On the last day of the 23-day march from Delano, 5000 farmworkers and supporters headed for the state capitol building in Sacramento.
SACRAMENTO, CA - 9/10/22 - 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 organized an atmosphere of terror to keep strawberry pickers from joining the United Farm Workers.
In mandatory meetings anti-union consultants warned there would be violence if the union was 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.
One worker, Efren Vargas, recalled, "My foreman told me how to make trouble for the UFW organizers when they came to the field to talk to us." In 1998 he and other pro-UFW workers at Coastal Berry were beaten in the fields. Vargas was hit in the head, knocked to the ground and kicked repeatedly. Supervisor Joel Lobato told him, "You deserved to get fucked up."
After the beatings, the company union filed for an election with the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, to keep the UFW out. The UFW protested that a fair election couldn't be held in that atmosphere, but the ALRB went ahead anyway. Workers went to vote in the fields where the beatings had taken place. Predictably, the company union won.
This summer, when 26 UFW members and supporters began marching from Delano on August 3, they were hoping to end growers' ability to use fraudulent elections like the one at Coastal Berry. When they arrived in Sacramento 23 days later, having traversed 330 miles, some remembered what happened in the fields of another notoriously anti-union grower, Gerawan Farming.
In 2013, in its effort to get rid of its obligation to negotiate a union contract, Gerawan foremen went into its peach orchards and vineyards, demanding that pickers sign a petition against the union. Supervisors shut down work entirely, and blocked entry to the fields and packing sheds, to pressure employees. One UFW supporter, Severino Salas, recounted threats that if the company had to sign a contract with the union, it would tear out the grapevines and trees.
The ALRB then conducted an election in the same fields where the threats had been commonplace. When the votes were finally counted, workers had lost their right to negotiate a union contract. Gerawan had achieved its goal. When workers have to vote in the fields, the voting booth isn't a pure isolated place where the world doesn't intrude. It's part of the world where the threats are made. Consequently, growers have tried to prevent any changes in the field voting procedure.
This year's march from Delano to Sacramento was not the first to try to remedy this situation. Last year the union organized a similar peregrination. Both were directed at California Governor Gavin Newsom, asking him to sign AB 2183, to give farmworkers an alternative to high-pressure field elections. Last year Newsom vetoed the bill on the march's first day. This year he waited until marchers had completed their 23-day trek before announcing that he would not sign this time either.
Farmworkers react with anger and dismay after United Farm Workers President Teresa Romero tells them that the Governor has announced he will not sign the bill.
AB 2183 proposes two alternative systems for voting. In one, growers would pledge in advance to remain neutral if workers try to organize, and agree not to require workers to attend anti-union meetings. The grower would allow workers access to union organizers at work. When the union asks for an official election, the board would inform the company and mail ballots to all the workers, who would fill them out at home and send them back. Workers could ask for ballots directly from the ALRB.
In the other alternative, where growers don't agree to neutrality, workers could sign union authorization cards at home, and the union would then submit them to the ALRB. The labor board would then compare the cards to a list of eligible employees. If a majority have signed, the company would be obligated to negotiate a contract. This system already exists for California's public employees.
Unions far beyond the UFW have fought for labor law reform for years to provide alternatives like these. During the Obama administration the AFL-CIO sought passage, unsuccessfully, of the Employee Free Choice Act. That would have allowed the same "card check" process, avoiding an election on the employer's property. Unions made another push, after President Biden took office, for the PRO Act, which would also make it harder for employers to use intimidation tactics.
Last year Governor Newsom argued that he had concerns over the "security" of the ballots. This year Newsom's communications director Erin Mellon told the Fresno Bee that although he supports changes in state law to make it easier for workers to organize, "we cannot support an untested mail-in election process that lacks critical provisions to protect the integrity of the election and is predicated on an assumption that the government cannot effectively enforce laws."
