Vol. 77/No. 32      September 9, 2013

Field workers and supporters carried out similar actions at two other locations in western Washington the same day.

After going on strike two times in July, some 250 members of the farmworkers group Familias Unidas por la Justicia (Families United for Justice), reached an agreement with Sakuma Brothers Farms management on wages July 25. But workers say the company stopped honoring the verbal agreement and started to bring in several dozen “guest workers” from Mexico.

After the company refused to pay an agreed-upon price per pound that would guarantee a minimum wage of $12 an hour, the workers decided to call for a boycott.

The strikes won improvements in living conditions. Filthy and bug-infested mattresses in the labor camps were replaced with new ones. They won back pay for young workers who had been receiving less than the Washington state minimum wage and an agreement to hire family members to weigh the picked produce.

“They negotiated with us, which was a big achievement” and workers are prepared to strike again if they don’t reach an agreement, said Rosalinda Guillen in a published interview. She is a farmworker organizer and director of Bellingham, Wash.-based Community to Community Development, which works with the pickers. Guillen said the company negotiated out of fear that their application for guest workers would be suspended by a strike.

The main demands of the workers are for higher wages, reimbursement of transportation costs for those who migrate annually from California and guarantees that workers who went on strike will be rehired next year without reprisals.

“Familias Unidas has not been able to speak with the guest workers, and the company put up a wire fence to separate guest worker housing from the other cabins,” said Paz.

Company security “stay with the guest workers when they go to the store, when they go to buy food,” said Angelica Villa, an organizer with Community to Community. “Those workers don’t know what is going on here.”

After a strike in 2004 workers at Sakuma Farms won a wage increase. But wages were lowered the following year.

The guest workers are employed under government H-2A permits. They cannot change jobs on their own accord and face deportation if fired. Each state sets a prevailing minimum wage for them, which in Washington this year is $12 per hour.

In 2012 some 85,000 workers received H-2A visas. The immigration bill under consideration in Congress would make it easier for growers to bring in guest workers and increase the annual number to 337,000 workers.

Messages for the workers and financial contributions can be sent to Familias Unidas por la Justicia at P.O. Box 1206, Burlington, WA 98233.
 
 
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