they really have a vision now. There's more openness and more collaboration with our movement. At this particular meeting it is important to have a plan at least to keep in touch. We need better communication so we can share struggles.  

This meeting is a bit strange, because it's a mix of people from big factories and Uber drivers and domestic workers. We need to close the gaps between us. Both domestic workers and workers in the informal sector seek strategies to guarantee their rights. We can learn a lot from them, and also from the large already established unions, such as the automobile unions or the electrical workers or others.

There is a new role for working women here at this meeting. It's very, very interesting. When we divided ourselves into sectors, the groups were dominated by men in the automotive sector, while in the others there were many more women. In the group of domestic workers there was only one man and a male baby. This does not reflect the gender composition that predominates in the industry. It's something we have to work on. In fact, reforms in Mexico now require companies to have gender protocols. But is gender equality required in the union leadership under the labor reform? We have to look at that, and at other areas too.

Julieta Morales marches to the Mexican consulate in Los Angeles in support of the Audi strikers.

Julieta Morales today is the General Secretary of the Union League of Mexican Workers (Liga Sindical Obrera Mexicana), and worked at a garment factory, Mex Mode, that was the scene of one of the first successful battles to form an independent union in the maquiladoras. The League was formed in Atlixco, Puebla, after workers organized the union at Mex Mode, and today has gone on to help workers organize independent unions in a number of other factories.

JULIETA MORALES

I worked in that maquiladora (Mex Mode), and it took courage to stand up against all the violations of our rights in the plant. There was a lot of discrimination, workplace harassment and our wages at that time were 70 pesos. That was what started our organizing.

At that time, an external organization helped us understand that we had the right to organize, and what unions were. The Solidarity Center supported the Mexican NGO, Centro de Apoyo al Trabajador (Center for Support for Workers - CAT) composed of five local organizers. We won an independent union, but we had many problems after we organized this union. A real workers' union will always be in trouble with the company.  

During the initial campaign in Mex Mode, workers were beaten at the gate when we were trying to organize. Then we asked for support from students in the United States and on various campuses they told the university they did not want the student stores to sell shoes and other Nike clothing. With this pressure, Nike was forced to put pressure on Mex Mode to remove the charro union and recognize the workers' independent union and negotiate a contract.

We are seeing the same possibility or possibilities like this, to help workers in other factories. With the decision made by the people in the factory, the possibility exists of using the same pressure of international solidarity. The brands we are working on right now include Carhartt, North Face, Fanatics, the Kiss, Vans, and Timberland. They are brands exported from Mexico to the United States. Therefore we believe that a good alliance can be built between workers in Mexico and the United States.  

The raw materials and orders are from the United States, and without them we have no more work. We want the companies to continue to exist here, and we want the brands themselves to understand that our workforce is very strong in Mexico. Let the brands give us more work. We want to prevent our own families from emigrating to the United States because when people leave it becomes complicated for many mothers who are left with the responsibility of their children. But we want to have better conditions. We want brands to establish codes of conduct that are truly respected. Since we work with brands that are expensive, from clothes to cars, we deserve to have better salaries, we deserve to be respected within the plant.

We don't want the brands to withdraw because we depend on them. That is our source of work. It's not just the 500 workers, since behind those 500 workers are their families. The charro union threatens people by telling them that the League has alliances with the United States. We're bad because the United States loves us, and wants to take their jobs away. But we know that we only ask that the worker be treated as a human being, as a person. And a foreign company should respect this, because they are coming to our house. And if you are welcome to our house, we are going to set the rules for you.  

Later, after we organized our independent union, there was a conflict, and Antorcha Campesina set up a company union. It keeps its power by making threats against workers. My coworkers there are from rural communities, so they don't know where to get training or where they can learn about their rights. They are still intimidated. Unfortunately Nike withdrew from Mex Mode, because it said it was not going to give the factory work while there were problems with Antorcha Campesina.  

So we decided to step aside and fight for a workers' union, where workers are the ones who make the decisions. We set up the Liga in 2021. We have always had the support of the Solidarity Center. It gives us training and helps us plan. It teaches us what our rights are and how far we can go.

The League is based on workers, like the first union at Mex Mode in Atlixco. At Mex Mode we began to see that there were more companies that wanted to form their own unions. We started with VU, which became the first section of the League. We had to change our statutes to be able to support other companies when workers formed their own unions. The League grew and now it is national.  We have a section in Torreón, Coahuila, our coworkers have organized another at Testar in San Luis Potosí, and another at 3M and at Goodyear. Currently a union in Aguascalientes is being formed by key workers who came from Mex Mode in Atlixco. The factory in Torreón makes jeans. 3M in San Luis Potosí handles all kinds of work, adhesive tape, caps, face masks. Goodyear makes tires. They have the right of representation there now, and at 3M the negotiations are about to start.  

Even though the League is national, as general secretary I can't go and make decisions in other workers' companies. The workers in each company must have the right to their own voice and the right to make their own demands. They have to prepare, to decide what corresponds to the situation they have in their own plant, and what workers should earn for the benefit of themselves and their families. If a worker has good conditions the whole family benefits, but if a worker is harassed at work, the one who pays the consequences is also the family. We come home angry, stressed, tired and we don't spend quality time with our children.

The league is supported by the Solidarity Center, which sends organizers everywhere. At VU people also work with the organizer for CFO, Julia Quiñónez.  There the workers themselves asked us if they could join the League. So now there is a strategic relationship between CFO and the League.

The League tries to respect the decisions of the workers, not to make decisions for them, not to hinder their work. Because I am General Secretary at the national level, I have the organizers prepare the workers. Then we put more people to work on the plant. But if the workers do not begin to make their own decisions and prepare for their own campaign, we are going to fall back into the charrismo of the other unions. We want to change all that. The workers' committee is the one that must decide what they do within the plant. The worker is the only one who has the right to decide what is good and what is bad for his or her coworkers, for the company, or for their union.  

In a way, the CFO and the Solidarity Center are allies. Together we learn how to ensure the workers themselves understand they have rights, and that they are the only ones who can unite with other workers to win better working conditions. In the league and the CFO we share values, that the workers are in charge, in terms of the actions they are going to take. The Solidarity Center doesn't pay us. They simply provide us with training. When we go to meetings like this, they help us with the expenses.  

The League is for workers. It is independent and we do not receive support from any union. We have support alliances. We've supported the strike at Audi, and we have the closest relations with the union at Volkswagen.

At this meeting we are looking for international support and alliances. There are other companies where workers are going through the same thing or worse things. So exchanging information makes us stronger, to know that we are not alone, that there are more people who are also fighting, and that united we can win.

But often the Mexicans who are our bosses are the ones who trample on and violate our rights. VU was closed and would not accept the independent workers' union. They laid off all the staff, and 70 workers were left without pay. At the VU factory workers are producing for the automotive industry, so it is possible that the UAW union can put pressure through its relationships with large automobile companies.  

But now the workers who worked at VU, who decided to form their own union, are not being hired in other companies. The doors are being closed to them just for demanding their right to form their own independent union. For other companies to close their doors because workers want to fight for their rights is very unfair, but it is something that will not go away.  

The companies have a database of these workers. Other companies in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, also have the database of the workers who wanted to belong to the League. If the workers go there to ask for work, their name appears on the list. It's like saying, if you belong to an independent union, you can't work in the plant. That's how it is. That has an impact on the mentality of workers. You will no longer work in any company; you will be left without a job. That is the fear they put in the workers. Their family will pay the price.

Now there are many who are working in stores, because you have to look elsewhere. It is also a reason why people are deciding to cross the border. As workers we feel we are being put between a rock and a hard place, as we say in Mexico. Yes I want to demand my rights, yes I want to form an independent union. But if I do it, things could go bad, and I could lose my job. And I'm not going to be able to get more work because no one is going to give me another one.

I try to attend meetings to get to know people, what their objectives really are, which ones really are like us, demanding worker rights. When I hear the people in those other jobs, like domestic workers or platform workers, I am impressed by the fact that they are women. I am not saying I am a feminist and resent men, because that is not my role. My role is to say 50/50. Both men and women deserve respect and deserve rights.

But these women have the courage to demand their rights. The domestic workers do not work for any company, but are independent in a house, yet they are able to join together and fight for their rights. The platform workers are driving cars, motorcycles, bikes, and skates, which is very dangerous. It does not matter if we work in the fields. We all have rights and together in alliance we will be able to win.

PLATFORM WORKERS - THE NEW FACE OF SOLIDARITY

PLATFORM WORKERS - THE NEW FACE OF SOLIDARITY
By David Bacon
The Stansbury Forum, June 2, 2024
https://stansburyforum.com/2024/06/02/platform-workers-the-new-face-of-solidarity

Introduction

On May 21 I went to the State Supreme Court Building in San Francisco at 350 McAllister. I went to witness oral argument in the case brought against Proposition 22, the state referendum that overturned Assembly Bill 5 in the 2020 election. Uber and Lyft and other platform/gig companies financed the referendum with $200 million in their effort to undermine the excellent provisions of AB 5 authored by then Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez of San Diego. AB 5 codified into law a previous Supreme Court case called Dynamex that established a very simple and solid three part test that determines who is an employee and who is a contractor. AB 5 if implemented and enforced would have made Uber and Lyff and other platform employers treat their workers as employees with the right to be protected by labor standards and the right to organize under the National Labor Relations Act.