This was a strange argument, since absentee voting is used extensively in California in general elections (including his own recall election), so there's plenty of experience with it. Peter Schey, director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law in Los Angeles, responded, "Passage of this bill would provide California's farmworkers with a variety of means for casting their votes, including voting by mail and dropping off ballots at designated locations. These and related provisions in the bill will simply provide farmworkers with more meaningful opportunities to exercise their longstanding right to vote in union elections."
Newsom seems blind to the existence of grower intimidation, which the absentee process is designed to make more difficult. Growers and their allies argue that intimidation is not a problem. Republican Latino political consultant Mike Madrid, for instance, claimed, "These are not issues of huge concern. They are of symbolic concern." The argument filed by the California Farm Bureau Federation against the bill states, "This bill would strip agricultural employees of their rights to express their sentiments about unionization in secret-ballot elections conducted by the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, free from fear, intimidation, coercion, or trickery exerted by anyone interested in the outcome."
According to Schey, however, "There is no question but that these [in the field] voting conditions create opportunities for voter intimidation and prevent many farmworkers from participating in an election out of fear of employer reprisals. While the Agricultural Labor Relations Act prohibits the use of intimidation by employers, it is our experience that the reality on the ground is that agricultural employers regularly use fear-instilling tactics to prevent unionization."
UFW President Teresa Romero and union co-founder Dolores Huerta march with union veterans to the state capitol to call on the Governor to sign AB 2183
Governor Newsom's rationales for opposing AB 2183 may have less to do with the security of the ballots, however, and more with his own relationship with growers. According to Sacramento journalist Dan Bacher, Newsom has received over $977,000 in campaign donations from the agricultural industry. "That figure doesn't include funds raised to fight his recall," Bacher says, "which included $250,000 from Stewart and Lynda Resnick, billionaire agribusiness owners of the Wonderful Company." In the 2018 election cycle the Resnicks, the world's largest almond growers, contributed $116,800, while E.J. Gallo, another storied and wealthy grower, gave the governor $58,400.
Newsom agreed to put his own interest in the PlumpJack Group, which he founded with billionaire Gideon Getty in the 1980s, into a blind trust when he became governor. But during the years of his ownership the company expanded from being an operator of restaurants and boutique hotels to an important agribusiness enterprise. It is now a major vineyard owner, with four estate vineyards, producing between 50,000 and 75,000 cases of wine each year. A decade ago PlumpJack paid $400,000 per acre for one 45-acre vineyard, and this year bought another in Napa Valley for $14.5 million, from another wealthy grower, Robert Mondavi.
In the state legislature, each year AB 2183 has passed both houses by substantial majorities. Taking the side of the union, and urging the governor to sign the voting rights bill, legislators have been joined by Vice-President Kamala Harris, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro. Helping to organize this Democratic Party pressure is Cesar Chavez' granddaughter, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, now White House director of Intergovernmental Affairs.
Politicking and inner-party infighting, however, should not obscure the fundamental issue of workers' rights. Growers, like employers generally, want to control the voting process as much as they can, not from some altruistic interest in the sanctity of the vote, but because they want to keep the union from being organized.
In the end, however, it's really no business of the growers where farmworkers vote. If the right to decide on whether to organize a union or not belongs to workers, and only to them, they should be able to exercise that right at home or away from the field, or wherever they want.
Indigenous Mexican farmworkers join members of the American Indian Movement in calling on the Governor to respect the labor rights of farmworkers.
Faces of the marchers and their supporters
Chicano organizations and lowrider car clubs brought their flags and exquisitely restored vehicles to support farmworker rights.
Judges' comment: Phenomenal people-centric story rich with story arcs and data.
