David Bacon Research Articles

Editorial: will the future be sustainable or just 'greenwash' printed in organic ink on sustainably-sourced glossy brochures?

Editorial:will the future be sustainable or just 'greenwash' printed in organic ink on sustainably-sourced glossy brochures? Daniel Blackburn, Editor and Declan Owens, Guest Editor The COP26 talks were a failure: a 'parade of inaction, false solutions and greenwash from rich governments and corporations'. But the event was not meaningless and heralded also a 'historic moment of growth in power and solidarity for the climate justice movement' This will ultimately play a critical role to overcome what remains of the suspicion of 'middle class' environmentalists by a working class cynical that their jobs and lives are being 'recklessly' pushed aside. De-industrialisation is not a new idea for many in Europe and North America, and their experience of it the first time around was not encouraging. And yet history is repeating, as Adrian Kane and Yvonne O'Callaghan observe small towns across the Irish midlands that are beginning 'to resemble the North of England's bleak post-industrial wastelands', as a local fossil fuel industry there is run down. There have been 'expensive government-led initiatives' to mitigate job losses but our contributors report the case of a nation-wide company displacing a local established business after receiving a grant from the local funding pool, seemingly the opposite of what would be intended. Huw Beynon and Ray Hudson remind us of just how bleak the impact was when the State failed to make any or sufficient provision to deal with the aftermath of the coal industry closures in the UK. Meanwhile, there are still many complaining about China and India's reliance on coal, though increasing recognition that over time it is the West that has contributed massively more to climate emissions. How can unions representing workers in these industries find agreement with climate activists? Sindhu Menon finds India's mining union leaders concerned for the future of workers with non-transferable skills who live on land that is degraded for farming and where water is scarce. Mine closure here means job losses, 'starvation', and 'disaster' for the coal belt economy. Georgia Montague-Nelson explains that livestock production also contributes 'over one-third of all human caused greenhouse gas emissions'. A set of trade union proposals for the sector developed by the IUF and GLI demonstrates a real potential for engagement with climate activists around shared ideas about decentralisation and redistribution and reducing the size of supply chains and the role of giant global corporations in livestock and agriculture. David Bacon shares with us a small selection of his photography collection documenting the lives and working conditions of fruit-pickers left their former homes in Mexico to avoid already 'devastating' climate impacts there, but are now facing increasingly aggressive heat under a changing climate in their adopted US. Sean McManus from the IAFF represents another group of workers who face the burning heat head-on. McManus describes how Canada's notoriously cold climate is now increasingly juxtaposed with extraordinary peaks of heat during summer that can surpass even the highest ever temperatures recorded in the Nevada desert. Firefighters are dealing with novel climate effects at first hand, including more ferocious wildfires but also torrential rains and flooding. Every time they respond to such a disaster, firefighters 'see very plainly whether there are adequate front line resources or not'. Returning to industrial and energy questions, Diana Junquera Curiel investigates crucial industrial and technological aspects of a sustainable future, looking at battery and solar production, but tracing concerns through these new industries' supply chains leads us straight to the Xinjiang region of China, where forced labour allegations are raised with regard to its solar panel production facilities. As if to underscore trade union concerns that industrial workers might ultimately be short¬changed by the transition to a sustainable future, trade unionists in the UK were stunned weeks ago when a major ferry company informed its staff by recorded video message (with no prior notice) that their jobs had ended and they would be escorted from their vessels. Professor Keith Ewing finds 'no shortage of international standards', but a lack of actually legally enforceable rights. It is the massive double standard between the glossy proclamation and the lack of any protection in...

Living with Climate Change in Farmworker Communities

Living with Climate Change in Farmworker Communities David Bacon (bio) According to Dr. Jessica Hernandez, a Zapotec scholar and board member of Sustainable Seattle, 'indigenous peoples are the first impacted by climate change'. She points to the fate of the small municipality of San Pablo Tijaltepec, high in the Sierra Mixteca of Oaxaca, in southern Mexico: 'Accelerated changes to our climate due to urbanisation, fossil fuel industry, etc. continues to result in devastating impacts. The heavy rains that have recently taken place in Oaxaca, Mexico, have destroyed many of the harvests Indigenous peoples depend on. For the pueblo San Pablo Tijaltepec, their milpas [corn fields] were completely destroyed. This leaves 800 Mixtec families without the communal harvest they all depend on'. Losing the milpas and harvest is a blow that falls on people already having a hard time surviving. The Mexican government says family income in the municipality averages about $500/month, leaving half its residents in extreme poverty. In 2020 only an eighth of San Pablo Tijaltepec had access to a sewage system, and over a tenth had no electricity. The region's Mixteco-speaking people have been leaving and searching for work for decades as a result, joining the 400,000 who leave Oaxaca for northern Mexico and the U.S. every year. In California's southern San Joaquin Valley, the most productive agricultural region of the world, people from San Pablo Tijaltepec have created a new home, an extension of their Oaxacan community, in the small town of Taft. For over two decades they've worked as farmworkers in the surrounding fields. Here, instead of torrential rains, they face another environmental danger–the summer's heat, which can rise to over 110 degrees in July and August. The connection between climate change and increasing summer temperatures has been dramatised by the 'heat dome' that covered the Pacific Northwest in July, leading to similar temperatures in a region accustomed to lesser heat. Portland had a high of 116 degrees. In the nearby Willamette Valley one farmworker, Sebastian Francisco Perez, died as he continued to work in the heat, moving irrigation pipes, in order to pay a debt to a 'coyote' who'd smuggled him across the border. Scientists, and even President Biden, attributed the heat dome to climate change and its associated drought. In the southern San Joaquin Valley town of Poplar, extreme heat in the summer is the normal condition in which people live and work. It is one of the poorest communities in the state. Air conditioning in trailer homes or crowded houses normally consists of old 'swamp coolers', which hardly lower temperatures. At work people bundle up, using layers of clothing to insulate against heat and dust. Poplar's families are almost all immigrants or their children, who have travelled here from other parts of Mexico, or have crossed the Pacific Ocean from the Philippines. Many now are older people, long accustomed to the heat. Yet for them the danger is greater as they get older. Some already have health conditions springing from poverty and the hard conditions in the fields. 'In extreme heat, the body must work extra hard to maintain a healthy temperature', cautions health journalist Liz Seegert. 'Older adults are at higher risk for heat stroke, heat cramps, heat exhaustion and other serious health issues due to poorer circulation and less effective sweating that comes with aging'. This rural poverty of the southern San Joaquin stands in stark contrast to the enormous wealth the labour of its people produce. Poplar's Tulare County produced $7.2 billion in fruit, nuts and vegetables last year. Yet the average income of a county resident is $17,888 per year, compared to a U.S. average of $28,555, and 123,000 of Tulare's 453,000 residents live below the poverty line. Poverty forced farmworkers to continue working during the pandemic. Tulare County's COVID-19 infection rate was much greater, per capita, than large cities. A year ago Tulare had 7,603 confirmed cases, and 168 deaths. Heavily urban Alameda County had 9,411 confirmed cases and 167 deaths. But Alameda County's population is 1.67 million, over three times that of...