Getting into the State Supreme Court chambers turns out to be much more difficult than getting through TSA airport security. First there is the usual metal screening then there is a second screening for phones and computers, which are not permitted in the chambers. I sat in the overflow room and watched the proceedings on live feed video. My own take and the opinion reflected in the legal press is that the State Supremes are going to basically uphold 22 which will probably lead to more legislative initiatives to bring justice to gig drivers and employees.

Before the hearing I met up with the President of Ride Share Drivers United, Nicole Moore and some of her members. After the hearing Nicole commented that it is a little disturbing to hear bright attorneys on the bench jousting with plaintiff and employer attorneys over fine legal points when the livelihoods of thousands of workers are at stake. The decision of the Court will be within 60 to 90 days of the hearing.

The Stansbury Forum therefore is proud to present interviews with Nicole Moore and leaders of platform worker organizing in Canada, Mexico and the United States.

The interviews and photos were done by David Bacon at a conference organized by the UCLA Labor Center - Global Labor Solidarity Program.

Peter Olney, Co-Editor of the Stansbury Forum


Foreword

As part of efforts to foster cross-border labor solidarity, the UCLA Labor Center convened over 80 labor leaders and workers from the U.S., Mexico and Canada for the "Worker Solidarity in Action: A Tri-national Labor Response to the USMCA" summit held on Feb. 9-10, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. The present report, written by noted journalist David Bacon, conveys the main objective of the event-to foster transnational labor collaboration and to create a space for strategic discussions surrounding worker rights campaigns in communities across North America.  This report was written, the interviews conducted, and the photographs taken by David Bacon.

This is the fourth section of the report.  Previous sections had contributions from workers and organizers in the maquiladoras, the auto industry, and in the domestic and home care industry.

Hosted at the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor (LA Fed), in partnership with the and the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung- Foundation-New York Office, this event took place on Feb 9-10, 2024,  and builds on the Labor Center's 18-year history of fostering global labor solidarity initiatives that can play a vital role in facilitating worker rights across the globe. entitled: "Worker Solidarity in Action: A Trinational Response to the US Mexico Canada Agreement".

Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, Project Director - UCLA Labor Center- Global Labor Solidarity


On Valentine's Day, just three days after the Los Angeles conference concluded, workers for Uber Eats, Deliveroo and other delivery apps in Great Britain went on strike, refusing to take orders and drive meals to the companies' waiting customers.  Like their coworkers in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, the UK drivers are not covered by the statutory "national living wage" of 11.44 pounds.  The UK supreme court last November ruled that platform workers aren't workers at all, in the face of an organizing drive by the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain that had signed up over 3000 members.

In an era where workers in one country can follow the actions of workers in another, in real time as they happen, the strike electrified platform workers across the Atlantic.


JENNIFER SCOTT

Jennifer Scott is a gig worker and the president of Gig Workers United in Canada. She lives and works in Toronto.

Our union started in early 2020 with the Food Stores United Campaign, at a European company called Foodora. This was an app like Uber. Workers wanted to unionize, so we helped them. We put in the papers for the certification of their union, and 89.4% of workers in Toronto and Mississauga voted yes. So we won and that set a precedent at the labor board.

Then the pandemic began and Foodora declared bankruptcy and exited Canada completely. But because of the worker power we built, we were able to get severance pay. The Federal government has a program called the WEP, for workers whose whose employers declare bankruptcy and are not not able to pay severance. We won a settlement of $4.1 million, allocated and divided among workers all over Canada.

After that, we had questions. Do we want to stop? Are we happy? Do we want our rights? What do we want to do? Everyone felt that obviously, we want our rights. After a few months of talking and thinking we figured out what we wanted to do. Workers came together and created Gig Workers United, saying, "Look what we have in common."

No matter what city we work in or app we work on, whether we're delivering by bike or walking or car, the problem is we don't have our rights and we want them. That's the end goal of Gig Workers United - to unionize.

The main companies in Canada are DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Skip the Dishes, now owned by Just Eat. There's also Instacart and Corner Shop, which was purchased by Uber. Our Members work on different combinations of these apps. We have a very loose definition of a gig worker, and it's easy to be e a member.

In Canada they misclassify us as independent contractors. We know we're not. Our work around organizing has to challenge the misclassification of gig workers, because that's how apps get away with treating us the way they do. It's why we don't have basic rights and protections.  

The debate over classification was a big part of the Foodora case and why it was precedent-setting. In Ontario, under the Employment Standards Act, independent contractors have no rights. But you also have dependent contractors, which is a form of employee. In the Foodora case we won because we were classified as dependent contractors.

At Foodora we had to certify a bargaining unit, and after that, workers voted democratically. Presumably if we filed a petition for Uber drivers, Uber would say that we're not employees and we would have to fight that whole thing all over again. But the precedent has been set. The board looked at our case and at the relationship between the platform and the workers and made the right decision. So it doesn't have to be as intimidating or feel as uncertain now as it might have in 2018.

Uber in any country always wants to control the narrative. That's why a win for us on one app or even a win in one jurisdiction is is a win for all us. The companies all work together, and workers have to work together too. A victory at Foodora or the huge fight in California around AB 5, and then the Uber initiative, all affect workers in other countries.

In the UK on Friday WGB [the British gig workers' union] organized what could be the biggest strike in the history of gig work. They shut down kitchens, with workers standing outside them saying, "We're not picking up." There are videos of McDonald's with 50 or 60 orders lined up and no workers. They were declining orders.

The consequence of a work stoppage is that the algorithm pays workers more for orders. Where on average they paid £3 per order, at the end of the strike Uber was offering £71 per order. That's amazing. As workers in Canada, we look at that and we're like, "OK, let's do that here." It shows us strategies and tactics that can work.

We know that any app algorithm is sensitive to strike action. As workers we can manipulate that and have big wins. A strike like that not only sends a message to the boss. It also means that a worker who is working that night is going to get paid £71 an order. That might make me think twice about collective power. A great reason to go on strike.

I'm excited to build my family relationships with folks in in the US. Because of the pandemic and being precarious workers, it has not really been possible to travel a lot, so we don't get to see each other. Being here is really meaningful for building those relationships.

The possibility might exist at some point that an action would take take place in the U.S., Mexico and Canada at the same time. Who doesn't want that to happen? But what steps would have to be taken in order to get there? Like any aspect of organizing, it's worker to worker. I talk with my coworkers, and my coworkers say, "I want to take action." That has to happen every place, and people have to coordinate it. If we've got 50 new leaders and they want to take an action, how do we do that?

Presumably we'd have to find organizations with the same set of principles in other countries. I don't think gig workers can organize in any way other than through rank and file, worker to worker organizing, whether it's locally in our communities or across borders or global action. It is all rooted in workers.

As a gig worker, every day, all day long, when I'm working I am being confronted with orders - $3 for five kilometers, $3 for 15 kilometers. And I'm constantly looking at things and figuring out if the orders are good for me. Apps frequently send us emails that say, "Hey, we're making a change in how the app functions and it's going to be good for you and you're going to like it." But then what we see, and what we hear from workers all over the world, is that we fucking don't like it. It's not good for us, and we know what is and isn't.

That that's the core of organizing. The people who do the work know what needs to change. When we unite together, will know how to take action together. Folks who are not workers have a role to play, an important one. But our core belief is that nobody can change your life for you. You have to do it for yourself.

There's a community of interest between people in very different industries. There are lots of reasons for us to connect together, but the most important one is that employers like Uber want to bring in regressive labor policy. That's their end goal. It isn't delivering food and it's not about ride share. They want to drastically change what we think work is.

Apps and gig work is coming for all work. Gig work is about lowering employment standards and changing minimums to something that is not tenable, that harms people, that harms our community. Maybe somebody has a good job now. Maybe they have a union job now. But with gig work that won't exist five years from now. So we have all the reasons in the world to work together.

As members of Gig Workers United we recognize that it is necessary to build relationships internationally with other gig workers. We'll keep fighting and our relationships with each other can keep us going, can give us a hand when we need one. Now is a moment to start building that, so that a year from now, two years from now, when we need each other, we're already connected.


NICOLE MOORE

Nicole Moore is a part time Lyft driver and President of Rideshare Drivers United, the organization of 20,000 drivers in California.  RDU has a democratically elected Board of Driver Members, and members who pay dues of $15/month to be eligible to vote in the election of officers, held every other year.  Today RDU has chapters in Los Angeles, San Diego and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Rideshare Drivers United started in the parking lot of LAX. When Uber started cutting our rates, we started talking to each other. Unlike other workers, we don't have a big room or a water fountain where we gather. We gather at airports to pick up people.  A majority of us are people of color and immigrants, so this gig model is impacting people of color more than other communities.

