Workers in the berry fields of the United States and Mexico have the same transnational employers. Now, farmworker unions in those two nations have begun to work together

by David Bacon

Surrounded by blueberry and alfalfa fields near Sumas, Washington, just a few miles from the Canadian border, a group of workers last week stood in a circle behind a trailer, itemizing a long list of complaints about the grower they work for. Lorenzo Sanchez, the oldest, pointed to the trailer his family rents for $800 a month. On one side, the wooden steps and porch have rotted through. “The toilet backs up,” he said. “Water leaks in when it rains.The stove doesn’t work.”

His wife, Felipa Lopez, described mistreatment in the fields. “The old man [the grower] sometimes walks behind us and makes fun of us,” she charged. “He yells at us to make us work faster.” Other workers in the circle nodded in agreement.

Ramón Torres, president of the farmworker union Familias Unidas por la Justicia, listened and then took union membership cards from the pocket of his jacket. “This is the first step,” he said. “Join the union. But you have to agree to support each other in this. If he fires any one of you, the others have to stop work to get the grower to give the job back. If he tries to evict you, you have to act then, too.”

Everyone signed the cards. They’d actually gone down to the union office in Bellingham two weeks earlier to ask for help-they’d had plenty of time to think about the consequences. After the cards were signed, they all agreed that the following Monday, instead of going into the field to work, they’d confront the grower and demand changes.

Two days later at sunrise, Torres and Edgar Franks, another union activist, joined the workers at the edge of a highway, next to the field where they’d been pruning blueberry bushes. Soon the grower, Gill Singh, drove up with his two sons. Torres gave him a letter from the union. “You don’t have the right to treat people like this,” he told the father. One son responded, “That’s true, they do have that right. But don’t we have the right to require them to work?”

Soon the workers were angrily recounting to Singh and his sons the pressure and the insults they’d endured, adding complaints about low wages and deteriorating housing. In the end, the grower agreed to fix some housing problems, to stop mistreatment in the fields, and not to retaliate against the workers for joining the union or stopping work over the problems. By then it was mid-morning, and the pruners went into the rows to begin their daily labor.

“This is how we’re building the union,” Torres says. “There are a lot of paros [small work stoppages] here all the time, and we come out to help the workers get organized.”

Familias Unidas Por La Justicia was born in 2013 out of a work stoppage like this one, when blueberry pickers refused to go into the fields of Sakuma Farms after one of them had been fired for asking for a wage increase. Workers then mounted a series of guerrilla work stoppages over the next four years to raise the piece-rate wages. At the same time, they organized boycott committees in cities up and down the West Coast to pressure Sakuma Farms’ main customer, the giant berry distributor Driscoll’s Inc. In 2017, Sakuma’s owners agreed to an election, which the union easily won. Familias Unidas then negotiated a two-year contract with Sakuma Farms.

Since then, work stoppages have hit many nearby ranches, and workers have successfully used them to win concessions from growers. Most of those workers are Mixtec and Triqui indigenous migrants from Oaxaca and Guerrero in southern Mexico, who now live permanently in rural Washington. In some cases, however, the paros have been organized by H-2A contract workers, brought to the United States under temporary work visas. In 2017, 70 H-2A workers refused to work at Sarbanand Farms after one of the fellow workers collapsed in the field, and later died.

A union contract has given Familias Unidas a support base for helping the workers in these spontaneous outbreaks. And because the piece rates for picking berries at Sakuma Farms has increased dramatically (allowing some workers to earn as much as $30 per hour) farmworkers at other farms have taken action to lift their own wages.

Job actions like these are not unique to U.S. farmworkers. In fact, the pruners’ job action seemed very familiar to two farmworker unionists from Mexico, who’d arrived in Bellingham to explore another way to give farmworkers more power: cooperation across the border. Their trip was organized by the Solidarity Center of the AFL-CIO and the UCLA Labor Center.

“We’re very similar,” says Lorenzo Rodríguez, the general secretary of a Mexican union, the National Independent Democratic Union of Farm Workers (SINDJA in its Spanish initials), “not just in using tactics like stopping work, but in the ways we recruit workers and organize them. The way Ramón and others lead these movements gives workers the message that we can make a change, that together we can organize, together we can walk out. Above all, that we can represent ourselves.”

