Vol. 79/No. 32      September 14, 2015

Valley Pride owner Larry Jensen told the Skagit Valley Herald Aug. 11 that he has no intention of raising wages and denied that toilets and drinking water were not available.

“We know how much we can pick,” Reyes said. “We know $4.25 a box was not fair,” especially with the recent dry weather that damages berries and makes them harder to pick.

The workers asked for $4.75 a box, but Valley Pride bosses refused and fired four people, denying them paychecks until they signed a paper stipulating the day they would move out of company housing.

The workers called Familias Unidas por la Justicia for help. President Ramón Torres came with two others and stayed for three days, going to the company to demand the workers be paid immediately. “We told them what they were doing was illegal,” Torres told the Militant. The company relented and brought the checks to the camp. “The bosses treat you differently when you have a union,” Torres said.

The workers at Valley Pride live in California, but travel each year to work harvests here. They’re indigenous people originally from Oaxaca, Mexico, whose first language is Mixteco.

“I didn’t know about unions before I came here,” Reyes said.

The fired workers have not been reinstated and there has been no wage increase, Reyes said, but more drinking water is available and toilet facilities in the field are improved.

“We ask workers who read the Militant to support us,” Reyes said. “The rich owners have money, vacations anytime, travel wherever they want. Where did the money come from? From our manual labor. We are a union and we will keep fighting.”

At Sakuma Farms 150 union berry pickers walked off the job Aug. 17-18 and pushed back the company’s demand that workers pick 22.5 lbs. of berries an hour to earn $10 an hour. The unionists demanded a 15-lb. quota. As a result of the strike, Sakuma agreed to a 16.5-lb. quota and fired a hated supervisor. The union’s main demand is $15 an hour and a union contract.

Workers at dairy farms in central Washington that supply the Darigold company are planning a protest at Darigold headquarters in Seattle Sept. 2 demanding safe working conditions and compensation for injured workers and family members of workers killed on the job. Farmworker Randy Vasquez drowned in a manure pond on a Darigold supplier farm in Mabton earlier this year when the front-loader truck he was driving tipped over.
 
 
Related articles:
Steelworkers rally against boss takeaway demands
Negotiations continue as contracts expire
Railroad Workers United calls Chicago rail safety conference
Frame-up of Phila. Ironworker poses what road for labor
On the Picket Line
Why labor should oppose the imperialist war drive
 
 
 
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