The United Farm Workers Could Use Your Help (Petition)

[WillyT]

Our vital bill, the Fair Treatment for Farm Workers Act (SB 104) has passed the CA Senate and Assembly and will shortly go to Governor Jerry Brown.

The United Farm Workers has won solid laws to protect California farm workers who provide more than half of our nation's produce. But with over 400,000 field workers migrating among 80,000 farms, these laws have not and cannot be enforced by the state of California.

The Fair Treatment for Farm Workers Act will ensure the laws on the books do become the laws in the fields. This new law will make it easier for farm workers to have a union and thus have the opportunity to speak up and protect themselves.

Without this bill, farm workers will continue to face unbearable conditions and pressure. Many workers don't have access to basic things like shade, water, heat training or even breaks during the hot summer days. And nothing will change. Wage and hour violations will continue. Overexposure to pesticides will go unchallenged. Sexual harassment will remain rampant and the health crises caused by a lack of sanitation and lax safety standards will continue to plague farm workers.

Link: http://action.ufw.org/page/s/sb104petition?source=calitics

[Rhiannon12866]

1. Done!

Thanks for posting this! :hi: :kick:

[WillyT]

2. You Are Quite Welcome !!! - Thank You !!!

:yourock:

:hi:

[Rhiannon12866]

3. Thank you!

This is a very important issue. I live in a rural area here in NY, congressman on the Agriculture Committee, and workers in this area need these protections, too. :( :hi: :kick:

[senseandsensibility]

4. K, R, and thanks for posting.

eom

[WillyT]

5. You Are Quite Welcome !!!

:hi:

[senseandsensibility]

6. And we could use some more recs,here, people!

If this thread doesn't get some soon, I'll start believing the anti-labor stuff about DU.

[WillyT]

7. Yeah... I'm Beginning To Wonder Myself...

<snip>

One of Robert Kennedy's least glamorous assignments in the Senate was a seat on the Subcommittee on Migratory Labor. He was appalled, of course, to learn of the miserable working conditions endured by farmworkers, at the mercy of big agricultural businesses. But with a lot of issues on his mind -- Vietnam, and the new Bedford-Stuyvesant renewal project in his own state -- it hardly seemed like one he could take on.

Indifference to Labor

So when labor activists and some of his aides prevailed upon Kennedy to show support for striking farmworkers in March of 1966, he resisted. "Why am I dragging myself all the way out to California?" he complained on the plane to Peter Edelman, his point man on the issue.

Inspired

Then he spent a day with Cesar Chavez. "By the end of the day, Kennedy had embraced Chavez and La Causa," writes biographer Arthur Schlesinger. RFK was so angered by what he saw, and so impressed with Chavez, that all doubts about getting involved with the farmworkers were erased.

From Worker to Organizer

Cesar Estrada Chavez was born in Yuma, Arizona, in 1927, to a farm-labor family of Mexican descent. When his successful father suffered a financial reversal in 1937, the family was forced to join the roughly 300,000 migrant workers who followed the crops to California every year. Growing up in a succession of overcrowded migrant camps, Cesar managed an eighth-grade education. He served for two years in the U.S. Navy during World War II, then returned to migrant work in the Southwest and California.

Worker Literacy

Chavez and his new wife, Helen, began teaching their fellow farm workers how to read and write in the hope that they might lobby for better working conditions and fairer wages. After being recruited by the Community Services Organization (C.S.O.), Cesar started part-time work as a labor organizer, overcoming his own shyness in the process. Chavez rose to general director of the C.S.O. in 1958, but resigned after four years to found a new organization, the National Farm Workers Association (N.F.W.A.).

<snip>

Link: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rfk/peopleevents/p_chavez.html

:kick:

[senseandsensibility]

9. Great photos! Any DUer who is not inspired by this to

at least rec this is a mystery to me.

[Rhiannon12866]

8. Kicking!

:shrug: :kick:

[WillyT]

10. Kick !!!

:kick:

[amborin]

11. K&R and Done!

[chowder66]

12. Done!

[senseandsensibility]

13. K and R

again!:hi: