When Food Workers Rebel | Part 2 in a Series
Moderator’s
Note: The
struggle of the indigenous berry pickers in Washington State is capturing the
attention of labor and working-class movements and organizers everywhere. It
should.
This is a historic strike and, now, boycott. It is the first farm
worker strike in Western Washington conducted by workers without a formal union; this strike represents a pure form of
worker direct self-organizing.
It is the first strike in which the workers are
not just demanding a fair living wage and better working and living conditions
but are also asking for a direct role in the management of production. In a
word, they are demanding workplace democracy. And this is the first strike in
Washington State history organized and led by indigenous farm workers, in this
case Triqui and Mixteco Mesoamerican diaspora workers.
Given the state of the “labor” movement in this
country – which faces a fifth decade of declining membership and withering
political power – the self-organization of the working class harkens back to
the days of the old Wobbly radicals when Austin Lewis, the IWW lawyer, argued
for the organization of the unorganized. A key point to recognize, as the
report I am posting here by Tomás Madrigal makes clear, is that these workers
may not have a union but they are very well organized.
Indeed, their organizational form is
highly advanced in political terms and much more culturally-based and socially
sophisticated compared to mainstream unions with their overburdened bureaucratic
hierarchies and sclerotic political marriage to the Democratic Party.
The resilience and innovative quality of the
Triqui/Mixteco mobilization in Washington State is evident in their ability to rely
on indigenous traditions such as tequio.
These dynamic workers did not just bring their bodies and working knowledge to
the U.S.; they brought their cultural customs, normative worldviews, and social
institutions and these have served them well.
The rest of the labor movement would do well to learn
from this example and start revitalizing the working-class struggle not just by
organizing unions but developing new organizational forms that sustain culture
to create a sense of community that is our greatest strength against the
banality of capitalist greed and corporate fascism.
A version of this article appeared in Labor Notes #414,
September 2013. Don't miss an issue, subscribe today.
Berry
Pickers Walk Out, Boycott
Tomás Madrigal | Burlington, WA | August 28, 2013
As non-union fast
food workers’ strikes caught the public eye this summer, at the other end
of the food chain, farmworkers were also stopping work. Pickers at Sakuma
Brothers Farms north of Seattle have walked off the berry fields twice and
launched a boycott.
 |
| Mixtec and Triqui workers address supporters. Photo by Star Murray |
More than 250 migrant farmworkers walked in silence, like a
great wave, from the labor camp where they live to a field office July 10.
There, they broke their silence with owner Ryan Sakuma and a
team of managers—demanding justice for a fired co-worker, 70 cents per pound of
berries, an end to sexist and racist harassment by their supervisors, better
living conditions, and 10 other items.
Federico Lopez, a strawberry and blueberry picker from
Oaxaca, Mexico, had been fired for voicing a grievance against a piece rate of
30 cents per pound. His co-workers stopped work the next day, formed an
11-member negotiating committee, and presented their list of grievances.
Sakuma specializes in highly perishable and labor-intensive
berry and tea crops. Its biggest clients are Haägen-Dazs and Driscoll’s. The
majority of its seasonal migratory pickers are indigenous, descendants of the
first nations people of southern Mexico. Their mother tongue is Triqui or
Mixteco, not Spanish.
The pickers organized themselves. Unlike the fast food
workers, they do not have a big union backing them up.
Their first work stoppage ended after six days with the
reinstatement of Lopez and the transfer of a hostile foreman, notorious for
humiliating pickers with verbal and sometimes physical abuse.
PLYWOOD
WALLS, TIN ROOFS
For more than a decade, indigenous migrant workers from
Oaxaca and Guerrero have made the trek from California’s San Joaquin Valley to
Washington’s Skagit Valley to harvest berries in the summer. They have stopped
work before, in 2004 (winning an anti-intimidation policy and a higher piece
rate) and 2008 (no gains).
Committee member Francisco Paz has worked for Sakuma
Brothers Farms for 12 years—since he was 14. He is one of the fastest pickers.
Someone with his ability could settle for the piece rates Sakuma offers because
he could make much more than minimum wage, unlike the majority.
But the struggle for a better future for his family, he
says, is more important than short-term gains that aren’t sustainable. His hard
work has taken a toll on his body, and without medical insurance, he believes
he will not be among the fastest pickers much longer.