We did a couple of protests over some of the cuts and brought 50 or 75 people. But we knew it wasn't enough to really make a change. We knew we had to build substantial power. So in 2018 we took signs and left our cars and organized mini strikes  on the sidewalks at the terminals where passengers are getting in and out.

Then we decided we had to build bigger than just airport drivers. Not all of us work at the airport. At that time we estimated there were 400,000 to 500,000 drivers in California, so we needed to organize to scale.

One of our volunteers started helping us build an Excel list. Then we realized we could actually build our own organizing app to help us recruit through social media and other venues. We wanted to build an organization where we could really communicate with each other and build real relationships.

We decided that when we got to 2000 people in our organization, we would do our first public action as Rideshare Drivers United on January 30th, 2019, when the new Governor of California made the alarming conclusion that drivers should get together with companies to come up with a solution. Some of the larger labor unions were already trying to do this, but with no drivers in the room.

As drivers we knew the companies were getting ready to their IPO's in 2020. They were slowly squeezing drivers to get more money, to look better for the investors. We were feeling it, getting less and less. So we said no. The the governor had barely been sworn in when we protested in front of his Los Angeles office. And instead of 50 people, we had 150.

We knew our organizing model, based on connecting as humans, was working. Lawmakers in Sacramento knew that these companies were fake classifying people as indefinite contractors, and the courts agreed. They passed a law, AB 5, that incorporated the ABC test for determining who is an independent contractor. It's been used all over the country, so it's not something radical.

None of us wanted to be employees of Uber, with a 40 hour work week and having to beg the boss for a vacation. Those are the things we associate with formal employment. The companies used that to feed us a line - that we wouldn't have flexibility if we were not independent contractors.

We needed the state to help. So we threw down to support AB 5, but we expected pushback from our members. But instead they said, "Hell, yeah! These people are treating us like employees, so we might as well have the rights of of all the other folks to at a least minimum wage and unemployment insurance and workers comp."

We had two gigantic strikes that year, the second right before Uber's IPO. That one went global. We had people striking on 6 continents because everybody knew Uber was about to make a bazillion dollars. They had cut us from $1.75 per mile to $1.20 per mile to $0.90 per mile to $0.60 per mile.

It was getting worse and five thousand of us filed wage claims because we often weren't even making minimum wage. But if minimum wage is just based on when I have a passenger in the car, there's no minimum wage at all. If there are 10,000 drivers in Korea Town trying to pick up two passengers, everybody's gonna make two cents. You have to look at all of the value of our time, wait time included. The state then ruled that they owed us $1.3 billion. That was huge.

When I hear people from the rideshare union in Mexico, or the platform workers as they call them, I think it's wonderful that they're they're in the same struggles that we're in. It's so great not to be alone.

They have a legal system that does say they are workers with rights. But they also are fighting against unions that are trying to trade their rights for money and power. We have very similar fights here, so it's very exciting to to talk with them. We have an international alliance of platform based transport workers and and have not been able to find a partner in Mexico. Now we have a union we feel we can work with.

Our deactivation report showed the violence, discrimination and and abuse drivers receive, and then we're we're fired or temporarily suspended by AI. We tell the company, "I wasn't drunk. The guy told me he was going to get me fired and get a free ride, so I shouldn't be fired. I haven't had a drink in 30 years." But we're arguing with the chat bot. There's no human in this process. Meanwhile we can't pay our rent or feed our kids. The woman driver from Mexico was talking about the same thing.

We're looking at global strategies to create standards for this industry. The ILO is doing that, but we want to make sure that drivers like us are in the room when those standards are set.

We're fighting global organizations, global capital, that are working to destroy labor rights for everyone. And they're going at it very deliberately and powerfully. It's no joke. All of us will be deployed through AI or some kind of platform in the future for our work. For the last hundred years, since the industrial revolution, we've tried to build workers rights. If we start at zero with the AI revolution, we're going to be in hell, a 21st century industrial revolution.


ZAIRA BARINO TOVAR

Zaira Barriño Tovar is the secretary for gender of the National Union of Application Workers in México. The union includes drivers for Uber, bicycle workers, and motorcycles that deliver food at home, as well as peoplewho deliver products for Amazon and Mercado Libre.

I have worked in these jobs and been paid badly. We do not have any benefits or rights. The applications  have sold us he idea that we are our own bosses, that we are freelance partners, but in reality they don't want to recognize us as workers, particularly as workers on digital platforms.

Mexican law regarding workers does cover people who work with transnational companies, but digital platforms do not recognize us as workers and or give us the legal benefits that this requires. The Federal Labor Law, although it talks about workers, does not consider us as workers either. The bad thing about this is that they are transnational companies that come to our country. set up shop, and don't even give benefits to the workers.

In Mexico there is no law that defines us as workers or non-workers. Federal labor law doesn't doesn't recognize or deny us worker status. Outsourcing has supposedly been made illegal and disappeared, so digital platform companies are going against the law because outsourcing no longer exists. So we are demanding a reform saying that digital platform workers are recognized as workers..

This is a very masculine sector and women are only 10% of the workforce, but these 10% worldwide suffer a lot of gender violence.  Sometimes you arrive at an address and you don't know what will happen on the street because you are a woman.  As Secretary of Gender, in October we had a meeting with women working on digital platforms on an international level. Colleagues came from Spain, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and other countries. We all wrote a letter to the ILO, asking for a report specifically on workers on digital platforms.

We have been a registered union for 3 years at the federal level. We also have sections in the States of Mexico and Colima, and in the city of León. In Tijuana, we are close to organizing a new one. We have an organizing committee there, and sent a delegation from Mexico City to help. We want to start ones in Monterrey and Guadalajara, which are two of the largest cities.

But although we have recognition under the law, we do not have the right to bargain collectively. And since the companies do not recognize us as workers, we cannot force them to sign a collective agreement. Our most important demand is that those companies sit down to negotiate with us, and that the Government of Mexico requires them to do this.

The most important thing for us is to reach 30% membership, to be able to make a demand on these companies and represent the majority of the workers. The most important is Uber because it has a super dirty, anti-union history.  This was discovered by prosecutors in the Panama Papers.

Although we have 30% of the workers, which is the normal legal requirement, who knows if they are going to comply. We thought when our membership hit 30%, that Uber and other companies might create white unions.  Then we could fight this by organizing to remove those unions, as other colleagues have done. At Audi there was a protection union, but the workers all got together and got it out. So we can do that if we have to. But we have to come together as workers to fight them.

Companies are looking for a special organization that is not a union, they call Decalogue. And this decalogue says that we are not workers, that we are service providers, that they pay us fees, that our job is at their mercy, and that we are only protected from accidents during delivery time. Obviously that would be terrible. The companies hold these organizations' money. But many people are waking up and saying "No, I am a worker, I work 12 hours, I provide the motorcycle, the car, the bicycle, so I need them to give me benefits."

We tell them, first of all, that they have to recognize themselves as workers. As a platform worker, we ask, "Do you have accidents? No one protects you if you die. No company is going to be responsible for you. You provide the money for spare parts and gasoline. Don't you think we have rights as workers?" Then you say, "Well, if I provide everything, I deserve the rights of a worker."

There is another union, but we call it a yellow union, one that is with the company.  They pretend they are on the side of workers, but in truth they are charros.

Some of the people who work on digital platforms are migrants in Mexico. Today we have a humanitarian problem of Haitian migrants, and many of these Haitians are working on digital platforms. Recently in the news a young Haitian who was hired by a construction contractor died and the company did nothing. We want to make this stop. Our fellow migrants are vulnerable, far from their country.

There are also a good portion of LGBT women and some gay men as well. They are victims of homophobia and discrimination.

We have relationships with similar groups of platform workers in other countries. We coordinate with groups in Argentina, Spain, Colombia, Uruguay and Brazil. We also work with groups from other unions.


MUHAMMAD EJAZ BUTT

Muhammad Ejaz Butt is the general secretary  of the I-Taxi Worker Association of Toronto, and President of the Toronto Limo Driver Association. He is also secretary of the 20-country International Alliance of App-Based Transport Workers.

We have filed a complaint against Uber and those unions that have made under the table agreements, first in UK, then in US, and now in Canada. In any country, unions must recognize the drivers, the gig workers, not just deal with the companies. Any organization of Uber workers should be an organization run by the drivers themselves, 100%.

Uber used to terminate any account for a driver at any time. Now, if a driver has lost his position he can contact with the UFCW without being a member of that union. Then they will arbitrate the case. However, last year fewer than 1000 people registered as members under that agreement. The union doesn't show clearly the advantages and disadvantages of that agreement. That is why I resigned from UFCW.

In our organization, there are four points to our program.  First, drivers need a minimum wage, so we would accept employee status if it gave us opportunities and rights like regular employees, including union rights. Second, we need a minimum shift of nine hours that includes waiting time.  Sometimes Uber will give a driver only 3 hours. The minimum wage should apply to all nine hours.