Editorial: a changing post-pandemic world for labour

2 | International Union Rights | 28/2 EDITORIAL Editorial: a changing post-pandemic world for labour The latest edition of IUR focuses on changes taking place in and around the world of work. Our selection reveals labour law reforms but no consistent pattern, with progressive announcements in some countries and sweeping attacks in others. We open with welcome news from the US, where the Biden administration has quickly introduced much needed reforms. Lynn Rhinehart describes the so-called PRO-Act as ‘by far the most significant piece of labour law legislation in decades’ promising to stop employer interference in union elections, restore workers’ bargaining power, improve relief for illegally fired workers, and override ‘right to work’ laws. It seems the US could rapidly see very significant improvements for trade union rights. As David Bacon’s piece on union access to farm workers reveals, however, there remains strong opposition to even basic union rights for even low paid and temporary workers. Over in Ukraine it is a different picture. As in other former Soviet states, the aspects of trade union law that were the bedrock of a very strong framework of social protection are being identified by a modernising administration as archaic barriers to business. Rights and privileges such as union ownership of and provision of fitness and holiday institutions - which gave trade unions considerable powers within the workplace and indeed a strong social role generally – are also all under threat. In New Zealand there is also a sense of radical reform, albeit it a very positive and pro-union agenda, with the government promising a new sectoral bargaining framework. Many looking at the proposals see real possibilities, but if the government is so supportive of workers’ rights why has the country not ratified ILO Convention No. 87, and why are the nurses on strike again? The background to the recent violent repression of a strike at a power station in Banshkhali in Bangladesh is set out for us by Anupoma Joyeeta Joyee. Seven strikers were shot dead at Banshkhali, making it one of the most severe recent cases of strike repression, though one that has been largely overlooked by the global unions. ICTUR is further dismayed to record the killing of another migrant worker activist from one of Italy’s base unions, which appears also to have gone unmentioned by the ITUC. And Labourstart’s Eric Lee raises with us another recent case where he argues similarly that the global unions could and should have responded to the case of an arrested migrant rights activist. We turn then to the other aspect of change discussed in this edition of IUR, which concerns not labour law but the changing nature of work and new trade union strategies and practices. Associate Professor Huang Yu brings a warning from China that workers are so far failing to fight for ‘the robot dividend’, managing at best to sustain conditions. And the other dramatic transformation affecting trade union work over the past 18 months has been the struggle to adapt and continue trade union work under the conditions of the pandemic. Dr. Niall Cullianane and Gareth Murphy discuss how the Irish FSU union has adapted to online tools, celebrating some success, ‘the shift to online unionism enhanced some opportunities for officers and staff to share ideas more frequently’, but noting that ‘socially distanced’ outdoor meetings were still regarded as important, and that ‘exchanges with employers have been less than ideal’. Hazel Nolan discusses relating themes around online outreach and activism in a major dispute with British Gas, revealing unexpected potential for online trade unionism to have a dramatic impact and to generate an impressive level of activism and member involvement. We close this edition of IUR with thoughts from ICTUR President and Vice President Lord John Hendy QC and Professor Keith Ewing, who remind trade unionists of the importance of language with their warning against the pernicious phrase ‘the labour market’, which they argue is giving ‘legitimacy to a capitalist mythology in which buying and selling labour is a natural and unalterable part of the human condition’. Daniel Blackburn, Editor Next issue of IUR Articles between 850 and 1800 words should be sent by email (mail...

Vigan's Public Market: The Commons in the Hands of Farmers and the Poor

Research Article| May 01 2020 Vigan's Public Market: The Commons in the Hands of Farmers and the Poor David Bacon David Bacon David Bacon is a writer and photographer, former factory worker and union organizer. He documents workers, migration, and the struggle for human rights. His latest book, In the Fields of the North / En los Campos del Norte (University of California Press, 2017), documents the lives of farmworkers in photographs and oral histories. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Gastronomica (2020) 20 (2): 99–108. https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2020.20.2.99 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation David Bacon; Vigan's Public Market: The Commons in the Hands of Farmers and the Poor. Gastronomica 1 May 2020; 20 (2): 99–108. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2020.20.2.99 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentGastronomica Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2020 by David Bacon. All rights reserved.2020Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Editorial: right-wing populism, trade unions, and fundamental human rights

