As we we celebrate Labor Day weekend, please remember that some workers are still not entitled to the 8 hour work day that many of us take for granted.

It has been 74 years since farm workers and domestic workers were left out of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, the landmark federal law setting minimum wages and overtime for nearly all American workers.

To win votes from Southern lawmakers back in 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was forced to exempt farm and domestic workers. Nearly all of those workers in the Southern U.S. then were African Americans. Today in California and across the country, most farm workers are Latinos.

The United Farm Workers is sponsoring AB 1313, by Assemblymember Michael Allen (D-Santa Rosa), to provide overtime pay for farm workers after eight hours a day or 40 hours a week. This bill passed the state Senate and will soon be on California Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk. Can you please send him an email today asking him to sign this vital bill?

The exclusion of farm workers from overtime after eight hours was wrong in 1938. It is wrong now. The time has come for it to end. Progress was made in 1976 when Gov Jerry Brown permitted California’s farm workers to receive overtime after 10 hours of work. But there is more to be done. California provides 80 percent of the nation’s fresh produce and as a result its agricultural laws set the standard for the nation. Tell Gov. Brown to end this shameful legacy of racism in California by signing AB 1313.

Bill to end shameful legacy of racism for farm workers can soon go to Calif. governor this Labor Day weekend

As safety violations continue, card check still has many opponents

by Brian Leubitz

Despite the deaths and very public injuries of farm workers over the past few years, farm labor is still very difficult to organize.  There are many reasons for this, as you can imagine.  Great distances, language barriers, and immigration issues are just some of those.  In addition, because of these issues, management has great sway over labor.  Management essentially has a thumb on the scale of an election process.

Card check wouldn’t end these issues, but it could go a long way towards making labor relevant in farm work.  Despite Jerry’s veto of card check legislation, the issue won’t go away quickly.  However, the numbers from the recent LA Times/USC poll show that the unions may need to do a bit more work on messaging.

The poll shows that 42% support card check for farm workers, and 45% oppose. Now, those numbers should probably considered somewhat squishy, but not necessarily in the good way.  After being read pro and con statements, support for card check fell to 39%.

Farm work is one of the more obvious positive cases for card check. It makes an unmanageable task possible, but hardly easy.  Farm workers need the right to organize, and card check just levels the playing field somewhat.

by California Labor Federation Legislative Advocate Caitlin Vega

The Napa I grew up in is probably not the place you'd come to spend a long weekend winetasting. Real Napa, as we call it, is not glamorous or exclusive. In the old days, my dad says, “it used to be a place where poor kids could grow up in the country.”  Today, even with the fancy restaurants and expensive tourist shops, Napa is still an agricultural town at heart, which means it is a farmworker community.

The wineries that have made Napa famous are also workplaces. The workers in the vineyards work long hours in freezing cold and sweltering heat. Most have no health care and no pension. Wages are low and workers are often paid piece rate.

Farmworkers are routinely exposed to dangerous pesticides. The cancer rate is very high, as are birth defects among the children whose mothers work in the fields. Heat stress has caused not only serious illness, but also deaths.

But it hasn't always been this way. My mother-in-law, Emma, started working as a farmworker at the age of 19. The daughter of a bracero, she joined her father in Napa to work beside him in the fields.

A few years in, everything changed. A young organizer named Cesar Chavez came to town. At first workers were scared but they were soon inspired to make a better life by joining the farmworkers union.  As longtime worker advocate Aurelio Hurtado recalls, “He had a simple message: we're people and are not afraid of anything when it comes to our future. We're here to work, not to beg.”  

When Emma tells me the stories, her face lights up and she says, “me encanta con la union.” She loves the union. Throughout her 35 years working in the vineyards, my mother-in-law and her compañeras rode buses up and down the state to wave their union flags in support of labor organizing and union boycotts.

Because she had a union, Emma was able to work for one employer for three decades. She was able to buy a home and provide security for her son. She worked ten hour days, six days a week, but she had health benefits, a small retirement, and job security. And because she had a union, she felt she was part of a movement to make conditions better for all workers.

But joining a union is no easy matter. Over 92 percent of employers conduct anti-union campaigns, 75 percent hold one on one meetings to discourage workers from unionizing, and 25 percent fire workers for organizing. This intimidation is much more intense in the fields, where workers have few other options and are often the sole support for their extended families in Mexico. In addition, many workers fear immigration consequences and are fearful to speak out about abuses or demand their rights. 

That's why farmworkers need a better way to organize. SB 104 would protect the right of farmworkers to join a union. Under this bill, workers could decide for themselves whether or not to join a union without the threat of losing their job or facing deportation. Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed this bill year after year, leaving farmworkers with little hope of improving their lives. 

