#agricultural worker

[dispatchesfromtheclasswar]

[allthecanadianpolitics]

More than 300 Quebec farmers drove their tractors through the streets of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu Friday to send a message to the provincial government, saying they are facing an existential crisis.

They say their costs have ballooned and it's becoming impossible to make a living.

Their message was simple: no farmers, no food, no future.

"We already have people going bankrupt. We already have people shutting down, doing something else. A lot of farmers already have to work almost part-time, if not full-time, outside the farm to be able to make ends meet," said Stephanie Levasseur, vice-president of the Union des producteurs agricoles, Quebec farmers' union. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland, @vague-humanoid

[newsfromstolenland]

Quebec Labour Minister Jean Boulet has amended his law project, Bill 19, regulating youth employment in the province to allow children under 14 to work in agriculture, provided the business has a maximum of 10 employees.

The proposed law, tabled in March, would limit the number of weekly hours Quebecers 16 and under can work during the school year to 17. It also sets the minimum legal working age at 14 — with some exceptions for jobs like babysitting or tutoring.

But Boulet's amendment would allow small agricultural businesses to be exempt from the new minimum working age and employ children as young as twelve.

[...]

This new exemption echoes the demands of employers, who asked for more exceptions to allow children under 14 to work.

But there are concerns over the agricultural environment being risky as injuries in young people are frequent. Some doubt the ability of Quebec's labour regulator, La Commission des normes, de l'équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CNESST), to ensure the safety of children in the workplace.

Full article

Tagging: @allthecanadianpolitics

[probablyasocialecologist]

Last year, during the hottest summer on record, Angel and hundreds of other workers on Dearnsdale fruit farm in Staffordshire were told to pick and sort about 100-150kg of strawberries every day inside polytunnels designed to trap heat. It was so hot that at least one worker fainted, she said. The strawberries they picked ended up on the shelves of some of the UK’s largest supermarkets, including Tesco, Co-op and Lidl.

An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and VICE World News has uncovered widespread mistreatment of migrants working at more than 20 UK farms, nurseries and packhouses in 2022. Workers reported a litany of problems, from not going to the toilet for fear of not hitting targets, to being made to work in gale-force winds. Some said they would be shouted at or punished for having their mobile in their pocket or talking to work colleagues while on the field. Others said they were threatened by recruiters with being deported or blacklisted.

Many were left in debt and destitution, and some left the UK being owed money by their employers. One worker even had to pull out his own tooth because he could not find appropriate medical care. Our findings expose a poorly enforced government visa scheme that is flagrantly breached by farms and recruiters, and which leaves people vulnerable to exploitation.

At Dearnsdale, those who made mistakes or failed to hit targets were routinely sanctioned. The most common punishment was to have their shift cut short – every day several workers would be sent back to their caravans after only a few hours’ work. That meant that on a day when a worker was hoping to earn money for eight hours of work, they would be paid for only three. The practice is common on farms using the visa scheme.

For workers like Angel, who took on debt to pay for visas and flights to come to the UK, having their earnings cut was devastating. Even after picking fruit and vegetables for five months, she still has not been able to pay off her £1,250 loan.

[...]

Human rights experts and lawyers say that the design of the UK seasonal worker visa puts workers at an increased risk of exploitation. Because these visas tie migrants to their sponsor, a recruiter, workers are then unable to seek work with anyone else, even if they have problems with their employer or their recruiter stops offering them work.

Workers are not only dependent on their recruiter and the farm employing them for work, but also for their housing, transportation and even information about their employment rights. Workers who are this dependent on their employer can find it harder to leave exploitative situations.

[miamaimania]

Earthen Embrace: A Colima Mother Figurine and the Chicana Voice 's black diamond

[chicanoartmovement]

CHICANO ART MOVEMENT attends: OC Fair 2024

(View at the Orange County Fair 2024 where it’s “always a good time” — this year’s theme.)

We made it to Costa Mesa, California for the last weekend of the OC Fair 2024 for extra long corn dogs, fresh lemonade, sweet & light funnel cake, and visual stimulation.

