WHY WORKING IN THE FIELDS IS NO LAUGHING MATTER!

BY AL ROJAS

My family and many others spent well over 25 years organizing and eventually founding the original United Farm Workers Independent Union, IBT based in San Jose California. Led by Oscar Gonzalez, from 1961 to 1983 we were able to organize committees throughout California, specifically in the coastal areas from Northern California down to the Mexican border. It was during that time, in 1966, that the UFW,IBTmerged with the National Farm Workers association (NFWA) led by César E. Chávez and others and the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee AFL-CIO (AWOC),thereafter becoming the United Farm Workers of America (UFWA).

Since having worked alongside braceros in the vegetable industry in Oxnard, California in the early 1960’s, I was able to understand the issues involved in foreign contract labor then embodied in the Bracero Program (Public Law 78). At that time people like the Hon. Dr. Ernesto Galarza, César E. Chávez, Gilbert Padilla, John Soria, and others opposed this inhumane system of indentured servitude, which did not allow workers protections, the right to decent wages, or the right to decide whether to have a union of their choosing represent their interests. Although the Bracero Program was abolished through the efforts of Galarza, Chávez, Padilla and others, it has now resurfaced as the guest worker program.

Recently, Arturo Rodriquez, president of the United Farm Workers (UFW), was invited to appear on Comedy Central’s Steven Colbert Report to encourage U.S. Workers to take jobs in agriculture. With UFW’s “Take Our Jobs” Campaign, the Union comes out in support of the the UFW’s proposed federal legislation Ag-Jobs. In essence, Ag-Jobs would allow the recruitment of foreign workers from countries like Mexico, Thailand, and Vietnam to labor in U.S. fields as “guest workers.” More…

According to the Wall Street Journal…

The Justice Department is stepping up its investigation into hiring practices at some of America’s biggest companies, including Google Inc., Intel Corp., International Business Machines Corp., Apple Inc. and IAC/InterActiveCorp., people familiar with the matter said.

The inquiry is focused on whether companies, particularly in the technology sector, have agreed not to recruit each others’ employees in ways that violate antitrust law. Specifically, the probe is looking into whether the companies’ hiring practices are costing skilled computer engineers and other workers opportunities to change jobs for higher pay or better benefits.

After a probe that began more than a year ago, Justice Department investigators have concluded that such agreements do raise significant competitive concerns, according to the people familiar with the matter.

Click here for the full WSJ story…

The Wall Street Journal reports this bi-partisan focus on immigration legislation:

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.

Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.

If you have to send packages do not be a scab. Send it with UPS or the U.S. Postal Service. They have unions. Every step, however tiny, we take to thwart the corporate rape of the country and protect workers counts. We would have to do more, much more, but this would be a small start. Like Smith, our politicians have sold their souls. They will not help us. We must help ourselves. And the longer we stand by and permit the Democrats and the Republicans to strip American workers of their jobs and their dignity the less we will have to say when the day of angry retribution arrives.

Click here to read the full article…

Here is my reply to an AFL-CIO NOW BLOG article “The Past Decade the Worst for America’s Workers” by Tula Connell, Jan 2, 2010 – http://blog.aflcio.org/

1. JerryWells on 02.01.2010 at 16:40 (Reply)

“The Past Decade the Worst for America’s Workers”

This is not news to “America’s Workers”. Does it take a story from the Washington Post to inform the AFL-CIO bureaucrats about the dire conditions of working people?

In fact, for the past 30 years real wages for American Workers have not kept up with inflation and have even declined. Productivity has dramatically increased over this same time, meaning corporate profits have been maximized by exploiting those who do work. More…

Rick Wolff, writing for the online Monthly Review, says that the current economic crisis “creates an exceptional opportunity for a labor movement strengthened with a new vision and strategy: to reorganize this society’s production system.”