2 | International Union Rights | 27/1-27/2 EDITORIAL Editorial: right-wing populism, trade unions, and fundamental human rights When work began on Volume 27.1 of IUR journal our attention was focussed on the rise of right-wing populism, now thriving throughout the world, and which informed ICTUR’s recent submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Assembly and Association. Before that edition could publish events were overtaken by the sweeping global health pandemic of Covid-19. The health crisis both delayed publication of Volume 27.1 of IUR, and became the focus of Volume 27.2, leading to the two issues being presented together in this double edition. Nicola Countouris and Andrea Ampresse explore the overtures that the Italian Right has made to unions – and discuss the importance populists place on the ‘direct link with the people’. In the face of a such an appeal to trade union members by the farright , Ozlem Yildirim argues that we have ‘nothing in common’, but there is an uncomfortable truth about these movements: they are not just populist - they are popular. Károly György considers the prospects for cooperation with one of Hungary’s far-right parties as it appears to be re-orientating itself towards the political centre, and reminds us that it is ‘fear and hope’ that motivate workers to support such parties. A cautious Adam Rogelewski is clear about the difficulties as long as populist parties are delivering real benefits impacting members’ daily lives. Esther Lynch of the European TUC concedes that trade union members ‘are not immune’ to overtures from the populists, but both Lynch and Rogelewski seem to share a view that while the right fails to address the root causes of economic injustice their project to woo trade union members is doomed. The Covid-19 health crisis has thrown into relief both the real problems facing workers which have led some to support the simplistic solutions of the right-wing populists, and also the hollowness of the populists, some of whom have seemed uninterested in even attempting to limit the impact of the virus. The risk of death or poverty has been a stark choice for many. As Dr. Patrick Roach of the NASUWT teaching union observes ‘if you are Black or Asian in the UK you are more likely to die from COVID-19. And, you’re also more likely to experience hardship as a result of emergency measures that have been introduced’. In 2020 unions from all sectors and around the globe have been tackling these dual challenges – personal and economic health – seeking to defend labour rights, inform members, negotiate safe working practices, and influence government policy. David Bacon describes how low wages put enormous pressure on US farmworkers to go to work, that employers are not required to provide health insurance to H-2A migrant workers, and that if they stop working because they get sick, the conditions of their visa require them to leave the country. Recalling the fundamental priority of the global food supply, Paul Lievens notes the IUF’s call for ‘substantial, open-ended funding from national governments and international institutions must be made immediately available to ensure adequate protection and safe work for agricultural workers as an elementary measure’. Similar demands have been articulated for other workers on the frontlines. In January, Baba Aye tells us, Global Nurses United wrote to the WHO Director General, calling for airborne precautions to be implemented, but even months later the fight for PPE and other health and safety measures continues in numerous sectors. ITF affiliates have developed a global charter of demands, endorsed by several occupational health and safety organisations and networks, calling on governments to recognise Covid-19 as an occupational disease with workers being eligible for compensation payments. And the profound risks facing shop workers prompted UNI Commerce to issue a Declaration on protective measures for workers and customers in the food retail sector. The UNI Declaration was rapidly endorsed by multinational companies employing one million workers, with real implications for the provision of protection and safety standards throughout these companies’ operations. Daniel Blackburn, Editor Next issue of IUR Articles between 850 and 1800 words should...

Editorial: towards universal ratification for freedom of association rights?

2 | International Union Rights | 26/3 EDITORIAL Editorial: towards universal ratification for freedom of association rights? Continuing the thematic focus of IUR 26(2) on the ILO in its Centenary year, this edition looks in particular at the state of what ICTUR regards as the ILO’s most fundamental instruments, the Conventions on Freedom of Association (No. 87) and Collective Bargaining (No. 98). These particular instruments are so crucial from a trade union rights perspective because they provide the fundamental protection in international law for trade unions to exist, to function, and to carry out their activities. To give a very basic sense of these instruments, Convention No. 87 is concerned with the existence of unions, their founding, and free functioning. It protects their right to take action, and the civil liberties of trade unionists. Convention No. 98 outlines an obligation to promote collective bargaining, and it requires that trade unionists have protection against acts of interference. The two instruments together provide the foundations for trade unions to operate. As such they are critical, even within the framework of the ILO’s ‘fundamental’ or ‘core’ labour standards. Conventions Nos. 87 and 98 are understood as ‘enabling’ rights (see ILO 2019 Declaration, Chapter II, A (vi)). The idea behind this is that where collective organisation and action are protected this provides an effective basis from which workers can agitate for, and hopefully win, respect for other rights. Most countries have ratified both of them. What is problematic is that a core group of countries are still holding out against ratification of either instrument. And it is extraordinary that prominent among these are a very significant section of the founder members of the ILO: China, Brazil, India, Iran, and New Zealand. The US was not a founding member, but it has also not ratified either convention. Of the ILO founders group, Nick Henry recalls that New Zealanders played a key role in drafting Convention No. 87, but the government of 1948 ‘chose to ignore the advice of their own delegation’. Varied strands of authoritarianism have been similarly hesitant to embace freedom of association, but some are changing. Anita Chan reports on the disparity between the situation in Vietnam, which has just ratified Convention No. 98 (and is tabled to ratify Convention No. 87 ‘by 2023’) and in China, the two countries, Chan tells us, are ‘on different trajectories’: ‘Vietnam is opening up politically while China is becoming increasingly suppressive’. Growing political authoritarianism is also the subject of our report from Brazil, where Ericson Crivelli describes further threats to trade union rights. While Jamshid Ahmadi told a recent ICTUR meeting that ratification remains just ‘a dream’ for Iranian workers,. Ratification by India is still discussed in committees, reports Sindhu Menon, but the unions have little faith in that process, which one union leader describes as ‘eye-wash’ and ‘farce’. But there are also success stories. Canada, Mexico, and Vietnam all recently ratified Convention No. 98, and we await news from South Korea, where Mikyung Ryu reports on the problems that have stalled ratification, but which is still expected, and may be imminent. And David Bacon outlines an optimistic assessement of the potential for labour reform under new laws passed in Mexico, following that country’s ratification of Convention 98 in 2018. The new government, is ‘undoing 36 years of neoliberal economic reforms’. Finally, Sudan remains one of the few key countries in Africa not to have ratified Convention No. 87. We hear from three Sudanese colleagues and gain their insight into the unfolding revolution. Daniel Blackburn, Editor Next issue of IUR Articles between 850 and 1800 words should be sent by email (mail@ictur.org) and accompanied by a photograph and short biographical note of the author. Please send by 15 November 2019 if they are to be considered for publication in the next issue of IUR. Subscribe to IUR / Affiliate to ICTUR Subscriptions: Print only £25 (individual rate), Print and electronic £75 (individual or institutional), Electronic only £55 (individual or institutional). Affiliations: (includes print and electronic access, and more, see www.ictur.org) Individual £50, Branch / local union £75 (includes 3 subscriptions), National (contact ICTUR for details). Name/Organisation Address Email Payment...

The Right to Migrate, The Right to Stay Home

Tijuana Police move in to suppress the strike at the Han Young maquiladora, where workers organized an independent union. (DAVID BACON)In the border city of San Diego, the factories loom like lords...

Who Harvests Our Food?

Research Article| February 01 2018 Who Harvests Our Food?: The Indigenous Roots of a Migrant Farmworker—The Story of Gervasio Peña Lopez David Bacon David Bacon David Bacon, based in California, has been documenting the lives of farmworkers through photographs and journalism since 1988. His photography has been exhibited in the United States, Mexico, and Europe and his articles and photo-essays published widely. His books include The Children of NAFTA, Communities without Borders, Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants, and The Right to Stay Home. His latest book, In the Fields of the North / En los Campos del Norte, copublished by University of California Press (Berkeley) and Colegio de la Frontera Norte (Tijuana), explores the lives of farmworkers through photographs and narratives. David was a factory worker and union organizer for two decades with the United Farm Workers, the International Ladies Garment Workers, the United Electrical Workers, and other unions. Today he photographs and writes about changing conditions in the workforce, the impact of the global economy, war and migration, and the struggle for human rights. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Gastronomica (2018) 18 (1): 83–96. https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2018.18.1.83 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation David Bacon; Who Harvests Our Food?: The Indigenous Roots of a Migrant Farmworker—The Story of Gervasio Peña Lopez. Gastronomica 1 February 2018; 18 (1): 83–96. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2018.18.1.83 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentGastronomica Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2018 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints.2018 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Editorial

INTERNATIONAL union rights Page 2 Volume 23 Issue 2 2016 IUR ❐ EDITORIAL Editorial: Trade union rights after the UK’s vote to leave the EU T his edition of IUR looks at the implications of what was, for many, an unexpected development with potentially far-reaching consequences : in June, UK voters voted to leave the European Union, by a margin of 52 to 48 percent in an average turnout of 72.2 percent. Owen Tudor of the British TUC (which campaigned for a Remain vote), but expresses concern : ‘the European Union has played a central role in protecting working people from exploitation , combating discrimination and promoting good employment practices’, while ‘UK governments strongly resisted equal treatment rights for agency workers, working time limits, and rights for workers to receive [workplace information and consultation]. During the referendum, only four trade unions officially called for a vote to leave the EU, while most other unions (including the country’s largest unions) called for a remain vote. Yet, as Alex Gordon points out, ‘analysis of the voting patterns revealed in the referendum result demonstrates a majority of working class voters, particularly in Britain’s former industrial heartlands; the north of England, Midlands and South Wales, voted (and in significantly large numbers) to leave the EU’ Trying to gauge international perspectives on ‘Brexit’, IUR uncovered clear concern at the deteriorating attitude towards Polish workers in the UK being expressed by the Polish trade union centre OPZZ, which has observed that ‘the campaign was won by xenophobia and populism, and as a result of exit from the EU, the situation for the majority of British people will worsen’. Esther Lynch of the ETUC observes that ‘the EU as a whole now faces a very difficult challenge … the anger and disillusionment of working people with the EU is not confined to the UK’, and adds that ‘social rights, in particular […] trade union rights, are not being accorded equal weight and emphasis compared with the protection and promotion of employers’ economic freedoms’. To address this urgent situation , Esther argues that ‘collective bargaining systems have to be restored as a fundamental right and because a pay rise for workers in Europe is central to a fair recovery from the crisis. The adoption of a social progress protocol is urgently required to restore the proper balance between economic freedoms and fundamental social rights in particular trade union rights’. Into this dynamic context, IUR welcomes the timely launch of the Manifesto for Labour Law: towards a comprehensive revision of workers’ rights, produced by the UK’s Institute for Employment Rights (IER). Observing that ‘the UK has ‘a framework of law born out of 19th century conditions, which has bypassed many advances of the 20th century, which ignores today’s economic and workplace realities, and which is not fit for purpose in 21st century Britain’, IER calls for the ‘restoration’ of the principles of collective bargaining ‘to provide a means of workplace democracy , to bring some measure of balance to the otherwise disproportionate power of employers, to redress wage inequality, to prevent the exploitation of migrants, to raise wages, increase demand and reinvigorate the economy, and to fulfil the UK’s binding legal obligations’. As Jon Jeffries reminds us, however, April this year saw the passing into law of the much-criticised Trade Union Act 2016. While parts of the original Bill were stopped (in part due to trade union negotiations linked to the then impending EU referendum) Jon Jeffries examines how the role of the Certification Officer was re-written. Looking at the trade union scene elsewhere; we report on unpopular changes to French labour law and the response of unions and youth movements; on Turkey we assess the trade union rights situation before and in the immediate aftermath of the failed coup attempt; we hear from David Bacon of the appalling treatment meted out to striking teachers in Mexico; report on the shocking sentence handed down to a South Korean trade union leader; and we publish a report back from the Global Labour Institute’s trade union summer school. Daniel Blackburn, Editor Next issue of IUR Articles between 850 and 1,900 words should be sent by email (mail...

Review: In the Fields of the North/En los campos del norte, photographs and text by David Bacon, spanish translation by Rodolfo Hernandez Corchado and Claudia Villegas Delgado

Book Review| July 01 2017 Review: In the Fields of the North/En los campos del norte, photographs and text by David Bacon, spanish translation by Rodolfo Hernandez Corchado and Claudia Villegas Delgado In the Fields of the North/En los campos del norte Photographs and text by David Bacon Spanish Translation by Rodolfo Hernandez Corchado and Claudia Villegas Delgado University of California Press, 2016/El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, 2016 450 pp./$34.95 (sb) Janet Zandy Janet Zandy JANET ZANDY, emerita professor, Rochester Institute of Technology, is the author of Hands: Physical Labor, Class, and Cultural Work (2004); Unfinished Stories: The Narrative Photography of Hansel Mieth and Marion Palfi (2013), and other books on working-class culture. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Afterimage (2017) 45 (1): 25–26. https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2017.45.1.25 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Janet Zandy; Review: In the Fields of the North/En los campos del norte, photographs and text by David Bacon, spanish translation by Rodolfo Hernandez Corchado and Claudia Villegas Delgado. Afterimage 1 July 2017; 45 (1): 25–26. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2017.45.1.25 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAfterimage Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2017 Afterimage/Visual Studies Workshop, unless otherwise noted. Reprints require written permission and acknowledgement of previous publication in Afterimage.2017 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Oakland's Friday Farmers' Market and Its Vegetable Vocabulary of Love