Third, Uber has to stop deactivating the accounts of drivers for small complaints. Sometime a customer is not right or he's drunk. So we want fairness in deactivations.  Last, and most critical,  Uber must be transparent. If I pick up customer and drive from A to to B, Uber will only show me what I get. They never show me how much they charge. The Uber agreement says they charge me 25%, but maybe they are charging 40% or 45%.

One day soon they will come to the table and agree with us.

Canada has already decided that by 2030 vehicle emissions must be zero and the vehicles must be electric. That will be a big expense for drivers like us. Auto workers and drivers need to talk together about this, and here we've been able to start.


CRYSTAL ROMERO

Crystal Romero is the press secretary at the LA County Federation of Labor.  She formerly worked as an organizer with the port truckers campaign of the Teamsters Union.

Organizing port truck drivers at the ports of LA and Long Beach has always been an uphill battle, because they have been classified as independent contractors, rather than being recognized properly as employees. Unfortunately, the majority of the trucking industry seems to believe that truck drivers are independent contractors, despite the law and numerous cases before the NLRB and other tribunals, which have stated that drivers are employees.

The ABC test established the criteria for determining what constitutes an independent contractor, and what constitutes an employee. But there's disagreement even among the drivers.  We need a lot of education to prove to the drivers themselves that they actually are misclassified employees. Even among the drivers it's always been an uphill battle to get them to recognize that their employers are taking advantage of them.

Employers often just choose to ignore AB 5, so we're still seeing active misclassification at the ports, which makes organizing a battle. A trucking company will claim, "no, no, no, these guys are not employees." So you have to fight out the employee issue, and ask for an NLRB union election.

Drivers make abysmally low rates. They've got to do multiple loads a day in order to break even. Some truck drivers actually make a negative income, and owe the company money. They are responsible for purchasing the trucks themselves. Each costs a quarter of a million dollars, and the drivers have to pay the taxes and insurance. Maintenance, tires, gasoline, all of that comes out of their own pockets. Essentially drivers are paying to work for multi-billion dollar global companies like Amazon.

A lot of positive changes have taken place, however the transition deadline to zero emission vehicles is going to be a huge barrier for a lot of misclassified truck drivers. How can we expect a low wage worker to finance a half-million dollar electric truck? A lot of the problems of the past are going to come back to haunt us if we don't address misclassification now.

I talked about the combination of passing laws and legal actions with Mexican gig workers. Gig workers there know that they're getting the short end of the stick, despite a few saying they're good with what Uber is doing. A big difference is the willingness of a lot of app drivers to recognize the problems and confront them head on.

Here we've had 30 or 40 years of deregulation, and the ideology of the independent contractor has really taken hold in the trucking industry. That is not as present in the app-based drivers today, so that's certainly a difference. But in all of these cases the problem is to get workers to establish their own agency, and get people to say, "Yeah. I'm a misclassified employee. I do have rights."

Legal action and political action could be an answer for the situation in Mexico, or one of the answers. Still, even here we've passed a wonderful law, but we still have billion-dollar corporations that skirt it. There are no real mechanisms of enforcement, or ways to keep these companies accountable that actually affects them in their pocketbooks. That's an issue that we see across the labor movement. So it's not the full strategy. I think it's just two prongs in a multiple prong approach.

In Mexico they are looking at organizing unions specifically for gig workers. Independent unions are part of the solution for them - rideshare and driver unions that can cater to the needs of these workers in a much better way than a very large union representing many different industries.

There's value in everything though. When you align with a very powerful union, like the Teamsters, you know you have more political clout. But I think one of the wonderful things that we've learned here is that we're all doing similar work. We all have very similar demands, and we're all fighting these battles in our respective jurisdictions. So how much more powerful could we be when we start really joining forces?And Uber continues to be enemy number one to workers everywhere.

RINGO HALLINAN - HE KNEW WHOSE SIDE HE WAS ON

RINGO HALLINAN - HE KNEW WHOSE SIDE HE WAS ON
By David Bacon
Foreign Policy in Focus/IPS | June 24, 2024
https://fpif.org/conn-hallinan-he-knew-whose-side-he-was-on/

 
I learned a lot from Conn "Ringo" Hallinan, who passed on June 19. Ringo had a full life as both a writer and political organizer, and ran the journalism program at UC Santa Cruz for 23 years. But that's not the way I knew him. For me, Ringo was a guide to a path through the hard knocks of labor and radical journalism.

Ringo was foreign editor at the West Coast People's World for many years. I spent a year of apprenticeship there, as it became a national newspaper, the People's Daily World. Both were publications of the U.S. Communist Party, and regularly carried news and analysis that went beyond, and usually in contradiction to, the mainstream media. Ringo's international columns, especially during the Cold War and the era of national liberation conflicts, were often the issue's high point.

Ringo was a voracious reader with an encyclopedic knowledge, ranging from defense budget figures to the world view of anti-apartheid fighters in southern Africa. He carried his "Dispatches from the Edge" into Foreign Policy in Focus after he left the paper and got his teaching gig at Santa Cruz.

I had no problems with the idea of being, as we called it at the paper, "profoundly partisan." I came out of union organizing drives and factory work, and became a labor reporter at the PDW after getting laid off for a time as an organizer. So, while I shared Ringo's general perspective, I had a lot to learn as a would-be journalist.  The terrible PDW pay couldn't sustain my family for more than a year, and I then had to go back to organizing work. But the bug bit me, and eventually I found a way to freelance fulltime journalism.

Organizing gives you a good grounding in the lives of working people, but the PDW job taught me how to put that into a coherent news or feature article. Although no longer at the paper, Ringo would often send me critiques of my articles, and our former editor, Carl Bloice, and the previous labor reporter, Billy Allan, helped me learn as well.

Ringo had a sense of dry humor and irony about the vicious absurdities of capitalism that appealed to me. His last column, written many years after his PW days, still could make me laugh. "But the illusions of Empire are stubborn," he wrote. "The US still thinks it can control the world, when every experience for the past 50 years or more suggests it can't: Vietnam, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed, the last war we 'won' was Grenada, where the competition was not exactly world class."

Or giving unwanted advice to the British about independence for Scotland and northern Ireland, or the Spanish about Catalonia: "You can't force people to be part of your country if they don't want to be, and trying to make them is like teaching a pig to whistle: can't be done and annoys the pig."

I could never imitate that sly style. But what I really learned from Ringo, and what I think he passes on, is his demand that journalists take sides, recognizing our interest in being participants in a broad movement for social justice. That includes his sharp analysis of the relationship between media workers and the people who employ them.

I interviewed Ringo not long after the huge and bitter Detroit News Strike, which ground on from 1995 to 1997. "The anti-union bias in the industry is very deep," he said.  The strike put that on display, but Ringo warned that the bias went beyond violent efforts by corporate owners to break the Newspaper Guild (as we were then called-the NewsGuild now). That bias is evident in the content of the papers and media, which gives it enormous political power in our world.

"So how is that produced?" he asked. Although corporate class interest certainly leads to overt censorship, media workers themselves share responsibility, he argued. Thousands of us belong to unions and care a lot about our salaries and working conditions. "And there were real efforts by dedicated newspaper union activists to challenge the suppression of the news from Detroit. But most media workers didn't feel a strong sense, not just of personal, but of class responsibility to report it."

Journalists are taught, Ringo observed, both by their education and the rules of the corporate newsroom, that they must not participate in movements for social justice, especially organizations on the left that challenge the established order. "Many reporters internalize the ban on being participants," he explained, "and believe it would compromise their supposed neutrality and objectivity. For reporters and editors, if they don't already know about something, it's not news. But the neutrality rule says you can't cover a story if you know about it from your personal experience, because it's a conflict. And of course, behind this lies the knowledge of what you need to do to please your boss and get ahead.

"The objective persona is like the tooth fairy-it doesn't exist," he added. "It not only makes reporters unwilling to be participants, but it keeps them from being good journalists. Was I.F. Stone neutral on Vietnam and Korea, or Mike Quinn on the San Francisco general strike? The point isn't to be objective and neutral, but to be fair and accurate. Neutrality destroys independent reporting-no one but reporters believes in it."

Belonging to the union can provide important job protections for journalists who challenge corporate power. But union membership doesn't automatically lead to better coverage of workers and communities of color, or international stories where U.S. foreign policy demands agreement. "For that, unions need to actively educate their members and appeal for loyalty to the labor movement and struggles in working-class communities. Some of the stories most hostile to workers during recent strikes and organizing drives, were written or aired by union members," Ringo charged.

"Look at the class origin of reporters and editors. Seventy-five years ago, they were overwhelmingly working-class people. Today they're largely middle class. Yes, corporations own the newspapers. But if reporters bit and screamed more, they could change a lot. Newspapers have to rely on them to produce the copy. Sure, publishers and editors have a class stance, but so does the average reporter, even if they belong to the Guild."

Ringo demanded political independence, both to know what side you're on, but even more important, to give working people what they need to make social change. "We need an analysis of the system in this country that reflects the reality of our lives," he said.

