Vol. 81/No. 11      March 20, 2017

 

Wash. farmworkers join union, protest conditions

 
EVERETT, Wash. — “We want separate bathrooms for men and women. We want water to wash with. We want soap. We want toilet paper. We just want the basics,” blueberry worker Reina Solano told Socialist Workers Party members who came to express solidarity, as her fellow workers picketed in front of Golden Eagle Farms in Washington’s Snohomish River Valley.

Some 30 farmworkers and a few supporters marched along the edge of a road in front of the grower’s barns and offices. They chanted, “Strike!” “Contractors out!” and “We want the workers rehired!” in Spanish.

Golden Eagle Farms is owned by an investment group run by Francesco Aquilini, who also owns the Vancouver Canucks ice hockey team. The Aquilini family is one of the 25 richest capitalist families in Canada, according to Canadian Business.

The Golden Eagle Group, which runs forestry, blueberries, cranberries, bees, two golf clubs and a standing period western town movie set, has been fined at their berry farms in Canada over safety conditions and in the U.S. for overuse of water and illegal timber harvesting.

“They always promise improvements but they don’t do anything,” Solano said. “The contractor told us, ‘If you don’t want to work, get out of here.’ Then she fired us.”

“We don’t want to work for a contractor,” she said. “We want to work directly for the farm, like we did last year.”

Picketers, who had been pruning the blueberry bushes to prepare for the coming growing season, told us that 75 workers were fired the previous week by Sheila Monterrey, one of the farm-labor contractors, after they asked for sanitary bathroom facilities.

“There are people working here who are members of Familias Unidas or have family members or friends in the union,” explained Solano. The Familias Unidas por la Justicia union won a representation election in 2016 at Sakuma Brothers Farms, 40 miles north of here.

A large group of workers fired by Golden Eagle Farms signed up with the union a few days before the picket line went up. The picketing was led by Ramón Torres, president of the union.

The workers and their union are raising other demands as well. “Last year we made $11 an hour. They should pay us more this year. We want a $1.50-an-hour raise,” Solano said.

“They promised to pay us every week, then the contractor said we have to wait until the last day of the month for what is owed to us,” she said. “It’s not right. We need our money. I have children in day care.”

“We, the workers at Golden Eagle Farms, call on the other workers and on the community not to work for this company or for contractor Sheila Monterrey,” Silvino Arce, another worker she fired, posted on the union’s Facebook page, “until they fix the working conditions and reach an agreement with us, the workers.”

Workers at another Golden Eagle site in the area are discussing joining the union, Torres said.
 
 
Related articles:
On the Picket Line
Pension funds for nearly 1 million workers are on verge of collapse
 
 
 
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