According to Rodríguez, the giant ranches of the San Quintin Valley employ 50,000 laborers in over 150 companies. Most of the companies, especially all the biggest ones, have “protection contracts.”

Both in Washington and in Baja California, Familias Unidas and SINDJA have few legal protections, and rely more on action by workers to force changes.

Both Sindja and Familias Unidas are worried about the explosive growth of the H-2A temporary work visa program, which creates a pool of workers with virtually no rights. In 2017, Washington growers were given H-2A visas for 18,796 workers, and the number for 2018 will undoubtedly be much higher. Last year, about 200,000 H-2A workers were recruited nationwide and brought to the United States. This year, the number is expected to exceed 230,000.

by Fernando A. Torres

Catholic Charities reported that the new social assistance center called Access Point The Mission, will join its program of prevention of homeless families and help services on immigration in a new location at 3270 18th Street with South Van Ness.

The presence of Catholic Charities and their social programs is not new to the Mission. They have been providing services for more than fifty years in the largest Latino neighborhood in Northern California. This time the new location will unite all social services under one roof, to continue providing “compassionate and comprehensive care to families and individuals struggling to survive and thrive.”

José Cartagena, director of programs, said that programs to help the homeless, immigration and financing to pay rent, will work in the recently inaugurated location. “We are very happy to be opening this Access Point center, which is the center, the connection of homeless families to receive services in the city. Our function is to establish and be the bridge so that homeless families can receive the services they need, be it shelter and shelter, be it references for low-cost housing, or subsidized rent programs, “said Cartagena.

Founded in 1907, Catholic Charities is part of the Archdiocese of San Francisco but its actions are independent. With the motto of “charity and justice” the organization was created in the Bay Area to help the orphans of the San Francisco earthquake.

At the opening of the premises last week, attended by various personalities and officials of the city. Mayor London N. Breed said the problem of the homeless is great especially in California. Of all the homeless people in the country, 24 percent are in California, Breed said.

“This center will provide services not only for homeless families who sadly struggle on our streets, but also for our immigrant community. As we know, we have a President who attacks our immigrant community every day … but despite these attacks and threats, we will continue to offer resources for our community, “Breed said.

The mayor informed that this new center is part of a coordinated municipal system of five centers for families that have lost their homes; to enter a system of protection aid, shelter and permanent housing. The city provides help to 50 people weekly and waiting in line “there are another 65 people … We know that the homeless represent a big problem throughout the State”, that is why it is important to find “regional solutions” because the city San Francisco “can not do it on his own,” Breed said.

San Carlos Church priest and Episcopal Vicar for Hispanics in the city’s Archdiocese Moisés Agudo said that Catholic Charities aims to reach “the most marginalized, those who are most defenseless. Families that are losing their homes; families that suffer from fear and even the terror of going out on the street. Every man needs to live with dignity. This center stands as a center that will enlighten and empower the Hispanic community. That they are not afraid, that they leave, that the church is with them, “Agudo said.

In a city where a one-bedroom apartment is worth 3,000 or 4,000 dollars; One of the biggest problems is economic, said Cartagena. “This implies that many families can not afford a rent. The rent is very high and the income of the family is much less … We are forced to have to share an apartment with three or four families to be able to sustain this. We are talking about Latino immigrant families who earn less than twelve hundred dollars a month; It is not enough to pay the rent and there is the problem of the homeless.

“Cartagena concluded that it is more economical to keep that family in their apartment or house than having to afford them shelter and shelter. The average cost to give refuge to a family is between 30 and 40 thousand dollars. “It’s much cheaper to help them pay the rent so that it is not evicted … we do not feel bad because we need help. Let’s not have grief or fear. If we need help, let’s look for it. There are programs like ours and we are here to serve them, “he said.

Jilma Meneses, Executive Director of Catholic Charities, said the organization has been working in San Francisco, Mari and San Mateo for more than 150 years. Similar programs are also developed in the Bayview neighborhood. The city of San Francisco is helping to finance the center. But the fundraising campaigns must continue “to turn it into a viable and sustainable project … We provide services to everyone, regardless of origin, gender, color, sexual orientation, religion. We are in a place where everyone is safe and welcome. You are brothers and sisters regardless of your offspring. You will never be rejected from our family … I am an emigrant. As a child I was motivated by the services that I and my family received and now it is an honor for me to return this, “said Meneses.