Vol. 81/No. 32      August 28, 2017

 

Wash. berry pickers protest death of
fellow worker

SUMAS, Washington — When Honesto Silva Ibarra, a berry picker at Sarbanand Farms near here, told the company that his head hurt and he felt ill, he was told to get back to work. The next day, Aug. 3, he felt so sick that he left work and tried to get a plane ticket back to his home country of Mexico. But he found out that the labor contractor hadn’t renewed his temporary work visa so he couldn’t purchase one. As his condition deteriorated, he was taken to a hospital 90 miles away in Seattle, where he fell into a coma and died a few days later.

The morning after he entered the hospital a group of workers at the farm decided not to work that day out of concern over Ibarra’s treatment and conditions at the farm.

“The workers only wanted information about his condition. They wanted to know what was being done to help. The company’s response was to fire them,” Ramón Torres, president of the farmworkers union, Familias Unidas por la Justicia [Families United for Justice], told the Militant. Sixty workers were fired and 22 others decided to leave with them.

The union organized a protest at the farm owners’ offices Aug. 8, demanding accountability for Ibarra’s death and payment of wages owed to the workers.

In an outpouring of solidarity, a local couple offered their back yard as a place where the fired workers could stay, which is now filled with tents. Others brought food, water, refrigerators, generators, and bedding.

Torres invited Socialist Workers Party members to come to the camp to get the workers’ story into the Militant.

“People are getting nosebleeds and ear infections,” said fired worker Miguel Ramirez Salazar. “You work all day in wet shoes. There are chemicals in the water, but they tell us there are none.”

“We have taken five of the workers to the hospital. Three have paralysis of the face. We have a compañero with infected toes, the doctor told him in one more day the infection would have spread to the bone,” Torres said. “When that happens they would have to amputate.” The fight has gotten widespread coverage in area press, radio and TV news.

“They just use us as cheap labor and don’t care if we are sick or if we die,” said Torres. “The purpose of the union is to defend farmworkers. We say, ‘we aren’t going to permit this abuse. Contract workers or whoever, we will fight for them.’”

— Edwin Fruit

Support grows for workers locked out by Pacific Blue Cross

BURNABY, British Columbia — Support is growing here for 600 Pacific Blue Cross workers who have been locked out since July 7. The workers, members of Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 1816, are protesting company attacks on health care coverage, wages, pensions and lengthening of the contract. Blue Cross is a private health insurance company.

Some 125 strikers and supporters, including members of the Hospital Employees Union, Steelworkers and several CUPE locals, rallied on the picket line here Aug. 9.

“What keeps us going is that we are in this together and the incredible support,” locked-out worker Momena Kayode, who has worked at Blue Cross for 10 years, told the crowd. “This is the first time I learned what unity is.”

The previous day 10 Hospital Employees Union members from Vancouver General Hospital came to the picket line. Food service worker Catalina Samson told the Militant that when the hospital contracted out their work in 2004, her wage went from $18.10 to $10.15 an hour and she lost all her benefits, pension and sick leave. Gemma DeJesus, who also works at Vancouver General Hospital, added, “We’ve gone through this. We know how it is.

— Joe Young

 
 
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No coal miner has to die!
Frame-up trial against Quebec rail workers to begin Sept. 11
 
 
 
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