Bill In Calif. Would Help Farmworkers Form Unions

[cory777]

Source: Associated Press

The temperature was nearly 100 degrees as 17-year-old Maria Vasquez Jimenez pruned grapes for nine hours at a vineyard near Stockton in California's Central Valley.

By the end of the day, the pregnant teen was dead from heat stroke, and her death set off renewed calls among union advocates for greater protections for farmworkers. But in the two years since, efforts to unionize workers have largely been unsuccessful.

Unions claim that's because employers have illegally interfered with union elections, and their Democratic supporters pushed a bill through the California Legislature last week that will automatically declare a union victory if employer misconduct is shown. The bill is awaiting action by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Between 307,000 and 450,000 people work on California farms, depending on the season, according to the state Department of Food and Agriculture. But fewer than 16,000 full-time farmworkers belong to a union, and a tally by the state's Agricultural Labor Relations Board found 40 percent of agricultural labor elections between 2000 and 2007 resulted in a vote against representation.

Read more: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129417137

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[Omaha Steve]

1. K&R!

[zbdent]

2. and I wonder how many of those 307K-450K farm workers

are legal US citizens?

Remember McCain promising $50/hour to U.S. citizens to pick lettuce (or tomatoes)? Quickly rescinded and not shown in Obama campaign commercials ...

Of course, there probably might be a Repug quandary ... if the pregnant teen was an illegal immigrant working illegally on the farm, was the fetus still sacred?

[Wednesdays]

3. Maybe that's the silver lining

The mega-corps have been getting away with shafting the illegal immigrants for too long. If the workers finally get a decent wage, they will put that money back into the economy and taxes. That would put to rest the meme that they're "leeching off taxpayers."