News from the Farm Worker Movement(www.ufw.org):
http://www.capitolalert.com/news/capalert05_20010721.html
Davis gets legislation to stiffen farm laws
By Andy Furillo
Bee Staff Writer
(Published July 21, 2001)
A bill to increase fines on agricultural employers who violate the
state's labor laws has cleared the Legislature and been sent to Gov.
Gray Davis.
The Assembly passed the bill Friday on a 50-23 vote after 25-7 Senate
approval Thursday.
Sponsored by the United Farm Workers and written by Assembly Speaker
Robert Hertzberg, D-Sherman Oaks, the bill was approved after a series
of amendments the past two weeks that stiffened monetary penalties but
eliminated mandatory jail time for three-time violators.
However, Hertzberg expressed optimism that the bill would help rectify
abuses in California's $27 billion agricultural industry, in which he
said workers are routinely cheated out of money.
"Every day, farm workers toil 12-hour days at minimum wage -- yet they
often don't even see a paycheck at the end of the week," Hertzberg said.
"This bill helps fix a system that's broken and gives workers
protections they deserve."
Davis vetoed a similar bill last year, saying it was unfair for
lawmakers to single out agriculture for special enforcement.
Gubernatorial spokesman Roger Salazar said of the new bill Friday,
"We'll take a look at it."
The bill increases fines to between $1,000 and $5,000 for first
offenses, $10,000 for a second offense and $25,000 for a third offense.
It also strengthens enforcement and verification of the state's farm
labor contractor licensing requirements.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Bee's Andy Furillo can be reached at (916) 321-1141 or
afurillo@sacbee.com.
http://www.bakersfield.com/local/Story/802484p-801687c.html
UFW-backed farm labor bill passes
Filed: 07/21/2001
By VIC POLLARD, Californian Sacramento Bureau
e-mail: vpollard@bakersfield.com
SACRAMENTO -- A bill to crack down on unscrupulous farm labor
contractors with heavy fines for failing to pay workers passed the state
Legislature and went to the governor's desk Friday.
The measure, which would also require growers to verify the licenses of
labor contractors they hire, was sponsored by the United Farm Workers
union and opposed by many farm owners.
The bill would require fines of at least $1,000 for the first failure to
pay wages due, $10,000 for a second offense and $25,000 for a third.
There are also stiff fines for acting as a farm labor contractor without
a license.
The measure is aimed at chronic complaints about some of the contractors
who provide the labor for much of California's farm field work.
"At long last it is time that the lowest-paid, most-exploited workers
get some relief," said UFW President Arturo Rodriguez.
"Every day, farm workers toil 12-hour days at minimum wage -- yet they
often don't even see a paycheck at the end of the week," said Assembly
Speaker Robert Hertzberg, the author of the measure, AB 423. "I am proud
that we are sending the governor a bill that helps fix a system that's
broken."
However, the bill goes too far, in the view of many growers.
"It's not at all acceptable to the grower community," said Manuel Cunha,
president of the Nisei Farmers League, which specializes in farm labor
issues. "No other industry has such stringent requirements."
The measure is similar to one vetoed by Gov. Gray Davis last year, but
UFW officials said the Hertzberg bill was tailored to meet the
governor's objections.
When he blue-penciled the measure last year, Davis said he sympathized
with the cause of farm workers, but he objected that it made agriculture
the only industry with automatic criminal penalties for wage violations.
Supporters of the Hertzberg bill said it requires civil fines, but
leaves criminal penalties for repeat violators up to local prosecutors
and courts, which is consistent with other industries.
The governor's office was noncommittal about whether Davis would look
more favorably on the new version of the bill.
A second bill streamlining workers' rights to recover financial damages
when defrauded by a contractor also passed and went to the governor.
He has 30 days to sign or veto them.
http://www.sacbee.com/ib/news/ib_news02_20010722.html
Dole Food's labor history is bumpy: There has been a series of legal
actions involving the company's workers.
By Andy Furillo
Bee Staff Writer
(Published July 22, 2001)
The Dole Food Co.'s unexpected layoffs of 1,900 workers in the southern
San Joaquin Valley again has put a focus on the firm's labor relations
record.
In the past decade, it has paid out more than $1 million in two lawsuits
filed by workers in California who accused the company of gender
discrimination and of not paying them for their mandatory travel time.
Dole also is the last remaining corporate defendant in a lawsuit filed
on behalf of 26,000 banana workers around the world who claimed they
were sterilized through exposure to a pesticide. The other defendants
paid $52 million to settle the accusations against them.
In addition, the company has acknowledged locking out 120 union workers
for more than a decade when their contract ran out at a vegetable
cooling plant in Salinas, and it successfully fought off another lawsuit
filed in 1994 by 400 Ventura County strawberry workers who charged that
they were let go after voting to unionize.