Research Article| February 01 2017 Oakland's Friday Farmers' Market and Its Vegetable Vocabulary of Love David Bacon David Bacon David Bacon is a Bay Area (California) writer and photojournalist. His newest book, In the Fields of the North/En Los Campos del Norte, is coming this spring from UC Press/Colegio de la Frontera Norte. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Gastronomica (2017) 17 (1): 66–71. https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2017.17.1.66 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation David Bacon; Oakland's Friday Farmers' Market and Its Vegetable Vocabulary of Love. Gastronomica 1 February 2017; 17 (1): 66–71. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2017.17.1.66 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentGastronomica Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2017 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints.2017 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Report: Mexican teachers jailed and shot for protesting education reform

since earlier this spring to stop implementation of the government’s education reform program. While strikes in Mexico are hotly contested, there is no precedent for firing teachers in such massive numbers just for striking. The night of the firings, federal police attacked and removed the encampment that teachers had organised outside Mexico City’s education secretariat . On June 11, the police in Oaxaca City moved to dismantle a similar encampment in front of the state’s education office. When 500 heavily armed police advanced shooting tear gas, confrontations spilled into the surrounding streets, reminiscent of the way a similar strike in 2006 was attacked, and then mushroomed into an insurrection that lasted for months. One controversial provision of the federal government ’s education reform requires teachers to take tests to evaluate their qualifications. Those not making good marks are subject to firing. This year, when the government tried to begin testing, teachers struck in protest. In March, when Nuño tried to give awards to ‘distinguished and excellent teachers’, one of them, Lucero Navarette, a primary-school teacher in Chihuahua, told him, ‘The results can depend on many factors and the personal circumstances each one of us live through…many don’t get the result they deserve, because the job they actually do at school is very different from what comes out in the test’. Journalist Hernández Navarro says educators have a tradition of egalitarianism and mutual support, and believe that ‘there are no firstor second- or third-class teachers. Only teachers’. On March 22 Nuño also announced a measure that would spell the end to Mexico’s national system of teacher training schools, called the ‘normals ’. Instead of having to graduate from a normal , he said, anyone with a college degree in any subject could be hired to teach. Since the Mexican Revolution and before, the normals have been the vehicle for children from poor families in the countryside, and from the families of teachers themselves, to become trained educators . Returning to rural and working-class communities , teachers then often play an important role in developing movements for social justice. The normal schools themselves have historically been hotbeds of social protest and movements challenging the government. Guerrero’s normal school in Ayotzinapa was the target two years ago of an attack that led to the disappearance and possible murder of 43 students , which has since galvanised Mexico. Recently a commission of international experts criticised the Mexican government for refusing to cooperate in efforts to identify the fate of the students , and pointed to the possible involvement of officials at very high levels in their disappearance. ‘The leaders of Sección 22 (of the National Union of Education Workers) are hostages of the federal government’ INTERNATIONAL union rights Page 20 Volume 23 Issue 2 2016 DAVID BACON is a journalist and photographer in San Francisco. He is a member of the Editorial Board of International Union Rights O n Sunday, June 19, Federal armed forces fired on teachers, students and supporters in Nochixtlan, a town in the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca. Nine people were killed, and many more wounded. Twenty-three were detained by the police. Demonstrators had blocked a highway, a common form of protest in Mexico, after the federal government had arrested leaders of the teachers’ union in Oaxaca. On June 12, as Ruben Nuñez, head of Oaxaca’s teachers’ union – Seccion 22 of the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (SNTE, English: National Union of Education Workers) – was leaving a meeting in Mexico City, his car was overtaken and stopped by several large king-cab pickup trucks. Heavily armed men in civilian clothes exited and pulled him, another teacher, and a taxi driver from their cab, and then drove them at high speed to the airport. Nuñez was immediately flown over a thousand miles north to Hermosillo, Sonora, and dumped into a high-security federal lockup. Just hours earlier, unidentified armed agents did the same thing in Oaxaca itself, taking prisoner Francisco Villalobos, the union’s secondhighest officer, and flying him to the Hermosillo prison as well. Both joined Aciel Sibaja, who had been sitting in the same penitentiary...

The Right to Stay Home: How U.S. Policy Drives Mexican Migration by David Bacon, and: Culling the Masses: The Democratic Origins of Racist Immigration Policy in the Americas by David Scott FitzGerald and David Cook-Martin (review)

Reviewed by: The Right to Stay Home: How U.S. Policy Drives Mexican Migration by David Bacon, and: Culling the Masses: The Democratic Origins of Racist Immigration Policy in the Americas by David Scott FitzGerald and David Cook-Martin Alejandra Marchevsky (bio) The Right to Stay Home: How U.S. Policy Drives Mexican Migration By David Bacon. Boston: Beacon Press, 2013. 328 pp. isbn 978-0807001615 Culling the Masses: The Democratic Origins of Racist Immigration Policy in the Americas By David Scott FitzGerald and David Cook-Martín. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014. 512 pp. isbn 978-0674729049 The mass movement of people around the Americas has been critical to racialized nation building since the 18th century, and has simultaneously produced transnational spaces of social and economic integration and state violence. These themes spring from David Bacon’s sweeping account of contemporary Mexican migration in The Right to Stay Home: How U.S. Policy Drives Mexican Migration (Beacon, 2013), and David Scott FitzGerald and David Cook-Martín’s historical-sociological book, Culling the Masses: The Democratic Origins of Racist Immigration Policy in the Americas (Harvard UP, 2014). Bacon’s book foregrounds an argument that the prolific journalist and immigrant rights activists have advanced for years: The U.S. is not an unwitting recipient of Mexican immigration; instead, it is swallowing up Mexico’s human and natural resources, and has imposed neoliberal policies that have contributed to skyrocketing unemployment and poverty in Mexico. This has left millions of displaced poor Mexicans no choice but to migrate north. Bacon documents in exquisite prose how Mexico’s “great migration”—which peaked at 12.67 million Mexicans in the U.S. in 2008—was propelled by U.S. policies, especially the North American Free Trade Agreement. This epic exodus is explained through exhaustive details on the assault on Mexican workers. On the heels of NAFTA, Granjas Carroll, a subsidiary of Virginia-based meatpacking giant Smithfield Foods, displaced Veracruz agricultural workers who then migrated to the U.S. for the same type of jobs they had lost at home. Thanks to liberalized foreign investment and trade rules, Smithfield flooded Mexico with cheap, imported pork, and erected massive hog farms in Veracruz’s Perote Valley, bankrupting Mexican pork producers. Representatives from Granjas Carroll and municipal officials promised valley residents “modernization” and jobs. And yet, the few jobs that materialized locked workers out of corporate profit-sharing and extracted 12-hour workdays for as little as $55/week (9). Most Veracruz emigrants settled in U.S. agricultural towns like Tar Heel, North Carolina, where Smithfield employs mostly undocumented Mexican immigrants in the world’s largest slaughterhouse, and the tobacco industry imports H2A visa guest workers and undocumented workers from Veracruz to labor under some of the worst conditions in the country. The story of displacement repeats in Oaxaca, where the federal government transferred communal lands (ejidos) to multinational mining conglomerates. When residents protested land loss and ecological damage from industrial mining, foreign companies cynically offered them free toilets, and local police descended on demonstrators with dogs and guns (50). Home to 20 percent of Mexico’s indigenous population, Oaxaca has seen most of its young residents leave for work in other parts of Mexico and the U.S.: nearly half of its rural communities had negative growth between 1990 and 2000 (57). Bacon argues that capitalists and political elites from both nation-states have spurred migration through their destructive policies. Next, U.S. policymakers have created “illegal” people through laws that racialize and criminalize Mexican immigrants, an effect that produces vulnerable workers for U.S. employers. The second half of the book recounts the repression of Mexican immigrants through the buildup of border and interior enforcement, and the expansion of the immigration detention system. The Right to Stay Home centers the voices of activists with selected testimonios that follow each chapter: In Mississippi, Latino immigrants and the state’s legislative Black Caucus united to block anti-immigration bills that had swept legislatures in other southern states; in Los Angeles, [End Page 185] Latino janitors protested “silent...

