Two Steps Forward, One Step Back for Labor

Ohio wasn't the only labor victory this week. But we also got a reminder that some employers still treat their workers like serfs and that worker abuse is widespread even among supposed good guys.

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

Employees at a Dodge City, Kansas meatpacking plant have voted to join the United Food and Commercial Workers. This is big news. Meatpackers busted their unions years ago by moving their operations to the rural Plains states and bringing in foreign laborers to toil away from media attention or communities of any size. These plants are extremely dangerous for workers, accidents are common, and death is hardly unknown. Organizers have had to overcome multiple problems, including the little fiefdoms of the packers in these rural communities, the fact that the packers have routinely reported themselves for immigration violations in order to deport workers likely to vote for unions, and a multiplicity of languages. In fact, all literature for the campaign was in English, Spanish, Laotian, and Vietnamese. So this is quite a victory, even if the big battle against National Beef Packing for a contract is forthcoming.

SNIP

4. In an all-too-typical story, 60 farmworkers in Washington were stranded in the middle of nowhere when they were bused from Seattle to an farm (an organic farm nonetheless) where they were told they would be paid $25 for 4-5 hours of work, i.e., below the minimum wage. They refused and were left to find their own way back to Seattle. That the farmer works in organics is not surprisingly either. There’s been a lot of tension between farm laborers and organic farmers, particularly over the need for additional hard physical labor to weed ground crops if pesticides are not used. While that’s not the case here, there’s little to no evidence that organic farms treat workers better than conventional farms.

Management will always exploit labor as much as it can get away with. The key is exposing management and keeping the spotlight on abuse, so they can't get away with it.