Dole is headed by David H. Murdock, a longtime Republican Party
financier who has been chairman and chief executive officer of the
company since his Flexi-Van Corp. acquired the company in 1985. Murdock
declined to be interviewed for this story.
Company officials declined to discuss in detail the two lawsuits that
resulted in payouts of $530,000 and $550,000 with company employees,
according to court records and plaintiffs' attorneys.
The first was filed in Los Angeles federal court in 1993 by female
citrus packers at Dole subsidiaries in Tulare and Ventura counties. The
company settled the case in which the employees charged they were denied
more stable general labor jobs because of their gender.
The second suit was filed in Monterey County in the mid-1990s by
employees of Royal Packing Inc., another Dole subsidiary. The company
did not pay field laborers at their Salinas job site for the time it
took them to get to work, even though the terms of their employment
required them to ride to work in company vehicles. The workers won on a
state Supreme Court appeal last year.
The sterilization of 26,000 banana workers through the use of
1,2-dibromo-3-chloropropane (DBCP) gained international attention in the
1980s. Attorneys in the Texas class-action suit charged that Dole
continued to use the pesticide for seven years after it was banned in
the United States.
Duane Miller, a Sacramento attorney and DBCP expert who assisted the
plaintiffs in the case, said in an interview that Dole bore no less
responsibility than the other corporate defendants that paid $52 million
to settle with the plaintiffs.
"After there was virtually indisputable evidence that DBCP had
sterilized men in every plant it had been manufactured or formulated in
in the United States, and after the product was banned, Dole decided to
use this product without telling their workers or providing them any
more protection than is afforded by a T-shirt," Miller said.
Dole officials declined to discuss the case. It is pending in the U.S.
5th District Court of Appeals in Texas. Dole is fighting on the issue of
whether the plaintiffs had the right to bring the action in the United
States.
Company Vice President George R. Horne, however, said, "I can
unequivocally state that Dole has never and does not use pesticides that
are illegal in the United States, the European Union or the World Health
Organization."
As for the lockout that has prevented union cooler workers from entering
the Dole-owned Bud Antle of California, Danny O. Urbano, vice president
in charge of industrial relations for the firm's fresh vegetables
division, said the employees could return to their jobs tomorrow if they
signed an agreement accepting the company's pay offer. The locked-out
employees have balked, however, because the agreement would require them
to make $5 to $8 an hour less than their replacement workers, according
to officials with the United Food and Commercial Workers union.
The Ventura County strawberry workers at Dole's Oceanview Farms sued the
company in July 1994 when they were laid off shortly after voting to
join the United Farm Workers union. Dole officials said Oceanview's
strawberry operations were losing money and the layoffs had nothing to
do with the employees' vote for United Farm Workers representation. The
company prevailed against the workers in court.
The Bee's Andy Furillo can be reached at (916) 321-1141 or
afurillo@sacbee.com.
http://www.sacbee.com/ib/news/ib_news01_20010722.html
Pulled up by the roots: Dole layoffs jolt farm workers who had escaped
migrant life
By Andy Furillo
Bee Staff Writer
(Published July 22, 2001)
EARLIMART -- For farm workers, they had attained a remarkable stability
picking fruit for the Dole Food Co.
They bought homes and cars. Their kids played youth sports, graduated
from high school and went to college. One worker took up masonry as a
hobby and built an arched brick barbecue in his back yard.
But the jobs that gave them a fighting chance to attain the American
dream in the farm towns of the southern Central Valley have been
eliminated. It was a decision that further undermined an already
suffering local economy.
"I felt I was secure," said Casemiro Medrano, 47, who had worked for
Dole since it entered the California grape and tree fruit business 14
years ago. "But when they took the job, it was like they took away the
whole trunk of the tree. They told us from one day to another, 'That's
it.' It's not easy to find another job that is stable."
Medrano is one of 1,900 Dole employees who were laid off in February
when the world's largest producer of fresh fruits and vegetables, with
annual revenues of $4.8 billion, announced it was selling 5,000 acres of
farmland in Tulare and Kern counties.
The layoffs are believed to be the largest in the state's agricultural
sector in at least five years, according to Cynthia Rice, an attorney
with California Rural Legal Assistance, which is investigating whether
to file a lawsuit against Dole on behalf of the workers.
"I haven't seen a layoff like this in California in at least the last
five and probably more like the last 10 years," Rice said. "In terms of
the magnitude of the layoffs and the impact on the community with
workers who had worked there for the same company for years and years,
this is pretty unique."
Al Bates, the Bakersfield-based vice president of Dole's North American
fruit operations, said the company is exiting the deciduous fruit
business in California and laying off the southern San Joaquin Valley
workers because returns in the division "were not acceptable."