Review: Unsettled/Desasosiego: Children in a World of Gangs, photographs by Donna De Cesare

Book Review| September 01 2014 Review: Unsettled/Desasosiego: Children in a World of Gangs, photographs by Donna De Cesare Unsettled/Desasosiego: Children in a World of Gangs Photographs by Donna De Cesare University of Texas Press, 2013164 pp./$65.00 (hb) David Bacon David Bacon DAVID BACON is a widely published documentary photographer and writer based in California. His latest book is The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration (2013). Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Afterimage (2014) 42 (2): 34–35. https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2014.42.2.34 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation David Bacon; Review: Unsettled/Desasosiego: Children in a World of Gangs, photographs by Donna De Cesare. Afterimage 1 September 2014; 42 (2): 34–35. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2014.42.2.34 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAfterimage Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2014 Afterimage/Visual Studies Workshop, unless otherwise noted. Reprints require written permission and acknowledgement of previous publication in Afterimage.2014 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Getting Past the Icon: Should Photographers Depict Reality, or Try to Change it?

Research Article| May 01 2013 Getting Past the Icon: Should Photographers Depict Reality, or Try to Change it? David Bacon David Bacon DAVID BACON is a writer and photographer. Among his books is Communities Without Borders: Images and Stories from the World of Migration (2006). Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Afterimage (2013) 40 (6): 10–15. https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2013.40.6.10 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation David Bacon; Getting Past the Icon: Should Photographers Depict Reality, or Try to Change it?. Afterimage 1 May 2013; 40 (6): 10–15. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2013.40.6.10 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAfterimage Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2013 Afterimage/Visual Studies Workshop, unless otherwise noted. Reprints require written permission and acknowledgment of previous publication in Afterimage.2013 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Fighting for a union and to stay in Mexico

FOCUS □ WORKERS'RIGHTSINFORMALANDINFORMAL MINING Fighting for a union and to stay in Mexico Interviewwith JacintoMartinez Ourtown is where the Mexican Revolutionbegan in1906, at a time when miners therewere virtually enslaved DAVID BACON isajournalist and photographer based in San Francisco. http://dbacon.igc.org Our began there town were in is 1906, where virtually at the a enslaved. Mexican timewhen Revolution The miners mine began in 1906, at a timewhen miners therewere virtually enslaved.The mine was eventually takenover by the government, whichranitformanyyears.Nevertheless, over thelasthundred yearsthere weremanystrikes in thismineoverwagesandworking conditions Finally, in 1989,the government stoppedall operationsat the mine, and PresidentCarlos Salinasde Gortari declaredthatthe minewas bankrupt. In August ofthatyearthegovernment sentinFederaltroops. Theminers wereexpelled from themine, andtheminewas closedfor three months. Then Salinassold itto private owners, GrupoMexico,thecompanyrunby theLarrea family. Really,itwas basicallygivenaway.The government had justinvested 400 million pesos in the ore concentrator alone. Grupo Mexico bought thewholeminefor650 million. After theLarreafamily took over,we've had nothing butbattle after battle with them. Theyare one of the largestminingcompanies in the world,and one oftherichest families inMexico. The companywas forcedto makecertain commitments in orderto take over the mine,but they've neverfulfilled anyofthem.One was to sharewiththeworkers fivepercent oftheprice they'd paidforthemine.Becauseoftheir failure, in 2004we tookactionto forcethecompanyto paywhathad becomebythattimea debtof55 million pesos. After thatthings became even moredifficult. Before, thegovernment was at leasta little concernedfor ourwelfare. Nowalldialoguewiththe government has been cutoff, and theygivetotal support toGrupoMexico. We went on strikeagain on June30, 2007, because of the deteriorating conditionsin the mine.Once thestrike started, the Federalgovernment , through thelaborboard,declareditillegal severaltimes. Eachtimewe'vegonetocourt, and the courtshave overruledthe board and restored thestrike's legalstatus. According tothe Inter American Commission on HumanRights, we havea right to return to ourjobs. Once again,on April14,2010,thestrike was declared legal by the courts.Nevertheless, at 10PM the same day the companywithdrew recognition fromour union and broke offits employer/union relationship withus. Thatwas completelyillegal. But the government then brought in police and troops,and allowed the company toreopenthemine. At the timewe went on strike, therewere about1200members ofourunion.Nowthere are still850 people on strike, fiveyearslater.The company has tried to buypeople off byoffering them severance payifthey'll giveup anyclaimto their jobs. In mycase, after 23 yearsworking in the mine,they'veoffered me 1,007,000pesos [about $85,000].They'vesaid thatin addition, they'dgiveme 830,000pesos to tryto buyme out.ButI won'ttaketheir offer, norwillanyof thestrikers. We don'thave Social Security medicalinsurance ,so themedicalcarewe getcomesfrom the company as partofouremployment. Ifwe take their offer, we willlose all ourmedicalcare.The 850 strikers have been fighting forthistoo. To makematters worse,onMother's Dayin2008,the company gaveus an additional gift byclosing the hospitalwherewe receivedour care. Counting children and retirees, an additional 1200people losttheir medicalcarebecauseofthat. The government steppedin to providesome services, buteven thoughwe can see a doctor again,we haveno moneytobuymedicine. This has hurtour retirees especially,because now they havetopayformedicine, whereinthepast thecompany had toprovideit.Someofus have severeproblems becauseofworking inthemine, likesilicosisand highblood pressure, so doing without medicalcareis notan option. To protest government support forthecompany ,about50miners havegonetoHermosillo, the statecapitol,wheretheyare occupyinga site nearthegovernment building. Whentheycome backto Cananea,other workers go to taketheir place.We arenottheonlylocalunionofminers on strike. Section17hasbeenon strike inTaxco and Section201 in Zacatecas.We are all facing GrupoMexico. We arealso protesting overwhathappenedat Pastade Conchosin2006.Theunionmademany requeststo theLaborSecretary, askingthatthe government conductinspections of thatmine. Butthere werenone,andfinally there was a terribleexplosioninwhich65 miners weretrapped insideand died. The onlythingtheydid was closethemine.Thecompany evenrefused togo in and bringback thebodies,and thegovernmentbacked themup. The companyand government claimeditwas an accident. Butthepresidentof our union,Napoleon Gomez Urrutia, held a pressconference and called itindustrial homicide.After that,the government triedto arrest himand he had tofleetoCanada. Since we've been fighting Grupo Mexico, we've had the financial supportof the United SteelWorkers intheUS,whoalsogavesanctuary to ourpresident. That'show we've been able to survive. Over80,000workers arecontributing to our ability to go on fighting. And we are also receiving contributions from our own members inMexicowho arestill working. So oursituation in Cananea isn'tgood, butwe've been able to continue for five years. Ourmembers still support thestrike totally. INTERNATIONAL union rights Page 12Volume 19Issue 3201 2 FOCUS □ WORKERS'RIGHTSINFORMALANDINFORMAL MINING Thecompany has been able to restart production , using about 3000 workers who are employed by contractors. Thereare about2000 Federalsoldiersguarding them...