Paz is a husband and father of three. They and the other
migrant families live in company-run labor camps: temporary cabins with plywood
walls, tin roofs, and just enough room for sleeping bunks and a
quarter-kitchen.
“It’s not the Hilton,” CEO Steve Sakuma admitted to a local
reporter—but he argued the cabins are up to state standards and workers don’t
have to pay rent or utilities.
Housing has long been a sore point in the industry. Growers
complain about having to provide it, and workers say the “free” housing gives
the growers leverage and control over their private lives.
DIRECT
NEGOTIATIONS
The members of Familias Unidas por la Justicia (Families
United for Justice), as the workers have named themselves, are seasoned
pickers. They say they deserve respectful treatment and to negotiate directly
with their long-term employer.
The community authorized a second work stoppage on July 23.
More than 200 workers picketed at the entrance of the labor camp.
The issue: differential wages they considered a reprisal for
their first stoppage. The second stoppage ended after three days with an
agreement that three pickers chosen by the committee will participate in a new
process for deciding piece rates.
Remaining demands include eliminating high-tech scanners
that leave no paper trail (worker say these enable wage theft), better
treatment and living accommodations, sick leave, affordable childcare, and
subsidized transportation from California.
GUESTWORKERS
Sakuma Brothers applied for 170 H-2A guestworkers from
Mexico this year. The pickers watched as cabins were renovated for the
guestworkers and equipped with new appliances, mattresses, bedding, and
cookware in order to bring them into compliance with federal standards—the very
improvements initially denied to Familias Unidas por la Justicia.
The guestworkers’ transportation costs would be covered, and
they would receive higher wages than the farmworkers had been earning for more
than 10 years.
To add insult to injury, on August 5—the day the
guestworkers were scheduled to arrive—a supervisor told youth pickers they
would no longer be needed because of the guestworkers.
At press time, guestworkers had not arrived due to pending investigations
by the Department of Labor and other federal agencies.
The farmworkers have had sporadic work for more than a month—due
partly to the work stoppages and partly to the nature of berry crops, which
sometimes aren’t ripe enough to be picked. The company has been laying off
pickers for three days at a time. Unions, social justice organizations, and
conscientious consumers have donated aid.
Raul Merino, in charge of distributing this aid, said
workers want to negotiate directly with Steven Sakuma “so that next year we can
just come back and work, and not have to do this again.”
CUSTOMS
What community organizer Rosalinda Guillen describes as the
group’s “deep democratic process” grows out of the workers’ shared experiences,
including cultural practices of the Mixteco- and Triqui-speaking people.
The tequio, for example, is the traditional practice of
community collaboration to accomplish a task for the public good. A tequio
functions on an honor system. The community delegates a task—say, putting on a
saint’s day celebration—to a particular family or community member. That person
then draws from the community’s labor and thinking power to help complete the
task.
This practice has been used to equitably distribute aid
among more than 300 people.
In Oaxaca, your word is your bond. Contracts are made face
to face. This is one reason workers have demanded to meet directly with owners
Ryan, Steve, and John Sakuma and not third-party mediators.
The pickers have struggled for more than 10 years without any
substantial gains, so they are trying something new—“for you [the public] to
pay attention about what is happening to us,” Lopez said.
Familias Unidas had won reinstatement of their co-worker,
removal of a hostile supervisor, mandatory breaks, better living conditions,
$6,000 in back wages for pickers who were minors—and a more equitable process
for determining wages.
But then negotiations stalled. The firm lawyered up and held
back from putting important concessions in writing, including promises of no
reprisals.
BOYCOTT
And after the agreed-upon “test pick” process came up with a
rate of 48 cents per pound (to make $12 an hour), the company refused to pay
that much. “We had made an agreement,” said President Ramon Torres, “and it is
the third one they did not honor.”
Our eyes are on the next wave.
Tomás Madrigal is a
researcher at UC Santa Barbara and a volunteer at Community to Community
Development. Donations can be made at www.foodjustice.org
by designating Familias Unidas por la Justicia under “special instructions,” or
sent to Community to Community Development, labeled “Sakuma Worker Fund,” 203
West Holly, Ste. 317, Bellingham, WA 98225.
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