"This story by David Bacon chronicled the effort by the Tulare County sheriff to evict unhoused people living on the Tule River near Porterville. The majority of this unhoused population are people of color residing in a region whose largest city, Fresno, has long been plagued by homelessness and poverty. Partly as a result of the story, the river dwellers sued the county, and the sheriff had to defend his actions publicly. Although the community leader, Chendo, was arrested, the sheriff had to release him, and he and his partner Josefina are still living in a trailer on the riverbank. Co-published by Visalia Times Delta." - Arlan Tariq in Medium MORE THAN A WALL / MAS QUE UN MURO
More Than a Wall / Mas que Un Muro explores the many aspects of the border region through photographs taken by David Bacon over a period of 30 years. These photographs trace the changes in the border wall itself, and the social movements in border communities, factories and fields. This bilingual book provides a reality check, to allow us to see the border region as its people, with their own history of movements for rights and equality, and develop an alternative vision in which the border can be a region where people can live and work in solidarity with each other. - Gaspar Rivera-Salgado
David Bacon has given us, through his beautiful portraits, the plight of the American migrant worker, and the fierce spirit of those who provide and bring to us comfort and sustenance. -- Lila Downs
- a book of photographs by David Bacon and oral histories created during 30 years of covering the people and social movements of the Mexico/U.S. border - a complex, richly textured documentation of a world in newspaper headlines daily, but whose reality, as it's lived by border residents, is virtually invisible. - 440 pages - 354 duotone black-and-white photographs - a dozen oral histories - incisive journalism and analysis by David Bacon, Don Bartletti, Luis Escala, Guillermo Alonso and Alberto del Castillo. - completely bilingual in English and Spanish - published by El Colegio de la Frontera Norte with support from the UCLA Institute for Labor Research and Education and the Center for Mexican Studies, the Werner Kohlstamm Family Fund, and the Green Library at Stanford University
"The "border" is just a line. It's the people who matter - their relationships with or without or across that line. The book helps us feel the impact of the border on people living there, and helps us figure out how we talk to each other about it. The germ of the discussion are these wonderful and eye-opening pictures, and the voices that help us understand what these pictures mean." - JoAnn Intili, director, The Werner-Kohnstamm Family Fund Letters and Politics - May 19, 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvs6SyXsM-4 Three Decades of Photographing The Border & Border Communities Host Mitch Jeserich interviews David Bacon, a photojournalist, author, broadcaster and former labor organizer. He has reported on immigrant and labor issues for decades. His latest book, More Than A Wall, is a collection of his photographs of the border and border communities spanning three decades. TWO YEARS OF HEAT AND COVID IN THE SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY
Photographs by David Bacon
Kolligian Library at the University of California Merced 5200 N. Lake Rd. Merced, CA 95343 October 1, 2022 - February 10, 2023
Public reception October 13, 2022, 4-6 PM
IN THE FIELDS OF THE NORTH/EN LOS CAMPOS DEL NORTE
Photographs by David Bacon
La Quinta Museum 77885 Avenida Montezuma La Quinta, CA 92253 January 8, 2023 – April 16, 2023
Online Interviews and Presentations
Exploitation or Dignity - What Future for Farmworkers UCLA Latin American Institute Based on a new report by the Oakland Institute, journalist and photographer David Bacon documents the systematic abuse of workers in the H-2A program and its impact on the resident farmworker communities, confronted with a race to the bottom in wages and working conditions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXKa2lHJXMs
Documentary Matters - View from the US Social Documentary Network Four SDN photographers explore themes of racial justice, migration, and #MeToo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWl-uENA7SQ&t=1641s There's More Work to be Done Housing Assistance Council and National Endowment for the Arts This exhibition documents the work and impact of the struggle for equitable and affordable housing in rural America, inspired by the work of George “Elfie” Ballis. https://www.thereismoreworktobedone.com/david-bacon Dark Eyes A beautiful song by Lila Downs honoring essential workers, accompanied by photographs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdC2gE3SNWw
Exhibited throughout the pandemic in the Cecil H. Green Library at Stanford. The online exhibition (https://exhibits.stanford.edu/bacon), which includes additional content not included in the physical show, is accessible to everyone, and is part of an accessible digital spotlight collection that includes significant images from this body of work. For a catalog: (https://web.stanford.edu/dept/spec_coll/NonVendorPubOrderform2017.pdf)
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
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