REVIEW: SOLIDARITY DIVIDED: We have to change to survive

REVIEWn SOLIDARITYDIVIDED We have to change to survive A reviewof SolidarityDivided byBillFletcher Jr.and Fernando Gapasin (University ofCaliforna Press, 2008) DAVID BACON isajournalist based in San Francisco Through we inour picketed Bay the Area 1980s ships labour I carrying was anti-apartheid a union South organiser African committee. and cargo, activist and As inour Bay Area labour anti-apartheid committee. As wepicketed ships carrying South African cargo, and recruited city workers to support theAfrican National Congress (then called a terrorist organisation by both the US and South Africa), Ilooked atSouth African unions with great admiration. TheSouth African Congress ofTrade Unions, banned in the1950s,hadfound waysto organise African and 'coloured' workers underground, to support a liberation struggle ina broad political alliance. Heroic SACTU leaders like Vuysile Mini gave their lives onthe scaffold for freedom. Then, as apartheid tottered andeventually fell, SACTU unions became thenucleus ofa newfederation, the Congress ofSouth African Trade Unions. With roots inthat liberation war, it declared socialism asits goal, and still does today. COSATU unions prize rank-and-file control overtheir elected leaders, andengage members inlong and thorough discussions ofthe country's development plans. Thelabour federation hasthemost sophisticated political strategy of any union in the world today - balancing a leading role in the tripartite alliance that governs South Africa with independence ofprogramme andaction, even striking toforce policiesthat put theneeds ofworkers before theneoliberal demands ofthe World Bank. Jacob Zuma owes hiselection as president ofSouth Africa today toSouth African labour. Asanorganiser during thesameperiod I worked with many others toforce our own labour movement torecognise that organising new members and changing our politics was necessary for survival athome. If wecould double our size (atleast), Ithought, we'd have more power, while the streetheat generated bytheintense conflict organising creates would setthe stage for political transformation. Needless to say, that transformation process turned out tobemuch more complicated than Iexpected. At the beginning ofSolidarity Divided, Bill Fletcher recalls a comment made by a healthcare unionist ata meeting in South Africa which sums upatleast part ofwhat makes COSATU so different from theAFL-CIO. "Comrades' they began, 'the role ofthe union istorepresent the interests of the working class. There aretimes when the interests of the working classconflict with the interests ofthe members of our respective unions". Fletcher andFernando Gapasin, Solidarity Divided's coauthor , usethe quote todramatise two important differences between ourmovements. South African unions talk about workers' class interests, using words that still frighten unionists here. And not only canCOSATU militants seethe potential conflict that cansometimes arise, but believe that when it does, unions should put the interests ofallworkers before their own institutional needs. There aremany differences between the USlabour movement andother union movements around theworld. In France inrecent months workers haveimprisoned their bosses intheir offices toforce them tonegotiate over the closure offactories andjobelimination. OnMay Dayhundreds ofthousands ofworkers poured into thestreets in Germany andRussia, andin Turkey unions had tobattle the police for the right tostand in Taksim Square. InElSalvador unions supported the guerrilleros during a civil war toupend Central America's most unjust social order, while their offices were bombed andtheir leaders killed. InthePhilippines workers commonly put uptents atthe gate ofa factory on strike, andlive there until thestrike isover. Even workers from Mexico and Canada usephrases like 'working class' as part ofordinary conversation. Bycomparison weseempretty conservative. Our labour movement hasresources andwealth that areenormous by comparison with most unions around the world. But our own existence andpower isjust as threatened as that ofmany others. Thepurpose ofSolidarity Divided isnot tocompare us unfavourably with labour elsewhere, ortomount anunrelieved criticism of our conservatism. Itistoaskquestions, so that wecancome togrips with the problems that endanger our survival. And theexperience ofunions andworkers in other countries, while itcan't betransferred orcopied, can atleast inspire uswith the courage toface our own situation with realism and the determination tochange it. Solidarity Divided hasbeen criticised by some activists for the dark picture itpaints of the situation faced by unions in the US.Itisnot a hopeless one, but itiscertainly sobering. Few would argue that with 12 percent ofworkers inunions there isnocrisis for USlabour. And the authors arenot saying that workers can't win inconflicts with employers today, orwith the political system. The continuation of the Bush era wasdefeated inlarge part byunion activists, money and votes. Workers canstill win...