You hear a lot these days about “union bosses.” The whole notion is kind of funny, since union leaders are democratically elected by their members — it's actually the other side that's got all the bosses. But on Cesar Chavez day, I am reminded that real leadership is about empowering people to believe in themselves.

My mother-in-law is soft-spoken and sweet, but put her on a picket line and she is transformed. To me, that's what Cesar Chavez stood for, and it's what our labor movement is all about. All workers, especially farmworkers, deserve the right to join this movement.

I’ll try to make this short.  Stephen Colbert has made the media focus on the plight of farmworkers who are abused because they have no rights, and done this better than anyone else for a really long time.  You’ve probably seen his testimony delivered “in character”:

In fact, as Dave Dayen has pointed out (BTW, hats off to DD for being all over this story) the most powerful testimony was at the end of the hearing, when answering the questions of Representative Judy Chu of California.

Some concern trolls are suggesting that what Zoe Lofgren has done by bringing him to testify in Congress – and his involvement in the Take My Job effort by the United Farm Workers in the first place – has been a setback to the effort to help the farmworkers.  

Mr. Colbert has moved me enough to see what I could do to help.  Perhaps you all have some better ideas, but here are the ones that occur to me:

#1 – Sign the UFW pledge to support the AgJobs bill (HR 2414), which is expected to allow current undocumented farm workers already in the United States a path to earn legal status.

#2 – Figure out if your representative in the House is a co-sponsor, and ask them to become one if they are not.  (For example, my representative Jane Harman is not currently one of the 63 co-sponsors)

#3 – Give a little money to the UFW to help them support migrant farm workers.  And if you have your donation end in $.01, they will know that it’s a donation inspired by Colbert.  

#4 – any suggestions?  

That’s right, you heard me. Stephen Colbert has accepted the United Farm Workers’ creative challenge to Americans of all stripes to head out to the fields and try their hands at picking fruit, if they want their danged jobs back so badly.

The campaign details are over at TakeOurJobs.org, where would-be farmworkers get matched with struggling growers and immigrant trainers.

Watch Colbert’s segment and see UFW’s Arturo Rodriguez explain what the campaign is all about, as well as how to say “Yes We Can-wich” in Spanish. (You won’t want to miss that).

The Take Our Jobs campaign has received tons of media attention for the way it directly challenges the oft-repeated claim that immigrants are simply “taking American jobs” instead of contributing to and strengthening our economy and our food security.

A couple recent headlines: Colbert teams up with  UFW over immigration (AP), Farmers Tackle  Immigration Issues (Miriam Jordan, Wall Street Journal), Farmworkers to Colbert: Immigration worries? Work in fields (Dylan Smith, Tucson Sentinel).

It’s even spawned DIY-videos and tales of bloggers (like The Unapologetic Mexican) and journalists (like Teresa Puente) heading out to the fields to take on anti-immigrant rhetoric.

The Tucson Sentinel’s Dylan Smith writes:  

The “Take Our Jobs” site asks interested parties to supply their name and area code to streamline the hiring process. It cautions, however, that “duties may include tilling the soil, transplanting, weeding, thinning, picking, cutting, sorting & packing of harvested produce. May set up & operate irrigation equip. Work is performed outside in all  weather conditions (Summertime 90+ degree weather) & is physically  demanding requiring workers to bend, stoop, lift & carry up to 50  lbs on a regular basis.”

According to Colbert, however, the excruciating summer heat and difficult conditions of farm work are no big deal:

“It was over 100 degrees this entire week  here. I did my show 22 minutes a night.”

Smith concludes:

“Somehow, undocumented workers are getting as much blame for our economic troubles as Wall Street, but missing from the immigration debate is an honest recognition that the food we all eat at home, in restaurants and work-place cafeterias, including those in the Capitol, comes to us from the labor of undocumented workers,” Rodriguez told the Tribune. “According to the federal government, more than 50 percent of the  workers laboring are undocumented.”

We are not only a nation “in denial about our food supply,” as Rodriguez has famously quipped, but a nation in denial about who’s to blame for our current economic crisis, aside from vulnerable scapegoats. This has led us to set aside common-sense solutions to fixing our broken immigration system and pursue radical, dangerous ones, like Arizona’s SB 1070, which law  enforcement says destroy community safety and shift the focus away from fighting crime.

More to the point, though, how do I get a front-row ticket to see Colbert struggling in the fields? Can’t wait for part 2 of the Take Our Jobs challenge.

Note: Cross-posted at America’s Voice.  

