barred from striking, airline food workers sit down in traffic

BARRED FROM STRIKING, AIRLINE FOOD WORKERS SIT DOWN IN TRAFFIC Photos and Story By David Bacon, Truthout  March 3, 2020 https://truthout.org/articles/barred-from-striking-airline-food-workers-seek-other-ways-to-protest/ https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2020/03/barred-from-striking-airline-food.html Melieni Cruz, who helps prepare the meals passengers eat on airplanes, went thousands of dollars into debt because she couldn't pay her soaring medical bills. "When the doctor found cysts on my ovaries, I had to save for a year to afford the procedure, and my cysts got bigger and more painful the whole time," she said as she picketed the terminal at San Francisco International Airport (SFO). Cruz works for LSG Sky Chefs, and her union, UNITE HERE Local 2, has been trying to renegotiate the contract that covers her and 1,500 other workers. The cost of health care premiums and wages are the big sticking points in bargaining. Medicare for All would certainly take Cruz's health care costs off the bargaining table, and ensure that she gets treatment without having to endure a year in pain to save enough money for it. That's an important reason why Local 2 endorsed Bernie Sanders, who campaigned for Medicare for All long before the current presidential nomination race. Cruz went to work for LSG Sky Chefs for the medical coverage, for which she pays $150 a month on a wage of $18.16/hour. The deductible on the $8,000 surgery she needed put a huge hole in her income, and she's now afraid to go to the doctor. Preserving affordable health care was one of the reasons why Local 2 went on strike at the Marriott hotels in San Francisco a year ago. For 61 days, hotel workers mounted picket lines in a strike coordinated with other UNITE HERE locals in nine cities. The union has one of the best health plans of any San Francisco union, paid for by the hotels, and workers struck to keep the hotels from making them pay for it. Fear of losing a similar plan kept Local 2's sister union in Las Vegas from supporting Sanders and Medicare for All, but many of its members voted for him anyway, knowing that not every worker in Las Vegas enjoys the health care that the casino workers have fought for. In the airline food kitchens, however, the situation is very different. Roberto Alvarez, a worker who loads food onto planes, says, "I prepare food and beverage for some of the world's biggest airlines, but I have to go to a free clinic because my company insurance is so expensive that I can't afford it." What's keeping airline food workers from following in the footsteps of their fellow Local 2 members in the hotels is an antiquated labor law. Candidates on the left side of the Democratic Party have supported some aspects of labor law reform that would make it easier to form unions. But the airline food workers' situation highlights the need for a further reform that has yet to make it onto the stage in the Democratic candidate debates.

[. . .]

---

DOCUMENTING RESISTANCE -
Community Organizing Beyond the Farmworkers' Movement
Photographs by David Bacon

February 18 - March 27
Powell Library Rotunda, UCLA
Los Angeles, CA
 

---

IN WASHINGTON’S FIELDS: Photographs by David Bacon

February 1-May 10, 2020
Washington State History Museum
1911 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, WA
 

---

Exhibition Schedule
Exhibitions of photographs are scheduled for the following venues and dates:

In the Fields of the North / En los campos del norte
Scheduled exhibitions:

January 5, 2020 - March 1, 2020
Community Memorial Museum of Sutter County, Yuba City
March 15, 2020 - June 21, 2020
Los Altos History Museum, Los Altos
March 21, 2021 - May 23, 2021
Carnegie Arts Center, Turlock


More Than a Wall - The Social Movements of the Border
Scheduled exhibition:

August 29,, 2020 - November 29,, 2020
San Francisco Public Library

Deportations
Scheduled exhibition:

April 10, 2020 - May 1, 2020
Uri-Eichen Gallery, Chicago IL

 

---

In the Fields of the North / En los Campos del Norte
Photographs and text by David Bacon
University of California Press / Colegio de la Frontera Norte
302 photographs, 450pp, 9”x9”
paperback, $34.95 (in the U.S.)

order the book on the UC Press website:
ucpress.edu/9780520296077
use source code  16M4197  at checkout, receive a 30% discount

En Mexico se puede pedir el libro en el sitio de COLEF:
https://www.colef.mx

Los Angeles Times reviews In the Fields of the North / En los Campos del Norte - click here
 

---

En los campos del Norte documenta la vida de trabajadores agrícolas en Estados Unidos -
Entrevista con el Instituto Nacional de la Antropologia y Historia
http://www.inah.gob.mx/es/boletines/6863-en-los-campos-del-norte-documenta-la-vida-de-trabajadores-agricolas-en-estados-unidos

Entrevista en la television de UNAM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdSaBKZ_k0o

David Bacon comparte su mirada del trabajo agrícola de migrantes mexicanos en el Museo Archivo de la Fotografia
http://www.cultura.cdmx.gob.mx/comunicacion/nota/0038-18

Trabajo agrícola, migración y resistencia cultural: el mosaico de los “Campos del Norte”
Entrevista de David Bacon por Iván Gutiérrez / A los 4 Vientos
http://www.4vientos.net/2017/10/04/trabajo-agricola-migracion-y-resistencia-cultural-el-mosaico-de-los-campos-del-norte/

"Los fotógrafos tomamos partido"
Entrevista por Melina Balcázar Moreno - Milenio.com Laberinto
http://www.milenio.com/cultura/laberinto/david_baconm-fotografia-melina_balcazar-laberinto-milenio_0_959904035.htmlDie Apfel-Pflücker aus dem Yakima-Tal
http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=23990
EN LOS CAMPOS DEL NORTE:  Farm worker photographs on the U.S./Mexico border wall
http://us7.campaign-archive2.com/?u=fc67a76dbb9c31aaee896aff7&id=0644c65ae5&e=dde0321ee7
Entrevista sobre la exhibicion con Alfonso Caraveo (Español)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJeE1NO4c_M&feature=youtu.be
 

---

THE REALITY CHECK - David Bacon blog
http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com

---

Books by David Bacon

The Right to Stay Home:  How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration  (Beacon Press, 2013)
http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2328

Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants  (Beacon Press, 2008)
Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008
http://www.beacon.org/Illegal-People-P780.aspx

Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100558350

The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004)
http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520244726

En Español:

EL DERECHO A QUEDARSE EN CASA  (Critica - Planeta de Libros)
http://www.planetadelibros.com.mx/el-derecho-a-quedarse-en-casa-libro-205607.html

HIJOS DE LIBRE COMERCIA (El Viejo Topo)
http://www.tienda.elviejotopo.com/prestashop/capitalismo/1080-hijos-del-libre-comercio-deslocalizaciones-y-precariedad-9788496356368.html?search_query=david+bacon&results=1

For more articles and images, see  http://dbacon.igc.org and http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com
and https://www.flickr.com/photos/56646659@N05/albums