The key to organising

OPINION□ CROSS-BORDERSOLIDARITY The key to organising When experience importance I was a of that union the dramatised cultural organiser, and for I historical me had the an experiencethatdramatised forme the importance ofthecultural and historical traditions that immigrants from Mexicobring with them whentheycometo theUnitedStates, and howthey affect thewaypeople organise. I was working for the United Electrical Workers, one ofthemostprogressive US unions. Wewerecontacted byworkers at a hugesweatshop ,Cal Spas. Unhappywithlow wages and abusive conditions, theybegan to organisea union.Thentheheadoftheworkers' organising committee was beatenup in themiddleof the street in front of the plant.It was an obvious effort to scaretheworkers and makethemstop organising. Thatnight, the workers'committee metand discussedwhatshouldbe done. Manyhad no legalimmigration status. Theyhad no resources, or even food at home in some cases, because their wageswereso low.Yetmostpeoplewanted tostrike. Butthey didhaveonebigquestion. Theywanted toknowifa strike was legal.I toldthemthat strikes underthosecircumstances in theUnited Stateswere legal, and theydecided thatthis wouldbe their courseof action.The nextday, theyhelda bigrally at lunchtime infront ofthe plant.The committee got up on theback of a flatbed truck andmadespeechesaboutthebeatingand intimidation. Attheend oftherally, the committee askedtheworkers notto go back to work.Hundreds ofworkers setup picketlines, and thestrike was on. The nextmorning, however ,thereweredozens of people at theplant office, applying forjobs. The companyspenta daysigning them up. Thefollowing morning, the police arrivedin a massive show of force. Escorted bythecops,thesenewworkers crossed thepicket linesandwenttowork. Thestrike committee turned tome.One worker ,ina tonethatindicated he thought I had lied to them,said thatI had promisedthe strike wouldbe legal.I saiditwas,andthey pointed to the strike-breakers. How can it be legal, they asked,ifthere arepeoplegoingintowork? Different concepts ofrights The difference in understanding is crucial.They meantone thingwhen theysaid legal, and I meantanother. In Mexico,during a legalstrike, workers can putredand blackflagsacrossthe doors intothe plant,and the companymust remain closeduntil thestrike isover.No one can legally go intowork.The problem, ofcourse,is thatit is verydifficult formostworkers to get legalstatus forindependent unionsand strikes. In theUnited States, unionsdo nothavetobe registered withthegovernment, and anyonecan form one. Butthereis little reallegalprotection forunions, andtheyhavefewrights. A company can legally breaka strike, justas Cal Spas did. Behindthesedifferences are different conceptions ofrights. IntheUnited States, property rights are paramount, and theyoverrule labourrights. Immigration law overrules labourrights, too.The Supreme Court heldintheSure-Tan andHoffman decisionsthatcompaniesfoundguilty of firing undocumented workers for unionactivity haveno obligation forreinstatement orbackpay. In Mexico,thelegaland political traditions of theI9IO Revolution still meansomething. Labour has important legaland socialrights, at leaston paper,and thestateis supposedto honourand uphold them.Unfortunately, those rights often remain on paper,unenforced inreallife. The Mexicanconstitution givespeople a right to foodand housing, butpeople go hungry and have no place to live.Thereis a right to strike effectively, but in practice,independentand democratic unionsare repressed. Atworst,the government uses police and even military force to breakunionsand strikes, as it did withthe MexicanElectrical Workers CSME')and theminersinCananeathispastyear . Thislackofenforcement often createsa deep cynicism amongimmigrant workers from Mexico about the connection betweenunionsand the state.WhenCal Spas strikers saw strike-breakers escorted intotheplantbypoliceacrossourlines, someofthemconcludedthat theunionhadlied, and was sellingout the strike. That suspicion endedonlyafter theyelecteda strike committee tocontrol thestrike. BoththeMexicanandUS Governments pursue a policyofencouraging foreign investment, and see labourupsurge andrising wagesas obstacles. Therearegrowing challenges to theofficial corporatist unionstructure in Mexico,and theprotectioncontracts thatfunction as a means of labour controlfor companies buildingplants there.Butbecause of theexisting development policyof encouraging foreign investment at all cost,thesechallengesbecome hard-fought battles .The ruleoflaw,as ithas protected workers' rights inthepast,is undermined. Theseproblems becomeworseas theneoliberal economicmodelbecomesstronger. The political , social,and economiccrisestheycreateproduce moremigration to theUnitedStates. Atthe same time,moreproduction leaves the United States, looking forlowwagesacrosstheborder. Cross-bordersolidarity Underpressurefroman accumulating foreign debt,Mexicaneconomicpolicybegantochange. Ifa strikewas legal, how could strike-breakers cross picket lines? Mexican workers meant one thing bya legal strike, and I meant another DAVID BACON IsaJournalist based In San Francisco Page 19Volume 17Issue 32010 INTERNATIONAL union rights OPINION□ CROSS-BORDER SOLIDARITY These different concepts ofrights are crucial Butunionsare accustomed to functioning within nationalborders Government businesseswere sold to private investors. US companieswere allowed to own land and factories anywhere in Mexico,without Mexican partners. Thepricesofbasicgoodswere decontrolled, and government subsidieson food and services forworkers and thepoorwerecut back or ended altogether. Today the Mexican economy looksnothing likeitdidthirty years ago. Over the last two decades, the income of Mexicanworkers has lostmorethanhalfof its purchasing power.Underpressure from foreign...

Book Review: Communities Without Borders: Images and Voices from the World of Migration David Bacon (Forwards by Carlos Muñoz Jr. and Douglas Harper), Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2006 235pp $29.95. ISBN13 978 0 8014 7307 4

Book Review: Communities Without Borders: Images and Voices from the World of Migration David Bacon (Forwards by Carlos Muñoz Jr. and Douglas Harper), Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2006 235pp $29.95. ISBN13 978 0 8014 7307 4

Book Review: Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants. By David Bacon. Boston: Beacon, 2008. 261 pp. $18.00 paper

Book Review: Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants. By David Bacon. Boston: Beacon, 2008. 261 pp. $18.00 paper