{"article":{"id":8896,"heading":"News from the Farm Worker Movement","author":"UFW","created":"2001-07-25 02:52:59","modified":"2005-08-15 00:36:47","last_modified":"Mon, 15 Aug 2005 07:36:47","article":"

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. <\/p>\n","contact":"","link":"http:\/\/www.ufw.org","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/plain","summary":"News from the Farm Worker Movement(www.ufw.org)","numcomment":0,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/2001\/07\/news_from_.txt","filesize":"22.7 kibibytes","article_url":"\/news\/2001\/07\/8896.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[]}