Thread: TEAMSTERS ORGANIZING ILLEGALS

TEAMSTERS ORGANIZING ILLEGALS

BY SFC DRAKE
ON AUG 4, 2014






(TRACY, Calif.) – Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa led a major rally in support of 900 food processing workers at Taylor Farms, the largest supplier of fresh-cut produce in the world. More than 700 Teamsters, Taylor Farms workers and community supporters packed in front of a stage outside the company’s plant in Tracy, Calif. where low-wage workers have been organizing against poverty pay, abusive working conditions, and extreme anti-union retaliation by the company.

“I bring you greetings from the 1.4 million members of the Teamsters union,” Hoffa told workers at the rally. “I’ve heard about the lack of respect here, the fact that people can’t use the restroom when they need to, and that workers have been here ten years and are temporary employees. That’s got to change – and we’re going to change it.”

Hoffa stood before a large crowd of workers holding signs that said “Dignity for All Workers” and “Food Workers Feed America.” Chants of “Si Se Puede” (Yes We Can) and “Teamster Power” erupted as other speakers took to the stage, including workers like Brenda Vega.

If you would like to know who Taylor Farms Supplies, Click HERE

BELOW FROM TEAMSTERS. ORG AND THEIR FACEBOOK PAGE:

Workers in Tracy, California following in the footsteps of labor leader and civil rights icon Cesar Chavez, are taking their fight to the public. The workers’ struggle for a better life for their families is supported by Teamsters in California and nationwide. We are building a movement for respect for the workers who feed America.


Come to this free screening on Thursday to talk with a lawyer about your options to regularize or adjust your immigration status.


Read more at http://www.dmldaily.com/teamsters-or...wei07GX3izC.99

It sounds as though Taylor Farms is a BIG employer of illegal aliens and they operate all over the country sort like the Tyson's of agriculture. With 1.8 billion in revenue a year, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out who is lobbying for amnesty. If the government was enforcing the laws, Taylor Farms would not have been able to hire the illegal that it abuses. Corporate cronyism at it's best.

JANUARY 02, 2014

Turning a New Leaf for Worker Justice
Low-Wage Movement Strikes Fast Food Processing at Taylor Farms

by BRIAN TIERNEY
Counterpunch

It was still dark as Julian Camacho flagged down workers driving in for their shift. One by one, he handed them a leaflet while dozens of picketers crisscrossed the parking lot entrance, chanting in the morning chill before the sun rose over Tracy, California.

Julian knows these people. He used to work alongside them – cutting, washing, packaging, and loading salads and other food for Taylor Farms, the largest supplier of fresh-cut produce in the country.

But when Julian became involved in a campaign to organize a union at his plant, the company fired him.

“I was fired after four years of working at Taylor Farms,” he said. “We have the right to stand up and organize for better working conditions, but Taylor Farms clearly does not respect that and it doesn’t respect its workers – they just want to silence us.”

Julian isn’t alone. He joined hundreds of other workers and supporters for a one-day strike against unfair labor practices on December 19. Like Julian, two other workers have been terminated for their union support. Among the workers at the company’s two plants in Tracy, a large majority have signed union cards. They say they deserve more than poverty wages and the mistreatment that management inflicts on its workforce.

Much like the fast-food and retail employees whose protests for living wages have spread across the country, Julian and Taylor Farms workers are part of a national wave of unrest against low wages in the food industry. The only thing that sets Taylor Farms workers apart from striking McDonald’s and Walmart workers is their position in the industry’s supply chain. They supply food to McDonald’s, Walmart and other major fast-food establishments, retailers, chain restaurants and grocers. These workers are unseen to consumers and all the more vulnerable to the heavy hand of abusive employers.

What makes Taylor Farms workers even more vulnerable is their position as immigrants, both documented and undocumented. The company has been keen on using that against its workers ever since they started organizing with Teamsters Local 601. Workers in Tracy report being threatened with deportation, E-Verify and other forms of immigration enforcement in retaliation for their union support.

UNFAIR LABOR PRACTICES AND OTHER INDIGNITIES

On the picket line, workers and supporters brandished signs and banners that read “We Will Not Be Silenced” and “Stop the War on Immigrant Workers.” Julian was later joined by Brandon, a young man who has been working at Taylor Farms for ten years. He started working on the plant’s onion line when he was 9 years old. Brandon wants to go to school, but the company changes his schedule every time he tries to schedule classes.

