Source: Labor Notes
It’s been a whirlwind spring of precedent-setting wins for North America’s migrant workers, who are making connections across borders.
After three months of strikes and protests, 30,000 berry pickers in Baja California, Mexico, won raises of up to $4 a day and rights to social security benefits and overtime pay.
These workers, mainly indigenous farmworkers from Oaxaca and Guerrero, allied with U.S. groups including the Farm Labor Organizing Committee and galvanized international support.
Some of the Baja leaders had picked up their organizing skills working on Florida tomato farms with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. Fidel Sanchez, for instance, was involved in CIW strikes in the 1990s.
“His consciousness was born here,” says the CIW’s Lucas Benitez. “Fidel returned to Mexico, but he didn’t forget his commitment to change.”
One tactic that worked: the international boycott of Driscoll’s. As the boycott began to hurt its bottom line, the L.A. Times reports, Driscoll’s executives pushed the Mexican government to intervene.
It’s been a whirlwind spring of precedent-setting wins for North America’s migrant workers, who are making connections across borders.
After three months of strikes and protests, 30,000 berry pickers in Baja California, Mexico, won raises of up to $4 a day and rights to social security benefits and overtime pay.
These workers, mainly indigenous farmworkers from Oaxaca and Guerrero, allied with U.S. groups including the Farm Labor Organizing Committee and galvanized international support.
Some of the Baja leaders had picked up their organizing skills working on Florida tomato farms with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. Fidel Sanchez, for instance, was involved in CIW strikes in the 1990s.
“His consciousness was born here,” says the CIW’s Lucas Benitez. “Fidel returned to Mexico, but he didn’t forget his commitment to change.”
One tactic that worked: the international boycott of Driscoll’s. As the boycott began to hurt its bottom line, the L.A. Times reports, Driscoll’s executives pushed the Mexican government to intervene.
– See more at: http://www.labornotes.org/2015/07/how-migrant-farmworkers-are-cross-pollinating-strategies-and-winning#sthash.QABGZkWe.dpuf
It’s been a whirlwind spring of precedent-setting wins for North America’s migrant workers, who are making connections across borders.
After three months of strikes and protests, 30,000 berry pickers in Baja California, Mexico, won raises of up to $4 a day and rights to social security benefits and overtime pay.
These workers, mainly indigenous farmworkers from Oaxaca and Guerrero, allied with U.S. groups including the Farm Labor Organizing Committee and galvanized international support.
Some of the Baja leaders had picked up their organizing skills working on Florida tomato farms with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. Fidel Sanchez, for instance, was involved in CIW strikes in the 1990s.
“His consciousness was born here,” says the CIW’s Lucas Benitez. “Fidel returned to Mexico, but he didn’t forget his commitment to change.”
One tactic that worked: the international boycott of Driscoll’s. As the boycott began to hurt its bottom line, the L.A. Times reports, Driscoll’s executives pushed the Mexican government to intervene.
– See more at: http://www.labornotes.org/2015/07/how-migrant-farmworkers-are-cross-pollinating-strategies-and-winning#sthash.QABGZkWe.dpuf