Tell Walmart to stop its supplier Giumarra’s unlawful behavior

Walmart says it wants you to live better. But they apparently don’t feel the same way about the workers who pick the grapes and other produce they sell in their stores. They sell grapes and other produce from Giumarra’s Nature’s Partner label–despite knowing that this mega company abuses the grape workers who work in their vineyards.

Giumarra harvests approximately 1 out of every 10 bunches of grapes picked in the US. In addition they are a major label of imported and domestic produce. Combined with the market power of the Walmart behemoth, this huge conglomerate helps set the industry standard.  

How does Giumarra abuse its workers? Here’s an example. California law says a person needs to make twice the minimum wage before they can be required to buy equipment necessary to do their job. Giumarra workers make minimum wage plus on a good day perhaps an additional $8 a day piece rate bonus. Giumarra knows this law, but does that keep them from violating it? Not according to many workers we’ve spoken to.

Farm worker Monica Martinez, who has worked at Giumarra for the last ten years, tells the story:

“The equipment–gloves and scissors for grapes and other items–we must buy ourselves without any type of reimbursement or compensation. In 2005, after the election, they gave us the equipment for a while and then they stopped. Now they only give it when they want to. There are times when we need gloves and no one provides them. Making us work without gloves ruins our hands.”

Enough is enough. Giumarra’s illegal behavior must be stopped.

As a key buyer of Giumarra’s imported and domestic produce–including grapes–Walmart has the ability to influence this produce giant. Please send Walmart an e-mail today and demand they exercise control over their suppliers by telling Giumarra/Nature’s Partner to demonstrate corporate responsibility.

Go to: http://www.ufwaction.org/campaign/walmart1009

Every year, you hear harrowing stories of farmworkers who are seriously injured in workplace injuries. Most of them are from heat-related illnesses. The LA Times had a very interesting story about this a month ago:

Even though California passed a groundbreaking law in 2005 to protect farmworkers from heat illness and death, there have been as many as 10 heat-related fatalities in the years since. Among the victims in 2008 were a pregnant teenager who died when her body temperature climbed to 108 degrees after working in a Lodi vineyard and a 37-year-old man who suffered heat stroke after loading table grapes near Bakersfield. The state has confirmed heat as the cause of six of the deaths and said it may have been a factor in the others. (LAT 8/2/09)

The fact is that during the economic meltdown and the ensuing budget crisis, worker protections get even harder to enforce. Not only are the state inspectors having to do more with less, but they are also given the heavy lean to look the other way.  Most of these workers are immigrants, who are distrustful of the government any way, so it is even harder to enforce the rules. And the results are tragic, but not that surprising. You neglect workplace safety protections, and eventually the money types will try to cut corners.  Cutting corners has major impacts.

And that is why organizing farmworkers is so important. These workers need a resource that will act as a strong intermediary between the government and themselves, an advocate that knows the situation and knows the needs of the workers.  And the United Farmworkers Union has been doing that since the days of its formation with Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta.

But organizing farmworkers is an exceedingly difficult task. They don’t work in an office where it is easy to communicate with groups of workers at a time. They work long hours and attending meetings can be a burden that many won’t bear.  So, organizing is typically a one-on-one process, from worker to worker.  It takes a long time, and a long process.  

And that is where SB 789 should have come in.  It was something of an employee free choice act for farmworkers in our state. It would have ensured that workers can opt to choose a card-check process that is better suited to this one by one process.  But the Governor thought his talking points were more important than the betterment of this challenged group.

Schwarzenegger’s action on the ‘card check’ bill, SB 789 by Senate Leader Darrell Steinberg,  D-Sacramento, came a day after a national union coalition poured $1 million into a UFW-backed committee to oppose the governor’s own top legislative priority — an overhaul of California’s water system.    

Although the governor has vetoed similar measures in the past, the timing of the two events was apparently linked. And the governor’s veto escalated political tensions in the Capitol as the final days of the 2009 legislative year got under way.

Schwarzenegger said Steinberg’s bill violated workers’ rights to privacy by “altering an employee’s right to a secret ballot.” Under card check, sign-up cards are distributed to workers, and if a majority favor a union election, an election can be ordered on an expedited time table.  (Capitol Weekly 9/2/09)

Now, whether this has to do with the water fight is an issue open to interpretation. However, it certainly doesn’t have to do with the secret ballot canard. That’s just red meat for his base. This bill would have cost agrobusiness some money, and he hates when big corporations have to spend money, even if it’s for things like providing shade and water.

SB 789 will likely be back in the next session, and will definitely be back when a Democratic governor is inaugurated in 2011.