Bates declined to reveal the specific numbers that prompted the decision
to sell the land. He did say that about 85 percent of the land for sale
grows table grapes. The California Table Grape Commission, meanwhile,
reported that table grape growers enjoyed a a record export year in 2000
with a total crop value of about $1 billion.
However, tree fruit farming has been generally dismal in the state,
according to agricultural experts.
Worldwide, the company's $68 million in profits for 2000 were up from
the $49 million it reported in 1999, and the numbers appear to be headed
up even more this year. The company projected a cumulative net income of
$68 million to $71 million for the first two quarters of 2001.
Dole officials said they are, of course, mindful of the bottom line, but
they maintained that the company never has lost view of the consequences
its decisions carry for its employees.
"Dole certainly has to be sensitive to its profitability and focus on
those businesses we do best," said George Horne, Dole's vice president
of administration and support operations. "Obviously, we employ 60,000
people around the world. So we're very sensitive to the employee needs
as well as our shareholders and customers. You've got all those
constituencies to satisfy. Sure, we have to be sensitive to our bottom
line, but this is not at the expense of the workers."
Over the past 15 years, Dole became one of the state's largest
agricultural employers. It bought the old Tenneco grape, tree fruit,
date and nut properties in the southern San Joaquin Valley and in the
Coachella Valley in the Southern California desert and the Bud Antle
lettuce and fresh vegetable operations in the Salinas Valley.
At one time, Dole employed more than 20,000 people in the state,
according to industry experts. Dole spokeswoman Freya Maneki said that
as of earlier this month, the company employed 5,950 people, including
3,800 under union contracts.
In a year of national economic uncertainty, Dole isn't the only company
in the United States or in California that has laid off portions of its
work force. But its decision to sell its land and replace its employees
in the interim with contract labor figures to have a significant impact
on an already troubled farm economy in the southern San Joaquin Valley.
Dole's jobs had provided some of the best opportunities in the
agricultural sector. Rather than flowing with the migrant stream that
takes workers from crop to crop, from Mexico through California and up
to Oregon and Washington, the Dole employees -- like workers at other
larger, direct-hire agricultural operations -- were able to entrench
themselves in their communities and live solid, working-class lives.
"People have a tendency to believe these are migrants," said Assemblyman
Dean Florez, D-Shafter. "They say, 'Oh, well, these farm workers will
find somewhere else to work.' But, hey, these people have worked at
these ranches forever. These people have always lived in these towns;
they've always had these jobs; and they've always gone to these fields."
Dole had characterized its workers as "seasonal," but nine of the
company's former employees interviewed by The Bee said they worked 10
months out of the year or more. CRLA lawyers said that a significant
percentage, if not most, of the 1,900 laid off farm workers were
employed for similar periods.
Foremen and supervisors said they earned more than $9 an hour, as did
fast-moving field workers working on piece rates at the height of the
grape season. The company provided health benefits.
"It paid for my house; it paid for my truck; it paid for my son to go to
college," said Armandina Aguilera, 67, of McFarland in Kern County.
She was a 16-year employee of Tenneco, which sold the 5,000 acres to
Dole in 1987. She then was a Dole field supervisor for 14 years.
"I could go on a good vacation every year to Mexico, to Cancun. Two
weeks, every December. And I got my bonus every year -- sometimes
$5,000."
A few miles up Highway 99 from McFarland is Earlimart, a town of 3,800
that serves as a gas stop for motorists driving between Los Angeles and
Fresno. It's also home to men and women who make their living picking
table grapes in the surrounding vineyards, packing them at cold-storage
sheds along the railroad tracks west of the highway.
The town is about 15 miles west of the Dole-owned Ducor Ranch, where
Casemiro Medrano worked. The Dole paycheck helped him buy a home, and
the stability of the job enabled him to embellish it by developing a
hobby -- brickwork. The barbecue on his back patio represents his best
efforts. He also has erected the brick pillars for a decorative fence
around his corner lot on North Church Street. He lives there with his
wife and his two sons, one of whom also worked for Dole.
"I wouldn't be doing nothing like this if it wasn't for the job,"
Medrano said of his brickwork hobby.
Around the corner from Medrano's house, Rosario Molina and his wife and
five children live in a modest single-family rental shaded by a magnolia
tree. Inside, the hallmarks of lives lived in one place adorn the walls
and bookshelves -- Rosario Jr.'s flag-football ribbons, his picture with
the Delano High School freshman football team, his trophy as the
school's Big Man on Campus, sister Maira's Earlimart Middle School
graduation.
Rosario Sr., 59, worked for Dole for eight years until the February
layoffs. It used to be that he could pay for his son's football cleats.
"He hasn't been able to get his cleats and stuff this year," Molina
said. "Right now, I'm struggling. I can't even buy groceries like
before."
Since February, Molina said, he has not been able to find any work.
Medrano said he worked for a few days as a supervisor for a farm-labor
contractor.