(South facing view of commemorative memorial honoring agriculture workers and their hard work.)

Entering through the blue gate, we came upon the “Table of Dignity” Memorial in commemoration of the agricultural workers by the Agricultural Association (32nd district) and the OC Fair & Event Center.

The only figurative artwork on the memorial as through its wall-thru archway which was created by artist Higgy Vasquez.

(Detailed view of inner walls of the walk through portal portion of the “Table of Dignity” monument.)

This pair of paintings “Dignity” & “Justicia” displayed the different phases of harvesting crops grown in Orange County such as grapes and strawberries.

One special elements of this memorial was the incorporation of live grape vines.

(View of participating collections and memorabilia at the year’s OC Fair.)

Next we moved on to the Hobbies & Handcrafts building in support of one of our street team member who had a pop culture display at the OC Fair.

(View of gallery sign at the Orange County Fair 2024.)

Afterwards we proceeded to the Visual Arts & Woodworking Gallery. There we came upon two life size cutouts: a pachuco and a pachuca.

(View of “Me Despojo De Todo Lo Que Disminuya El Valor de Mi Ofrenda” by Jacqueline Valenzuela, 2024.)

Lured in and while walking around the art booth, we saw the artista Jacqueline Valenzuela painting live. We were fortunate enough to chat with her & learned about her art collaboration with the fair.

“Jacqueline Valenzuela is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice is centered around depicting her personal experiences as well as the storytelling of other women who like her are in the Chicano world of lowriding. Her art practice reflects the deep roots she has planted in the lowrider community by bridging the gap between fine art and this underrepresented community.”

[bonesandpoemsandflowers]

some of you being like "any civilian killed in war time is a war crime" do not actually know what the legal term "war crime" means, but more importantly you seem to only care about certain causalities, whereas the poor Thai migrant farmhands getting slaughtered can go fuck themselves, apparently, because how dare they travel far from home, which is always a rural and poor area of Thailand, so that they can earn money to send back to their families, in most cases so that their children can go to college and escape the cycle of poverty.

but no! only one hash tag at a time as a thought in your brains.

[girderednerve]

i have once more Read a Book !

the book was jim morris' cancer factory: industrial chemicals, corporate deception, & the hidden deaths of american workers. this book! is very good! it is primarily about the bladder cancer outbreak associated with the goodyear plant in niagara falls, new york, & which was caused by a chemical called orthotoluedine. goodyear itself is shielded by new york's workers' comp law from any real liability for these exposures & occupational illnesses; instead, a lot of the information that morris relies on comes from suits against dupont, which manufactured the orthotoluedine that goodyear used, & despite clear internal awareness of its carcinogenicity, did not inform its clients, who then failed to protect their workers. fuck dupont! morris also points out that goodyear manufactured polyvinyl chloride (PVC) at that plant, and, along with other PVC manufacturers, colluded to hide the cancer-causing effects of vinyl chloride, a primary ingredient in PVC & the chemical spilled in east palestine, ohio in 2023. the book also discusses other chemical threats to american workers, including, and this was exciting for me personally, silica; it mentions the hawks nest tunnel disaster (widely forgotten now despite being influential in the 30s, and, by some measures, the deadliest industrial disaster in US history) & spends some time on the outbreak of severe silicosis among southern california countertop fabricators, associated with high-silica 'engineered stone' or 'quartz' countertops. i shrieked about that, the coverage is really good although the treatment of hawks nest was very brief & neglected the racial dynamic at play (the workers exposed to silica at hawks nest were primarily migrant black workers from the deep south).