"The media talk about our economic system in black-and-white terms. Communism is dictatorial and repressive. The free enterprise system is the savior of all people. The media says our economic system allows us the freedom to do wonderful things, but there's no discussion of how this system really works, and its true impact on working people."

I took Ringo's call to heart. When the United States bombed the headquarters of Serbian television during the Yugoslav war, media workers in other countries voiced outrage.  But the U.S. journalism profession generally remained silent. I wrote a letter to our union newspaper, the Guild Reporter, with his words in my ear.

"We need independent international relationships, based on mutual working-class interests, free from the defense of U.S. foreign policy which characterized so much of labor during the cold war," I warned.

"The Guild has to find ways to support our right to independence from the bias of the corporations we work for, and the efforts by our own government to enforce political conformity. Independence means a culture of solidarity, identifying our common interests with other journalists and workers internationally and here at home."

The letter stirred up the predictable controversy, and I still remember the "Right On!" note I got from Ringo. We all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us and fought the battles that make our own work possible. Ringo's were pretty broad.

NOT SO WONDERFUL TO ITS WORKERS

NOT SO WONDERFUL TO ITS WORKERS
Will California's new farmworker labor law survive the assault by the Wonderful Company?
By David Bacon
The Nation, 5/1/24
https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/not-so-wonderful-company-ab2183/

UFW President Teresa Romero and marchers at the beginning of the 22-day march to Sacramento to win the card check bill.

It took  two marches from the southern San Joaquin Valley to Sacramento, and months of mobilization and pressure on Governor Gavin Newsom, to get a card check law for farmworkers.  In the end, though, on September 28, 2022 he signed AB 2183, giving California field workers the best agricultural labor law in the country.  

Today that law is in danger.  In a courthouse in Visalia, a small city in the heart of Republican grower country, a hearing opened last week to undo the law's first landmark achievement - the certification of the United Farm Workers as the union for workers at Wonderful Nurseries.  A union in this 640-worker operation could lead to organizing the rest of the gigantic Wonderful agribusiness complex, which employs over seven thousand grape, nut and tree fruit laborers.  

At stake, however, is more than just a union at Wonderful.  The hearing has become the focal point of a campaign combining politics, media and union busting, that takes aim at the law itself.  

Inside the hearing room, Wonderful attorney Ronald Barsamian, a lawyer with a long record of fighting unions, claims that the  UFW's certification should be set aside because organizers tricked workers into signing union cards.  Supporting the company is James Young, a lawyer for the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, who says he represents twenty anti-union workers. The foundation's website says it seeks "to eliminate coercive union power [and] provide free legal aid to these victimized employees."

Outside the building a noisy group shows up periodically, waving placards claiming Wonderful workers don't want a union, demanding that the Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) rescind the certification.  As TV cameras zoom in, one demonstrator in particular, Ana Lopez, makes an oft-repeated anti-union speech, in English - a language most farmworkers don't speak.

According to the UFW, Ana Lopez is not even on the list of nursery employees supplied by the company as part of the legal process.  One worker told me she is the sister of a company foreman.  In reality, her presence is part of a theater organized by Wonderful management, and orchestrated by Raul Calvo, a well-known California union buster.  

If the Board invalidates the certification, Wonderful wins and doesn't have to bargain.  Other companies would likely pursue the same strategy, perhaps shutting down implementation of the new law.  But if the Board upholds the certification, then Wonderful will undoubtedly appeal the decision in court.  Not only could a judge then throw out that certification, but he or she could go beyond that to invalidate the law itself.  In an increasingly conservative court system, that outcome is all too possible.  Heads I win - tails you lose.

"The goal here is to get rid of card check," says Chris Schneider, who retired two years ago as regional director of the ALRB Visalia office.  "I suspect the industry is supporting this, and possibly even helping to fund it."

Wonderful wouldn't need much assistance, though.  Its sales topped $4 billion in 2023, and its co-owners, Stewart and Lynda Resnick, are worth over $10 billion, which made them the wealthiest growers in the U.S. in 2018.  Today their Wonderful brand of pistachios, almonds, pomegranates and grapes is only rivalled by Driscoll Berries as the most recognizable agricultural products in the world, dominating supermarket shelves everywhere.  

 

 

Marchers in Sacramento at the end of the 22-day march to win the card check bill.


A union campaign under the new law

Workers began to challenge Wonderful's power when they started meeting with UFW organizers in the fall of 2023, after the new law went into effect.  AB 2183 modified the original Agricultural Labor Relations Act, passed in 1975, by allowing workers to sign union cards outside of work, and then use those cards to force their employer to recognize their union.  The old 1975 law needed to be strengthened, its proponents said, because over 40 years growers have used massive intimidation to prevent workers from voting freely in union elections on company property.

Using the new law, once a majority of workers have signed up, the union gives the cards to the ALRB.  After the Board verifies the union has majority support, it certifies the union as the workers' bargaining representative.  The company is then obligated to negotiate a contract.  If it refuses, the union can ask for a mediator, and the Board can impose a contract on the grower.  Even if the grower appeals the certification, it still has to bargain unless that certification is overturned.  That mandatory mediation of first time contracts was itself a modification of the original law in 2002, caused by growers' almost universal refusal to negotiate contracts even when workers did win elections.

Last year UFW organizers began holding house meetings to let workers know about the new way to get a union contract.  Rosa Silva held one of those meetings in her San Joaquin Valley home, inviting friends from a number of companies.  They included some from Wonderful Nurseries, where she worked.  "Erika [Navarette, the UFW organizer and vice-president] told us the history of the union and Cesar Chavez," she remembers.  "She explained the new law, and how negotiating a contract would work.  If we put together a proposal we could fight for it, and the union would back us up.  Then she passed out union cards, and said if we wanted to join, we could sign up.  Everyone did.  We even took photos of each other, laughing and holding the card."

 

Marchers in Sacramento at the end of the 22-day march to win the card check bill.


At the end of the meeting, Navarrete told workers about a $600 benefit the union had pushed for with the Biden administration, a payment to farmworker families struggling because of the COVID pandemic.  Last year the US Department of Agriculture established the Farm and Food Worker Relief (FFWR) Grant Program "to distribute $670 million to fourteen nonprofit organizations and one Tribal entity [giving] one-time $600 relief payments to eligible farm and food workers."  In addition to the UFW Foundation, other distributors include Catholic Charities, the Cherokee Nation, the National Center for Farmworker Health and the National Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Association.  

Navarrete had a computer tablet with the USDA website application, and helped people at Silva's house who wanted to apply.  The new program, she said, was better than earlier relief programs because, unlike them, families didn't have to provide a Social Security number.  That had disqualified many undocumented farmworkers from pandemic aid.  The National Agricultural Workers Survey estimates that about half of all farmworkers lack legal immigration status, and the Cooperativa Campesina says that in California it's over 70%.  Although undocumented workers pay into the Social Security fund from their wages, the government will not give them Social Security numbers.

Maria is another worker who signed a card.  A union organizer came to her home and told her that other workers in the nursery were trying to form a union and get a contract.  "I wanted a union because there's a lot of favoritism and discrimination," she told me.  Maria, who wanted her name kept confidential to avoid retaliation for speaking out, is not employed directly by Wonderful.  She works for Guerrero Farm Labor, one of four labor contractors Wonderful uses to supply workers without directly hiring them.  Because she works for a contractor, she gets no benefits like a medical plan or paid holidays.  Under the state labor law, however, she is considered a Wonderful employee, and can sign a card and join the union.

People employed directly by the nursery work year around, but contracted workers only have jobs from January to June.  "When the season ends they select certain people who can stay on, the favorites of the foremen," Maria charges.  "The rest of us get laid off."  When she's working she makes $16.35 per hour.  She and her husband, also a farmworker, have three children.  "Everything is so expensive we can hardly make it when we're working, and what we can buy is very limited.  When the work ends, we try to get other jobs, but we can hardly survive."

On February 23 the UFW handed the cards signed by Wonderful Nurseries workers to the ALRB.  The Board asked the company for a list of workers, to verify that a majority had signed them.  It concluded that 327 Wonderful Nurseries employees who were farmworkers, working in the appropriate period, and who weren't supervisors or management, had done so - a majority of the its 640 employees.

 

United Farm Workers members and supporters march to the capitol building in Sacramento, to demand that Governor Newsom sign a bill providing absentee ballots for farmworkers in union elections. Newsom vetoed the bill the same day.


The union busting campaign unfolds

Three days later, Wonderful hired Raul Calvo, who then met with its human relations managers.  Together they practiced a script prepared by company lawyers to use in meetings with the nursery workers.  The next day the meetings began.  ALRB staff later investigated the meetings and met with workers who attended.  The day before the Visalia hearing began, the ALRB's general counsel filed charges against Wonderful over illegal activities in those meetings.  Foremen stopped work in area after area, the complaint says, and told workers to meet with Calvo and the lawyers.  Calvo read from the script, and added his own anti-union messages.  