Aguilera found work two weeks ago for the first time since the layoffs,
a "cash pay" job from a cousin.
"It's real hard to find a job," Medrano said. "Most companies already
have workers."
The three hope that their job opportunities improve when the table grape
harvest hits full stride later this summer.
Until the farmlands sell, Dole intends to hire farm labor contractors to
bring in the crops.
Dole Vice President Bates said many of the company's former employees
"were given the opportunity" to apply for work with the contractors Dole
is assembling for the upcoming harvests. But the company refused in an
interview to disclose which contractors it has hired, saying that it is
proprietary business information. Bates said Dole has taken no measures
to ensure that its former employees are offered the work.
"We're not directing who the contractors hire," Bates said. "That's
their business."
None of the nine former Dole employees interviewed by The Bee has
obtained a job through the company's contractors. CRLA lawyer said they
were unaware of any of the laid-off workers being taken on by the
contractors.
"I'll go look for a job and the contractor already has his people,"
Rosario Molina said.
Experts say that such third-party employment arrangements, which involve
lower pay and no benefits, are more likely to result in a work force
more heavily migrant, undocumented and prone to exploitation.
"Employers like Dole have the option at any time to undermine existing
labor standards by replacing stable, experienced guys and women with
another type of labor," said Don Villarejo, founder and former director
of the California Institute for Rural Studies in Davis, who has
extensively studied farm labor contractor practices in the state.
An enormous oversupply of labor in the state's agricultural heartland,
reflected in May unemployment rates of 13.5 percent in Tulare County
(third worst in the state) and 9.5 percent in Kern County (14th worst),
makes it easier for big farming companies to determine work-force
arrangements.
"So long as that labor supply ... is constantly being supplemented by
new immigrants from Mexico, we're going to have this terrible situation
where the threat of (layoffs) or the reality of doing it, as Dole is now
doing, is going to be in our face," Villarejo said.
The new reality already is affecting the economies of southern San
Joaquin Valley towns such as Arvin, Shafter, McFarland and Earlimart.
Brenda Gutierrez, who owns Earlimart Auto Sales, said she is carrying
about 30 former Dole employees who are late on car payments. She said
the $8,000 she is owed represents about 15 percent of her total
business.
"Most people are asking us to wait for them a couple months, until they
find a different job," Gutierrez said. "Some of these people have been
with us a long time. Now, they don't work. All they live off is
unemployment."
At El Super Barato, a discount market and money exchange store on Front
Street, owner Moises E. Lopez said he also has felt the layoffs' impact.
He said his customers usually wire $10,000 to $20,000 a month to
relatives in Mexico, but business is down by 25 percent. He attributed
half of that decrease to customers who used to work for Dole.
"When these people don't work, we're slow," Lopez said.
CRLA attorneys, meanwhile, have asked the company for employment
information on hundreds of workers to determine what months they were on
the Dole payroll last year. They are in the process of obtaining the
information to decide whether to file a lawsuit against the company on
allegations that it violated the federal Worker Adjustment and
Retraining Act. The timing could determine whether the field hands had a
reasonable expectation of working for Dole within two months of
receiving their layoff notices this past February.
The WARN Act requires large employers to give workers 60-day notice
before layoffs. Dole filed its WARN Act notifications with the state
Employment Development Department on Feb. 13, about the time it
eliminated its work force. Violators can be subject to civil remedies
that would pay workers up to two months in back pay, according to
federal labor law.
Dole Vice President Horne said most of the laid-off employees "would
have been seasonal workers that would not have been rehired." But he
added, "We go through the process of notifying people and compensating
them in accordance with the laws, and if they're covered by some of our
company policies, such as separation and that sort of thing, that
applies there also."
None of the nine employees interviewed by The Bee was offered or
received a severance package. And CRLA lawyers said none of the other
Dole employees received severance benefits, as far as they know.
Horne suggested in an interview that the workers' seasonal status would
preclude them from receiving such benefits.
"To get rid of the problem, they call us 'seasonal,' " said Lucia
Cortez, a former Dole worker who lives in Arvin and worked at Dole's
Rancho Loma off Highway 166 in southern Kern County. "They didn't want
to pay the severance to people who did qualify."
At the Ducor Ranch in Tulare County, Armandina Aguilera said word of the
layoffs came down with a stunning finality, just as the workers were
finishing the winter pruning, getting the vineyards ready for
production.
"They tell us at Dole, 'No more,' " Aguilera said. "No 'Bye-bye.' No
'Thank you.' No nothing."
The Bee's Andy Furillo can be reached at (916) 321-1141 or
afurillo@sacbee.com.
For more information on the Farm Worker Movement visit our web site at http://www.ufw.org and/or subscribe to the Farm Worker Movement list serve by sending an e-mail to UFW-subscribe@topica.com.
