The Immokalee, Florida farmworkers who have won battles against some of food industry's biggest corporations take aim at Publix and Wendy's
Unions can win in the South, and doing so is an essential part of the broader goal of defeating the reactionary political and economic agenda nationwide. The key is cultivating and mobilizing community support for workers’ rights to organize.
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In the picking of the strawberry crops - many workers are needed and in the name of immigration reform the growers are seeing their dream - a huge cheap source of labor. Congress is debating bills that would expand the number of recruited workers many times over, possibly even reaching the 500,000 worker peak of the bracero program in the mid-1950s.
In July, Washington berry pickers went on strike. A week after their return, farm owners brought in H2A guest workers.
Familias Unidas Para la Justicia at Sakuma Brothers Farms are attempting to demolish the dismal conditions of their labor. In doing this they are cultivating a newer and more democratic form of work through their strike. "Viva la Huelga!" is the call of the hour. There is much the labor movement can learn from these striking workers and the long tradition of struggle they come from in Oaxaca.
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Most workers in the U.S. look to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for standards to protect them from exposure to hazardous chemicals. Protection for farmworkers from pesticides is left to the EPA's authority under the Worker Protection Standard of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act ("FIFRA"), a standard that is far more lenient than OSHA rules and is fundamentally inadequate.
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