In at least some of those meetings, Calvo asked workers if they had signed union cards, an illegal interrogation.  He asked workers to put their names on a list of those who wanted to revoke their signature, another violation.  He and other supervisors told workers not to sign the cards, and that the company wanted "to remain free of the union."  Workers who put their names on the list were called individually to the company office, where lawyers and agents wrote out declarations for them to sign.

According to Maria, in the meeting she attended, "Raul asked who had signed for the $600.  He had a piece of paper for people to put their names, to revoke their signatures.  He said they'd meet with their lawyers to write a statement.  I was called in to Ana's office [a human relations manager], where Raul asked if I'd signed and if it was for $600.  Then he wanted me to talk with the LA Times to say good things about the company.  I didn't want to tell lies, so I said no."

Once the hearing began to challenge the union's certification, Calvo and other company supervisors began organizing groups to travel to Visalia, to demonstrate in front of the ALRB office. Another anti-union rally was held during work time outside the Wonderful office in Wasco. Although workers can't normally get time off during the work day, Seth Oster, a Wonderful manager, told reporters that no one would be punished for leaving work to rally against the union.

 

Marchers in Sacramento at the end of the 22-day march to win the card check bill.


 At the same time, the company gave declarations to the Board to support its challenge of the certification, in which they say workers claim they were tricked into signing union cards, or told they had to sign in order to get the $600. In the hearing, Wonderful is represented by nine or ten lawyers, according to UFW attorney Mario Martinez.  Their claims have been seconded by the National Council of Agricultural Employers, whose president Michael Marsh says the union used the same tactic in New York State, where a card check law has also gone into effect.  In both states, "they were tricked, lied to, and coerced by UFW organizers."  The grower association is presumably challenging card check laws wherever they appear.

"People began to be very afraid," Rosa Silva says.  "They were told that a judge would give them a paper saying they had to testify against the union."  Maria adds, "They know the company wants them to go [to the rallies].  If they don't go, people will say they're on the side of the union.  They're afraid they'll lose their jobs or won't have work when the season comes next year."  

Raul Calvo has organized this kind of campaign before.  Following years of wildfires in California's wine country, he appeared in Sonoma County in 2022 to oppose proposals for worker protections.  A coalition of labor and community groups, North Bay Jobs with Justice, proposed hazard pay, disaster insurance, community monitoring and safety training in indigenous languages like Mixteco, for farmworkers laboring in smoke and other dangerous conditions.  Calvo organized a committee of pro-grower workers, who testified at hearings in opposition.  Nevertheless, an ordinance including some of the protections was finally passed by the county Board of Supervisors later that year.

At the Apio/Curation Foods vegetable processing facility on the state's central coast, Calvo was paid more than $2 million over eight years to convince workers not to organize with the United Food and Commercial Workers.  After the union was defeated in 2015, Curation Foods was bought by ag giant Taylor Farms for $73 million.  

Bringing workers to demonstrate outside ALRB offices to pressure the Board was the most public feature of an earlier campaign to get rid of the mandatory mediation section of the labor law.  Another big California grower, Gerawan Farming, tried to have the law declared unconstitutional in 2015, in an effort supported by the National Right to Work Committee, the California Fresh Fruit Association and rightwing politicians around anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist.  The Board charged that forged signatures on anti-union petitions had been turned in by Anthony Raimondo, the then-partner of Wonderful's lawyer Ronald Barsamian.  Workers were bussed to media events in Sacramento to rally against the union in front of TV cameras, expenses paid by growers.

Ultimately the California Supreme Court upheld the law's validity, but the Board yielded to political pressure and in the end the UFW lost its certification.  A few years later the company went bankrupt and several thousand workers lost their jobs.  "Wonderful is taking a page from the Gerawan playbook," according to UFW lawyer Martinez.  "And the objective is the same - to get rid of the law itself."

 

UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta and UFW President Teresa Romero in Sacramento, after marching for 22 days to win the card check bill.


Wonderful is better positioned to mount that challenge than were the Gerawans, who were extreme Republicans in a Democratic state.  In the ten years before 2018, Wonderful spent over $1 billion on the image of its famous brands - Halo mandarins, Fiji water, Pom juice, Justin wines, Teleflora flowers and Wonderful pistachios.  

The Resnicks cultivate California media, support Democrats like Governor Newsom (to whom they contributed at least $220,000), and spend money on high profile projects in California farmworker towns.  The couple gave $25 million to the Wonderful College Prep Academy, a charter school in Delano, and donated $55 million to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  The new student union building at California State University in Fresno bears their name.  "Our company has always believed that success means doing well by doing good," Stewart Resnick says on the Wonderful website.  "We are deeply committed to doing our part to build a better world and inspiring others to do the same."

But just as Andrew Carnegie built 3000 libraries in cities across the country, while fighting unions among his steelworkers with Pinkerton detectives, the Resnick's paternalism also obscures a history of intense opposition to organizing among its own workers.

As early as 1998, workers at Paramount Farms, a large fruit and nut enterprise owned by the couple, began joining the Laborers Union in its huge Avenal almond packinghouse.  The company responded by hiring union busters Mendez and Associates.  Using the same kind of captive meetings held at Wonderful this spring, supervisors told workers the company would help them get their signatures on union cards revoked.  Two union supporters were fired, and workers voted down the union in a climate of fear.  A complaint of illegal tactics was later upheld by the National Labor Relations Board, but the decision was too late and too weak to change anything.  

By 2010 Paramount was cultivating 5 million trees on 120,000 acres in Kern County.  The company bought the Westside Mutual Water Company, and through it gained control of the Kern Water Bank.  Pumping to irrigate its almonds and pistachios then led to a 115 foot drop in the water table in three years.  Rob Yraceburu, Wonderful's current president, is a water bank director.  Another director William Phillimore, who today runs Westside, was a Paramount Farms vice-president for years.  

In 2015 Paramount changed its name and became Wonderful.  A year later, Wonderful's labor contractor, Family Ranch, fired a crew of eight older workers just after Christmas.  They'd protested dirty drinking water and company pressure to work faster. The workers filed a complaint, and after two and a half years of appeals, the Board concluded that they were fired "because they complained about working conditions."  Chris Schneider, at the time the ALRB Regional Director prosecuting the case, asks, "What would it have cost the company to settle the case?  Far less than what it paid the attorneys for years of appeals.  But Wonderful was fundamentally opposed to the idea of workers having any say."

In 2019 the company announced it would cut the pay for 1800 pickers of its "Halo" mandarins by 12%.  The workers stopped picking for four days, with help from the UFW, and the cut was rescinded.   But after the harvest restarted, fear kept workers from taking further steps to join the union.  

 

 

Marchers in Sacramento at the end of the 22-day march to win the card check bill.


Will the new law work?

It was the new law that provided a way for Wonderful Nurseries' workers to organize and bring the union in, despite this history.  And while almost to a person growers want to keep the union out, in the first two ranches where the UFW filed petitions the outcome has been different, at least so far.  Last fall DMB Packing Corp was the first company where workers signed cards, and the union asked for certification under AB 2183.  Its appeal was dismissed by the ALRB, and it is now in contract negotiations with the UFW.  In January the union filed a petition for workers at Olive Hill Greenhouses, a small nursery.  Again, the employer is negotiating.  

Those results give some hope to Rosa Silva, who says she wants a contract with a grievance procedure because she puts her job at risk to complain about bad conditions.  "A few days ago we were getting stomach problems from the water, and one of us went to human relations to ask them to do something," she remembers.  "They told her the problem was in her head, and that the water is fine.  It was brave to complain the first time, but doing it again would get you in a lot of trouble.  If we had a union we could force the company to have good water, and complain without fear."  

Silva is a divorced mother of three, making $16.55 per hour.  Although she has a year-around job, "it's not possible to survive on this wage," she says.  "We pay one bill and put off the next.  It hurts to tell my kids I can't buy them a burrito.  Nothing for them.  So we have meetings each week, and talk about our problems at work and what we want in our contract.  It's hard.  A lot of people are afraid to come, that if the union doesn't win we'll get fired.  But I think that if the company has all this money for lawyers and consultants, they can raise the wages and make conditions better.  We're just asking for what's fair."

The union still has its certification, even while the appeals process drags on.  Silva and the other union workers at Wonderful Nurseries face the difficult problem of continuing to organize inside the company, in an atmosphere where workers fear for their jobs and can see the company's obvious hatred for the union.  Whether their beginning organization can get better water, or oppose the favoritism in hiring and layoffs, or pressure Wonderful into a wage raise, will depend in part on their ability to get workers to advocate openly for changing these immediate conditions.  Signing cards is only the beginning.  Making real changes through their collective action is what will build their union.

But much still depends on the ALRB.  The Board's complaint about illegal interrogation and pressure on workers is a powerful tool to open up space for worker organizing.  The new law was also written so that the Board has the power to impose a mediator and even a contract.  So talking about what people want in that agreement isn't just a theoretical discussion.  Putting together workers' demands is also a basic way to organize.  

A lot is at stake in that Visalia hearing room.  Whether the Board can stop the fear campaign.  Whether the union's certification will be protected.  Whether the workers will have a real right to organize and bargain.  Most of all, whether the Board will stand up for its own law and process in the face of money, media and political power.

