Author: stevew

WILL THE SUPREME COURT OVERRULE FARMWORKER UNION RIGHTS?

by David Bacon
Capital & Main, November 20, 2020

All photos © by David Bacon. These photos are housed in the Special Collections of the Green Library at Stanford University.


An organizer talks at lunchtime with a D’Arrigo Brothers worker with a union button on her cap.

Not long before Donald Trump’s election in 2016, the Pacific Legal Foundation filed suit against California’s farmworker access rule in federal court on behalf of two companies – Cedar Point Nursery in Siskiyou County and the Fowler Packing Company in Fresno. The foundation is a conservative libertarian group that holds property rights sacred and campaigns against racial equity. It fought hard for the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the high court.

The access regulation, which took effect after the passage of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act in 1975, allows union organizers to come onto a grower’s property in the morning before work to talk with workers. According to the labor board’s handbook, “The access regulations of the Agricultural Labor Relations Board are meant to insure that farm workers, who often may be contacted only at their work place, have an opportunity to be informed with minimal interruption of working activities.”


Two UFW organizers walk into a D’Arrigo Brothers broccoli field in Salinas, 1994.

The board requires that the union give notice to the employer before taking access, and that organizers not disrupt work. They can talk only for an hour before and after work and during lunch, and can take access for only a total of 120 days during a year.

Growers have always hated the access rule, and many at first refused to obey. Former United Farm Workers organizer Fred Ross Jr. remembers being arrested several times in Santa Maria for taking access. “This was all about power and who had it,” he says. “Growers had it all, and their workers none. They wanted to dominate. For them, workers didn’t even have the right to talk.”

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RENT STRIKE IN OAKLAND IN THE COVID TIMES

A Photoessay © by David Bacon
Capital & Main, 7/20/20

OAKLAND, CA 7/9/20 – Tenants and supporters demonstrated at an Oakland apartment complex where tenants are mounting a rent strike against Mosser Capital, one of several apartment complexes where rent strikes are taking place. During the COVID-19 crisis the landlord is insisting on bringing investors to inspect the apartments despite the danger of contagion. Mosser bought over 20 buildings in Oakland in 2016, according to the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE). Mosser received a Paycheck Protection Program loan between $2 million and $5 million during the pandemic.

OAKLAND, CA – 9JULY20 – Tenants and supporters demonstrate at an Oakland apartment complex where tenants are mounting a rent strike against Mosser Capital, one of several apartment complexes where the strike is going on. The tenants are organized by the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE). During the COVID-19 crisis the landlord is insisting on bringing investors into the apartments despite the danger of contagion.Copyright David Bacon

The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment organized tenants from buildings across Oakland to come to the apartment house, to confront speculators brought by Mosser Capital, the building’s owners. Tenants, especially seniors, expressed fear that letting strangers into their homes during the pandemic would put them at risk for contamination from the coronavirus. They also believed that the investor tour might result in evictions and rent hikes.

Sabeena Shah (r) is a striker in the building and Sharena Diamond Thomas (l) is a striker in another building.Copyright David Bacon

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WAR AND OCCUPATION OPENED THE DOOR TO IRAQ’S VIRUS PANDEMIC

To fight COVID-19, Iraqi workers want political change
By David Bacon, © 2020
The Nation, 4/8/2020


Union leader Falah Alwan, president of the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions of Iraq, and leather goods factory workers argue with the plant manager about their union rights in 2003.

Solidarity, Then the Virus

Many U.S. union activists remember Falah Alwan. As the occupation of Iraq unfolded in the summer of 2005, he and several Iraqi union leaders traveled here to make clear the impact of sanctions and invasion on his country’s workers. From one union hall to another, on both coasts and through the Midwest, Alwan and his colleagues appealed for solidarity.

In the end, the war’s damage went virtually unhealed, but the ties forged between workers and unions of the two countries have remained undiminished. Last week, as both face the coronavirus pandemic, Alwan wrote to the friends he made in those years. “The news from New York is horrible,” he commiserated. “I believe the days to come will be much worse than they are now, not only in Iraq but for you also.”

In 2005 the Iraqis effectively dramatized the human cost of U.S. policy. Today, as both countries face the coronavirus, the devastating situation of Iraq’s people calls for revisiting that question of responsibility.

On paper, the virus’s toll in Iraq today stands at 1,031 officially confirmed cases, with 64 deaths. While Iraq’s per capita count is still much smaller than that in the U.S. – 22 cases per million people to the U.S.’ 910 – the numbers don’t tell the real story. In Iraq very few people can access medical treatment, and the number of infections and deaths is much higher than that given in official statements.

This past week Reuters reported that confirmed cases numbered instead between 3000 and 9000, quoting doctors and a health official – a report that led the Iraqi government to fine the agency and revoke its reporting license for three months. The higher figure would give Iraq a per capita infection rate higher than South Korea, one of the virus’ early concentrations.

Unions and civil society organizations must now try to make up for Iraq’s political paralysis and the partial dysfunction of its government. “Because of our ruined healthcare institutions,” Alwan explains, “the government hurried to impose a general curfew [a stay-at-home order] to stop the outbreak and a rapid collapse in the whole situation.”

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