cancer factory spends a lot of time on the regulatory apparatus in place to respond to chemical threats in the workplace, & thoroughly lays out how inadequate they are. OSHA is responsible for setting exposure standards for workplace chemicals, but they have standards for only a tiny fraction—less than one percent!—of chemicals used in american industry, and issue standards extremely slowly. the two major issues it faces, outside of its pathetically tiny budget, are 1) the standard for demonstrating harm for workers is higher than it is for the general public, a problem substantially worsened during the reagan administration but not created by it, and 2) OSHA is obliged to regulate each individual chemical separately, rather than by functional groups, which, if you know anything at all about organic chemistry, is nonsensical on its face. morris spends a good amount of time on the tenure of eula bingham as the head of OSHA during the carter administration; she was the first woman to head the organization & made a lot of reasonable reforms (a cotton dust standard for textile workers!), but could not get a general chemical standard, allowing OSHA to regulate chemicals in blocks instead of individually, through, & then of course much of her good work was undone by reagan appointees.

the part of the book that made me most uncomfortable was morris' attempt to include birth defects in his analysis. i don't especially love the term 'birth defect'—it feels cruel & seems to me to openly devalue disabled people's lives, no?—but i did appreciate attention to women's experiences in the workplace, and i think workplace chemical exposure is an underdiscussed part of reproductive justice. cancer factory mentions women lead workers who were forced to undergo tubal ligations to retain their employment, supposedly because lead is a teratogen. morris points at workers in silicon valley's electronics industry; workers, most of them women, who made those early transistors were exposed to horrifying amounts of lead, benzene, and dangerous solvents, often with disabling effects for their children.

morris points out again & again that we only know that there was an outbreak of bladder cancer & that it should be associated with o-toluedine because the goodyear plant workers were organized with the oil, chemical, & atomic workers (OCAW; now part of united steelworkers), and the union pursued NIOSH investigation and advocated for improved safety and monitoring for employees, present & former. even so, 78 workers got bladder cancer, 3 died of angiosarcoma, and goodyear workers' families experienced bladder cancer and miscarriage as a result of secondary exposure. i kept thinking about unorganized workers in the deep south, cancer alley in louisiana, miners & refinery workers; we don't have meaningful safety enforcement or monitoring for many of these workers. we simply do not know how many of them have been sickened & killed by their employers. there is no political will among people with power to count & prevent these deaths. labor protections for workers are better under the biden administration than the trump administration, but biden's last proposed budget leaves OSHA with a functional budget cut after inflation, and there is no federal heat safety standard for indoor workers. the best we get is marginal improvement, & workers die. i know you know! but it's too big to hold all the same.

anyway it's a good book, it's wide-ranging & interested in a lot of experiences of work in america, & morris presents an intimate (sometimes painfully so!) portrait of workers who were harmed by goodyear & dupont. would recommend

[vibinwiththefrogs]

The fact that generally speaking white Americans consider Latino/Hispanic people to be lazy when literally our entire food system relies on migrant workers and imports from Latin America has to be one of the greatest cultural brainwashes in this country.

[cathkaesque]

South Asian Dispatches: Episode 1 – Farmworkers’ Strike in Bangladesh

The Communications Collective of South Asia, with support from the Youth Media Collective of MONLAR, is releasing the first edition of La Via Campesina’s South Asian Dispatches. These consist of a series of interviews with leaders from various peasant organizations in South Asia, and through them, we bring you the latest updates about the different peasant struggles in the region.

Episode 1 focuses on the ongoing farmworkers' strike in Bangladesh, organized by the Bangladesh Agricultural Farm Labour Federation since July 21, 2023.

The struggle led by farmworkers for improved wages and working conditions has compelled the government to establish a committee to study the matter and provide recommendations.

Listen to Golam Sorowar, the General Secretary of BAFLF, as he provides further insight into the struggle.

[harriswalz4usabybr]

Speech Governor Walz Gave in Louisville, KY!

~BR~

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Grain and General Services Union (GSU) Locals 1 and 2 have presented Viterra Canada Inc. with a 72-hour strike notice. Viterra operates grain elevators, processing plants and other agricultural infrastructure in Canada and the U.S. Its Canadian head office is in Regina. GSU Locals 1 and 2 represent 436 employees across Saskatchewan. The union said the notice was given on Tuesday afternoon after more than a year of negotiating with Viterra. The union says it's seeking fair wages, improved work-life balance and workplace respect.