THE HUMAN COST OF A STRAWBERRY WAGE

THE HUMAN COST OF A STRAWBERRY WAGE
By David Bacon
Civil Eats, 4/24/24

Guillermina Diaz, a Mixtec immigrant from Oaxaca, picks strawberries.  She and her sister Eliadora support three other family members, all of whom sleep and live in a single room in a house.


Driving north on California's Highway 101 through the central coast, a traveler approaches the Santa Ynez Valley through miles of grapevines climbing gently rolling hills.  Here humans have mastered nature, the landscape seems to say - a bucolic vision of agriculture with hardly a worker in sight.  Perhaps a lone irrigator adjusts drip pipes or sprinklers.  Only during a few short weeks in the fall can one see the harvest crews filling gondolas behind the tractors.  Even then, you'd have to be driving at night, when most grape picking now takes place under floodlights that illuminate the rows behind the machines.

As 101 winds out of the hills, the crop beside the highway suddenly changes.  Here endless rows of strawberries fill the valley's flat plane. Dirt access roads bisect enormous fields, and beside them dozens of cars sit parked in the dust.  Most are older vans and sedans.  Inside this vast expanse dozens of workers move down the rows.  

From the highway, many fields are hidden by tall plastic screens.  Growers claim they keep animals out, but they are really a legacy of the farmworker strikes of the 1970s.  Then growers sought to keep workers inside, away from strikers in the roadway calling out to them, urging them to stop picking and leave.  The abusive and dangerous conditions of strawberry workers today, and the eruptions of their protests over them, make the screens more than just a symbol of past conflict.  

Picking strawberries is one of the most brutal jobs in agriculture.  A worker picking wine grapes in the hills can labor standing up.  But the men and women in the strawberry rows have to bend double to reach the berries.  As strawberries ripen, they hang over the side of raised beds about a foot high, covered in plastic.  In a ditch-like row between them, a worker pushes a wire cart on tiny wheels.  Each holds a cardboard flat with 8 plastic clamshell containers - the ones you see on supermarket shelves.  

Eduardo Retano plants root stock of strawberry plants.


The pain of this labor is a constant.  Many workers will say you just have to work through the first week, when your back hurts so much you can't sleep, until your body adjusts and the pain somehow gets less.  At the start of the season in March, rain fills the rows with water and the cart must be dragged through the mud.  When summer comes the field turns into an oven by midday.

Through it all, workers have to pick as fast as possible.  "At the beginning of the season there aren't many berries yet," Matilde told me.  She'd been picking for three weeks, her fifth year in the strawberries.  "The mud makes heavy work even heavier.  It's hard to pick even 5 boxes an hour, but if I can't make that, or if I pick any green berries, it gets called to my attention.  The foreman tells us we're not trying hard enough, that they don't have time to teach us, and if we can't make it we won't keep working.  Some don't come back the next day, and some are even fired there in the field."  

Mathilde didn't want to use her last name because being identified might bring retaliation from her boss, a fear shared by another worker, Juana.  "Not many people can do this job," Juana told me in an interview.  She came to Santa Maria from Santiago Tilantongo in Oaxaca and speaks Mixtec (one of the many indigenous languages in southern Mexico), in addition to Spanish, like many strawberry pickers living in the Santa Ynez Valley.  She's been a strawberry worker for 15 years.  "I have permanent pain in my lower back," she said, "and when it rains it gets very intense.  Still, I get up every morning at 4, make lunch for my family, and go to work.  It's a sacrifice, but it's the only job I can get."  

 

Eliadora Diaz, a Mixtec immigrant from Oaxaca, picks strawberries with her sister Guillermina.


Low Wages, High Cost of Living

On April 1 the Alianza Campesina de la Costa Central (Farmworker Alliance of the Central Coast) organized an event timed to gain public notice at the beginning of the strawberry season.  The objective was to pressure growers to raise the wages.  The Alianza issued a powerful 44-page report, Harvesting Dignity, The Case for a Living Wage for Farmworkers, that documents in shocking statistics what Mathilda and Juana know from personal experience.  

Those statistics reveal that the mean hourly wage for farmworkers in Santa Barbara County was $17.42 last year, which would produce a yearly income of $36,244 for a strawberry picker working fulltime, all twelve months.  But this calculation includes the higher wages of foremen and management employees.  Juana, after 15 years, made $16, the state minimum wage, and Mathilde after five years made the same.  

In reality, their annual income was much lower because even working the entire season, they would get no more than eight months of work, and often less.  At the beginning of the season there are not enough berries for 8 hours each day, so Mathilda only got 6 hours, or 36 hours in a week working on Saturday too.  Juana's week in late March was 15-20 hours.  

At the height of the season wages go up because growers begin to pay a piece rate, which last year was usually $2.20 for each flat of eight clamshell boxes.  To make the equivalent of the minimum wage, a worker would have to pick over 7 flats an hour, and earning more than minimum wage on the piece rate means working like a demon, ignoring the physical cost.  At the beginning of the season, "champion pickers can do 8 or 9 an hour," Mathilde explains.  "but not everyone can.  6 or 7 is normal."    

Fulltime work at minimum wage for eight months would produce $21,760.  Out of her strawberry wages Juana and her husband, who works in the field with her, are paying $2000 a month rent, or $24,000 a year.  Three of her children are grown, and the other three are still at home.  "We have to save to pay the rent during the winter when there's no work.  If we don't, we don't have a place to live," she explains.  "During those five months there are always bills we can't pay, like water.  By March there's no money at all, and we have to get loans to survive."  The loans come from "friends" who charge 10% interest.  "Plus, I have to send money to my mama and papa in Mexico.  There are many people depending on me."

 

Sabina Cayetano and her son Aron live in an apartment complex in Santa Maria.  In the spring and summer she works picking strawberries.


Mathilde and her husband and their two children share a bedroom in a two-bedroom house.  Another family of three lives in the other, and together they pay $2,200 in rent.  "Fortunately, my husband works construction, and gets $20 an hour," she says, "but the same months when there are no strawberries the rain cuts his hours too.  It would be much harder if we didn't have his work, and we try to save and save, and look for work in the winter, but often there's just enough money for food.  We don't eat beef or fish, just economical foods like pasta, rice and beans.  And even with that sometimes we have to get a loan too."

According to Harvesting Justice, the median rent in Santa Barbara County is $2,999 per month.  Using the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's living wage calculation formula, the report estimates the annual food cost for a family with two children at $12,880, and the total income required for all basic expenses at $99,278. As a result, a UC Merced/California Department of Public Health survey found that a quarter of all farmworkers sleep in a room with three or more people.  

This poverty affects all farmworkers in the state, in all aspects of life.  Less than a quarter of undocumented field laborers have health insurance, and the Harvesting Dignity report estimates that people without immigration documents make up 80 percent of those living in Santa Maria.  Because reporting bad conditions, and even more so protesting them, is much riskier for undocumented workers, having no papers affects survival at work as well.  "In Santa Barbara County in 2023 there were two farmworker deaths," it noted, "both related to poor supervision and training. In one instance, farmworkers reported they were told to continue working in a Cuyama carrot field alongside the body of their fallen coworker."

Workers Calling for Change: The Wish Farms Strike

Santa Maria strawberry workers have mounted many challenges to this low wage system.  In 1997 a Mixteco worker group organized a strike that stopped the harvest on all the valley's ranches, which lasted three days.  More recently workers at Rancho Laguna Farms protested the owner's failure to follow CDC guidelines during the pandemic, and won a 20¢ per box raise by stopping work.  In 2021 forty pickers at Hill Top Produce used the same tactic to raise the per-box piece rate from $1.80 to $2.10, which was followed by similar action by 150 pickers at West Coast Berry Farms.  At the beginning of the next season in 2022 work stopped at J&G Berry Farms in another wage protest.

Last year, workers carried out a dramatic and well-organized strike at Wish Farms, a large berry grower with fields in Santa Maria and Lompoc, and headquarters in Florida.  At the height of the season, to increase production the company promised a wage of $6/hour plus $2.50 per box, a rate they'd paid the previous year.  When workers saw their checks, however, the piece rate bonus was a dollar less.  They met with Fernando Martinez, an organizer with the Mixteco Indigenous Community Organizing Project (MICOP), which belongs to the Alianza Campesina.  Martinez and MICOP organizers had helped workers during the earlier work stoppages, and urged the Wish Farms strikers to go out to the fields to call other workers to join.  "We helped them form a committee," Martinez says, "and in a meeting at the edge of the field they voted to form a permanent organization, Freseros por la Justicia [Strawberry Workers for Justice]."

 

Strawberry workers on strike against Wish Farms, a large berry grower in Santa Maria and Lompoc  Most were indigenous Mixtec migrants from Oaxaca and southern Mexico, but who now live in the U.S.  


