The Maya of Morganton: Work and Community in the Nuevo New South (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Maya of Morganton: Work and Community in the Nuevo New South Judy Ancel The Maya of Morganton: Work and Community in the Nuevo New South. By Leon Fink. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. 254 pp, 25 photos. $34.95 hardback, $17.95 paper. This book asks how Guatemalan immigrant refugees of one of the most brutal civil wars in recent history could organize and win union recognition at a southern poultry plant in 1995 when virtually no one else could. The answer is as intricate as the huipiles the Mayan women wear. These dazzling woven and embroidered blouses, symbols of pride and village identity, are like the workforce itself, filled with complex and sometimes opposing threads of experience, expectations, and relationships, and Leon Fink deftly unravels them, always asking, as he puts it, "Who sticks with whom and under what conditions?" The situation at the Case Farms poultry plant in Morganton, North Carolina could be summed up as Ken Sehested of the Baptist Peace Fellowship did in a support speech: "Worlds colliding. Peasant farmers of distant land meet small-town USA. What twist of fate has brought you together? The world's plant managers know. They have their hands around both your throats." The story begins with strikes at Case Farms in 1991 and 1993 by the Guatemalan workers who make up most of the 80% Hispanic workforce over issues of pay and working conditions. Then in 1995 the already substantially organized workers affiliate with the Laborers International Union (LIUNA) and hold an NLRB election in July, which they win 238 to 183. Case Farms appeals and loses. The company is slapped with a bargaining order; fruitless negotiations follow and then another bargaining order. The anti-union animus of this company is unbelievable. They actually demand that 30 cents an hour be withheld from wages until the end of the contract for an insurance fund against strikes. Finally, in 2002, after having expended vast resources in its Poultry Workers Alliance, LIUNA bows out, leaving the workers with a workers center to be set up by the Chicago-based Interfaith Worker Justice coalition and funded by LIUNA. The Case Farms struggle could be a textbook example of the best organizing practices of the mid-1990s advocated by the Sweeney-led AFL-CIO. It includes bottom-up organizing, skilled and inspiring Spanish-speaking [End Page 103] organizers, corporate and consumer campaigns, international solidarity, and the constant replenishment of rank and file and leaders despite high turnover. And they still don't win, if winning means a signed union contract and dues-paying members. The Maya of Morganton should be read by every student of labor, every organizer and strategist, at minimum.to understand about immigrants and organizing But this book deals with many other issues too. I would have liked to know more about the attitudes of the few American-born workers, black and white, at Case Farms. And a chronology of events and name list of players would have helped for reference. Fink leaves readers asking what winning means. The Western North Carolina Workers Center is now self-sustaining. Its staff members Francisco Risso and Juan "Nacho" Montes come right out of the book. In 2005 there was another union election with RWDSU, which the union lost. The still largely Guatemalan workforce maintains their organization and intends to try again. As Nacho told me, "Unions must refocus on organizing the base in this country. We have patience." Judy Ancel University of Missouri, Kansas City Copyright © 2006 the West Virginia University Press, for the United Association for Labor Studies