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Tagging @politicsofcanada

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"The category of race was also critical to the second pillar of the CFU’s [Canadian Farmworkers Union] organizing mission: ridding the industry of contractors. Contractors would supply the labour force for the farmers and, in many cases, they held as much power as the farmers. The contractor was responsible for hiring a workforce, maintaining discipline, and making payments. The farmer would not pay the workers directly; instead, the farmer would pay the contractor who, in many cases, would retain the money until the end of the season. In many instances, the contractor was also responsible for transporting workers between the field and their homes. Since labour contractors were trying to maximize profits, the vehicles they used to transport workers predictably violated many road safety standards. As Chouhan remembers, his first contractor: “came to pick me up in an Econoline van which had no seats in it, there were people sitting on the floor which was quite a shock [laughs]. No seat belts, no nothing.” Many workers have been killed due to accidents in these unsafe vehicles, and, as recently as 7 March 2007, three farmworkers died in a rollover accident while riding in an overcrowded vehicle between Abbotsford and Chilliwack. Often, contractors were from the same social and ethnic circles as the labourers whom they employed. Charan Gill identified a “colonial mentality” in comments made by farmworkers. Since the contractors who provided them with work shared familial and cultural ties with them, some of which could be traced back to Punjab, many farmworkers did not want to stand up to the contractors. Fears of losing jobs and housing were very real, and such losses could jeopardize their immigration status. Contractors who came from the same community as the workers could manipulate the latter into believing they were on their side, and, because of this, Gill notes: “in spite of our efforts, individual interests [of workers] sometimes invalidated collective interests [of their class]” because some of those workers aspired to be contractors. Simply getting safety information to farmworkers was also difficult. Since many of the workers could not read or write in English, and some were illiterate in their own languages, they were often dependent on information from the farmer and the contractor. Contractors could intentionally mislead, omit certain information, or outright lie to their workers about their legal rights. This delayed organizing efforts. To counter this information block, organizers would try to go to local temples on the weekends, where many workers went to pray. However, the labour contractors also had control over the temple executives, so organizers were often refused the right to speak. Frustrated, the organizers developed a two-part strategy. First, they would have “kitchen meetings” in which the organizer would contact one worker for a meeting in their home, and that worker would contact neighbours and friends, so “that way [they would] not [be] afraid to be seen by a labour contractor or in the temple or in a public place.” Second, because many families used the temples for social events, the organizers would ask family members to invite the CFU and thus circumvent the temple executives as organizers of social events had the “absolute right to invite anyone they want[ed].”

These strategies helped the CFU reach out to potential members and to provide valuable information regarding their legal rights. Unfortunately, despite the efforts of the CFU, contractors are still a part of the industry to this day, and anyone driving through the agricultural areas of British Columbia’s Lower Mainland can witness the painted-over shuttle buses that daily transport farmworkers from home to field."

- Nicholas Fast, ““WE WERE A SOCIAL MOVEMENT AS WELL”: The Canadian Farmworkers Union in British Columbia, 1979–1983,” BC Studies. no. 217, Spring 2023. p. 44-45.

[wanderingandfound]

After having a lot of trouble falling asleep, then a lot of trouble staying asleep, I have woken up earlier than I would like with a sore throat and a worryingly precarious mental state for first thing in the morning.

[pinkcadillaccas]

I really and truly understand the need for a shorter work day, and not working people 8 hours minimum just because we can. HOWEVER, some jobs, especially manual ones, need more time and that's okay because some people love their jobs! A carpenter engrossed in their job and facing high demand might relish working 8 hours a day non stop, I work in vegetable growing and that job is just by nature long and inflexible. Yes with the right attitudes and right amount of workers all the work that needs doing can be done quickly at the right times of the day but it's just like actually some jobs, especially in our current society, are laborious and that's not because of shitty capitalistic workers rights it's just how they are, and some people enjoy working them. Idk I just feel like a lot of the (very very important!) conversation about workers rights in terms of hours and demand and flexibility misses out a lot of manual labour jobs that can be people's passion. Yes we still need to make changes ideally yes people are still overworked, but the solutions and the aims are entirely different and so often workers like my family and friends are left out of the conversation.