Biden vs. Newsom on Farmworkers' Right To Vote

[Omaha Steve]

In a heated debate over farmworker voting rights, California’s governor refuses to sign a bill to make it easier for workers to win union recognition.

By David Bacon TODAY 5:00 AM

BERKELEY, CALIF.—In California’s heated debate over farmworker voting rights, Democratic Party leaders are increasingly closing ranks against the state’s governor, who refuses to sign a bill to make it easier for workers to win union recognition. After a march by workers and supporters from Delano to Sacramento, President Biden himself weighed in.

“I strongly support California’s Agricultural Labor Relations Voting Choice Act (AB 2183),” Biden announced on September 6. Noting that farmworkers had worked through the pandemic, he declared, “The least we owe them is an easier path to make a free and fair choice to organize a union. Government should work to remove—not erect—barriers to workers organizing.”

The barriers to organizing in the fields have historically been fearsome for many California farmworkers. Some of the marchers, who braved temperatures of over 110 degrees as they walked through the San Joaquin Valley, had bitter memories of field elections that went disastrously wrong. One particular catastrophe took place in the late 1990s in Watsonville, when growers fomented an atmosphere of terror to keep strawberry pickers from joining the United Farm Workers.

In mandatory meetings, anti-union consultants warned that there would be violence if the union were organized and that growers would fire people and go out of business. These were not idle threats. In 1995 VCNM, a large Watsonville strawberry company, plowed under a quarter of its fields after workers organized. The company later disappeared completely. Then, strawberry growers set up a company union to fight the UFW. Dozens of pro-UFW workers were denied jobs or fired in the following seasons.

FULL story: https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/farmworker-ufw-march-voting-rights/


On the last day of the 23-day march from Delano, 5000 farmworkers and supporters headed for the state capitol in Sacramento. (David Bacon)

[peacebuzzard]

1. never ending war of the classes. ongoing today.