Indigenous Oaxacan farm workers win themselves a union in
the Pacific Northwest.
David Bacon, American Prospect
June 26, 2017
Bob's Burgers and Brew, a hamburger joint at the Cook Road
freeway exit on Interstate 5, about two hours north of Seattle, doesn’t look
like a place where Pacific Northwest farm workers can change their lives, much
less make some history. But on June 16, a half-dozen men in work clothes pulled
tables together in Bob's outdoor seating area. Danny Weeden, general manager of
Sakuma Brothers Farms, then joined them.
 |
| A worker votes to ratify the contract. Photo: David Bacon |
After exchanging polite greetings, Weeden opened four
folders and handed around copies of a labor contract that had taken 16 sessions
of negotiations to hammer out. As the signature pages were passed down the
tables, each person signed. Weeden collected his copy and drove off; the
workers remained long enough to cheer and take pictures with their fists in the
air. Then they too left.
It was a quiet end to four years of strikes and boycotts, in
which these workers had organized the first new farm-worker union in the United
States in a quarter-century—Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ).[…]
Read the full article:
http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2017/06/a-new-farm-worker-union-is-born.html
http://prospect.org/article/new-farm-worker-union-born
http://prospect.org/article/new-farm-worker-union-born
Read previous coverage of the struggle at Sakuma Brothers:
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