Celebrate Peace Week or Fleet Week p. 14 Lowriders teach art not war p. 15
n Aug. 6, 2017, Honesto Silva Ibarra died in a Seattle hospital. Silva was a guest worker — a Mexican farm worker brought to the United States under contract to pick blueberries. He worked first in Delano, Calif. And then in Sumas, Wash., next to the Canadian border. His death and the political and legal firestorm it ignited has unveiled a contract labor scheme reminiscent of the United States’ infamously exploitative mid-century Bracero Program. In a suit filed January in the U.S. District Court in the state of Washington, the state’s rural legal aid group, Columbia Legal Services charged that Silva’s employer, Sarbanand Farms, “violated federal anti-
trafficking laws through a pattern of threats and intimidation that caused its H-2A workforce to believe they would suffer serious harm unless they fully submitted to Sarbanand’s labor demands.” Those demands, as described in the complaint, were extreme and Silva’s coworkers believe he died as a result. Sarbanand Farms belongs to Munger Brothers, a family corporation in Delano, Calif. Since 2006, the company has annually brought more than 600 workers from Mexico under the H-2A visa program to harvest 3,000 acres of blueberries in California and Washington. Munger, the largest blueberry grower in North [See Suffer, p.7]
as it was quick in coming By Terelle Jerricks, Managing Editor On Aug. 13, members of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters Local #2375, known by most in the Los Angeles Harbor as the Piledrivers Union, were shocked to learn that Local #2375 was dissolved and assigned to a new chartered local without even having a say in the matter. Effective Aug. 14, Local 2375 and 14 other locals in the Southwest Council were replaced with seven new locals. All “affiliate local union” were restructured
Portrait of piledriver from noted labor photographer Slobodan Dimitrov.
August 23 - September 5, 2018
When casualties aren’t just a thing of war p. 13
O
Story and photos by David Bacon, RLn Contributor
Piledrivers Local 2375 Is No More The storied local’s dissolution was as shocking
Dems pursue four House seats in OC p. 12
The H-2A Farm Worker Program creates a pipeline of cheap, disposable labor
Real News, Real People, Really Effective
YAKIMA, WA — The hands of Manuel Ortiz, who came to the U.S. from Mexico as a bracero in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and spent decades working as a farm worker in California and Washington, show a life of work. Photo by David Bacon/The Progressive.
[See Piledrivers, p.3]
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