Workers say they discovered, however, that after they walked out the company brought a crew of workers with H-2A guestworker visas into one of the fields to replace them.  The H-2A program allows growers to recruit workers in Mexico and other countries, and bring them to work for less than a year, after which they have to return home.  Workers are almost all young men.  Those who can't work fast enough, or who protest conditions, can be fired at any time and sent back.  Federal regulations establish a wage for them, which last year in California was $18.65 per hour.

Replacing domestic workers with H-2A workers during a labor dispute is a violation of Federal regulations.  Wish Farms did not respond to requests for comment about the strike.

Concepcion Chavez, one of the strikers, told me in an interview that "when we would work by the hour, the company was paying them [the H-2A workers] $18.65 [per hour], and us $16.25.  Many of the workers who live here felt the company really wanted us to leave.  We are always afraid they'll replace us, because they give a preference to the contratados [H-2A workers].  That's what the supervisors say, that they'll replace us and send in the contratados."

After two days strikers reached an agreement with Wish Farms and went back to work.  In September, however, as the work slowed for the winter, Chavez asked if she would be hired again the following season.  "In the office they told me they had no job because the company was already filled up," she recalled.  "But when I went back to my foreman, he said the company had told him not to give me a job.  That happened to other workers who were in the strike too."

Another Roadblock to Change: Union Busting

According to Martinez, "There were a lot of strikes until last year, mostly to challenge low wages.  But after the strikes, workers usually don't want to continue organizing because the company brings in anti-union consultants.  Wish Farms brought in Raul Calvo, who has been in other farms also.  We've heard from workers that growers tell them not to participate in meetings with community organizations like us. They're trying to intimidate people, because they're afraid workers will organize."

 

Strawberry workers on strike call out to other workers to leave the field and join them.


Calvo has along history as an anti-union consultant.  At the Apio/Curation Foods processing facility in Guadalupe, a few miles from Santa Maria, Calvo was paid over $2 million over eight years to convince workers not to organize with the United Food and Commercial Workers.  After the union was defeated in 2015, Curation Foods was bought by ag giant Taylor Farms for $73 million.  

Following huge wildfires in 2017, Calvo appeared in Sonoma County in 2022 to oppose proposals for worker protections.  A coalition of labor and community groups, North Bay Jobs with Justice, proposed hazard pay, disaster insurance, community monitoring and safety training in indigenous languages like Mixteco, for farmworkers laboring in smoke and other dangerous conditions.  Calvo organized a committee of pro-grower workers, who testified at hearings in opposition.  An ordinance including some of the protections was finally passed by the county Board of Supervisors later that year.  Most recently, Calvo was hired by the Wonderful Company to organize another anti-union committee to oppose nursery workers in Wasco, CA, who are trying to join the United Farm Workers.

Opposition to unions and worker organizing activity is one reason why strawberry wages remain close to the legal minimum, according to the Harvesting Justice report.  One of its authors, Erica Diaz Cervantes, feels strongly that the wage system is unjust.  "During the pandemic, these workers provided our food, even though as consumers we can be oblivious of that fact.  So when the workers have initiated these strikes, it has put more attention on their situation."  Diaz Cervantes is the Senior Policy Advocate for the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE), which formed the Alianza with MICOP.

Nevertheless, the strikes haven't resulted in permanent worker organizations.  "There are a lot of union busters who discourage workers," she says.  "They win small improvements and wins, but always in the piece rate, never the basic hourly wage.  And the actions don't go on longer because workers can't afford to."

Jamshid Damooei, professor and director of the economics program at California Lutheran University, and executive director of the Center for Economics of Social Issues, was a principal advisor for the report.  "Profit seeking by growers is greatly responsible for the low wages," he told me.  "If they can depress wages, the profit is greater.  Unionization can help workers because the function of a union is to give them the ability to negotiate."

 

The Diaz family, Mixtec immigrants from Oaxaca, slept and livet in a single room in a house in Oxnard, where other migrant families also lived.  The Diaz family are strawberry workers.  From the left, Guiillermina Ortiz Diaz, Graciela, Eliadora, their mother Bernardina Diaz Martinez, and little sister Ana Lilia.


The Impact of H-2A Workers

But workers' bargaining leverage is undermined by their immigration status, he believes.  "Eighty percent of farmworkers in Santa Maria are undocumented, and without them there is no agriculture.  Yet the median wage, which in 2019 was $26,000 a year for farmworkers born in the U.S, was only $13,000 - half that - for the undocumented."

While undocumented labor is cheap, nevertheless strawberry growers in Santa Maria increasingly use the H-2A program to bring workers under labor contracts from Mexico and Central America.  About 2 million workers labor in U.S. fields. Last year, the Department of Labor gave growers permission to bring 371,619 H-2A workers - or about a sixth of the entire U.S. farm labor workforce - a fourfold increase from 98,813 in 2012.

Growers provide food and housing for the workers, although there is a long record of complaints over crowding, substandard conditions, and enforce isolation from the surrounding community.  Because employment is limited to less than a year, workers must apply to recruiters to return each year.   

Growers say they face a labor shortage making this necessary.  According to Western Growers President & CEO Tom Nassif, "Farmers in all sectors of U.S. agriculture, especially in the labor-intensive fruit and vegetable industries, are experiencing chronic labor shortages, which have been exacerbated by recent interior immigration enforcement and tighter border security policies."

 

This trailer, at 1340 Prell St., was listed as the housing for six H-2A workers by La Fuente Farming, Inc.


That is not the case, at least in Santa Maria, Diaz Cervantes responds.  She says the 2022 census reported 12,000 workers in the Santa Ynez Valley.  Martinez believes the true number is double that, and that 60% are Mixtecos.  "I do not think there's a shortage of farmworkers here," Diaz charges. "We know it's a lot more because many undocumented people are afraid to be counted.  There are always people ready to work and put in more hours.  It's just a way to justify increasing the H-2A program.  Overall there are a lot of local workers in the county." 

What makes the H-2A program attractive to growers, Damooei says, is that "workers do not have much ability to negotiate their labor contracts.  Their living environment and mobility are restricted, and they face repression if they protest.  That has an impact on workers living here."

One recent case highlights the vulnerability of H-2A workers.  Last September at Sierra del Tigre Farms in Santa Maria, more than 100 workers were terminated before their work contracts had ended and told to go back to Mexico. The company then refused to pay them the legally required wages they would have earned. The company's alter ego, Savino Farms, had already been fined for the same violation four years earlier,.

One worker, Felipe Ramos, was owed more than $2,600. "It was very hard," he remembers. "I have a wife and baby girl, and they survive because I send money home every week. Everyone else was like that too. The company had problems finding buyers, and too many workers."  In March Sierra del Tigre Farms declared bankruptcy, still owing workers their wages.  Last year Rancho Nuevo Harvesting, Inc., another labor contractor, was forced by the Department of Labor to pay $1 million in penalties and back wages to H-2A workers it had cheated in a similar case. 

 

Bars on the windows of the complex at 1316/1318 Broadway, was listed as the housing for 160 workers by Big F Company, Inc. and Savino Farms.  It was formerly senior housing, and the contractor built a wall around it, with a gate controlling who enters and leaves.


According to Rick Mines, a statistician who designed the original National Agricultural Workers Survey for the U.S. Department of Labor, "There are about 2 million farmworkers in the U.S., mostly immigrant men and women who live as families with U.S- born children.  They are being displaced by a cheaper, more docile labor force of single male H-2A workers.  The H-2A program should be phased out and replaced with a program of legal entry for immigrants who can bring their families and eventually become equal American citizens.   We should not become a democracy that is half slave and half free."

A New Way Forward

As the strawberry season unfolds in Santa Maria, warmer weather will dry out the mud.  The berries will ripen faster and become more numerous.  It will be the time growers feel the most pressure to get them from the fields to supermarket shelves.  It will also be the time Juana and Mathilde depend on each year to pay past bills and hopefully save for future ones.  They will need the work.  How the Alianza Campesina uses this moment could have a big impact on their wages and lives.

"Perhaps there are different ways to change things," Martinez speculates.  "We've thought about a local ordinance like ones we've seen for other kinds of workers.  A union could also raise pay and bring benefits and holidays."

MICOP and CAUSA are holding house meetings with workers, and a general meeting every two weeks. "Right now we're trying to popularize the idea of a sueldo digno [dignified wage] and explain the justice of this demand.  The idea is to increase workers' knowledge.  And since so many of us are Mixtecos, we're getting workers to reach out to their workmates from the same home communities in Oaxaca."   

 

Alondra Mendoza, a community outreach worker for MICOP, talks with a farmworker outside the Panaderia Susy early in the morning before work.


Diaz adds that workers can see the labor activity happening elsewhere in the country.  "Our report is adding to what workers are already doing.  Whatever they do we're right behind them."

Mathilde has already made up her mind.  "It's necessary to pressure the ranchers so they value our work," she says.  "Without us they have nothing.  We do all the work, so why should we get $2 or $2.20 per box when $3 or $3.50 is what's fair.  People have to unite, and we need big demonstrations.  I am willing to help organize this, because it will make life a lot better.  I hope it will happen soon."