Taylor Farms workers want more than a living wage. They want respect and dignity in the workplace. Instead, they endure unsafe working conditions and the company’s routine termination of workers who are injured on the job.

The company denies basic accommodations to pregnant workers, forcing one woman to resign and lose six months of wages while she scraped by on food stamps. Another worker is reduced to living out of his car so that he can afford out-of-pocket costs for his daughter’s health care. Still others are denied protective gear, causing gagging and other health problems for workers exposed to chemical fumes. The company often denies workers their meal breaks and pressures them against using the restroom during their shift.

So on a windy Thursday before Christmas, Teamster members in the region joined Taylor Farms workers and community allies in an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) strike against the company. Pickets assembled at 4 am while a team of mobile picketers hit Teamster-represented workplaces supplied by Taylor Farms, including Raley’s and C & S Wholesale Grocers. Several trucks making deliveries to the plants in Tracy respected the picket line, turning their 18-wheel rigs around and leaving goods undelivered.

The union has filed charges for hundreds of ULP violations committed by the company at both plants in Tracy. With decades of experience in union drives across many industries, organizers on the campaign say the sheer volume of ULP violations committed by Taylor Farms is overwhelming and perhaps even unprecedented.


A VICIOUS ANTI-UNION CAMPAIGN

The Teamster organizing campaign at Taylor Farms began in September. And despite the fact that over 2,500 workers at Taylor Farms’ plant in Salinas are represented by Teamsters and have a union contract, the company immediately responded to organizing efforts in Tracy with a fierce anti-union drive.

The company’s campaign against the union is backed by high-priced attorneys who specialize in “union avoidance.” One firm the company has used is Industrial Relations Consultants, Inc., which boasts its ability to help “manage Hispanic and other ethnic workers and assist our clients in remaining or becoming non-union.”

Further complicating the workers’ organizing campaign is the fact that many of the workers at the plants in Tracy are not direct Taylor Farms employees. The company relies on two “temp agencies” – Abel Mendoza and Sling Shot – to staff a large portion of its operations. One of the agencies is located right outside of the Taylor Farms plant on MacArthur Drive, giving the company easy access to flexible labor and protecting it from any legal consequences associated with employing undocumented workers.

The company’s war on its immigrant workforce has included mandatory anti-union meetings, posting anti-union propaganda in break rooms and forcing workers to wear shirts that say “I Love Taylor Farms.” But threatening workers based on their immigration status has been the company’s primary weapon against the union drive at Taylor Farms.

IMMIGRANT RIGHTS – IT’S THE LAW

Taylor Farms’ repeated violations of immigrant workers’ rights is technically illegal. But a trio of new laws passed in California will soon add tougher sanctions against employers who break the law by abusing their immigrant workforce.

“This community and the state of California will not accept the abusive and illegal practices that Taylor Farms is alleged to have committed against its workers,” said California Assemblymember Roger Hernandez who spoke at a rally in front of Taylor Farms on the day of the strike. Hernandez led the California legislature in passing AB 263, a new immigrant anti-retaliation law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown along with AB 524 and SB 666.

The laws, which take effect on January 1, 2014, prohibit immigration-related retaliation and classify the threat to expose workers’ immigration status as extortion. Companies in violation of the new laws could face criminal penalties.

“The stories I’ve heard from workers like you compelled me to introduce legislation last year that prohibits employers from retaliating against workers such as yourselves for exercising protected rights,” Hernandez told workers at the rally. “I could not have moved that legislation forward without the heavy support and push of the Teamsters Union – that’s how we got it to the governor’s desk.”

“I strongly believe that Taylor Farms can afford to treat its workers with dignity and respect. This is not a mom-and-pop business. Last year Taylor Farms had an estimated revenue of $1.8 billion. They supply produce to some of the largest companies in the world, including Walmart and McDonald’s,” Hernandez said.

Hernandez added that he is deeply troubled by reports that the company has used immigration status as a threat to silence workers who are trying to organize. “We will no longer stand for such behavior,” he said.

One of the central demands of the recent ULP strike was that the company reinstate unjustly fired workers like Julian. Two other fired workers, Eddy Rodriguez and Julio Munguia, also spoke at the rally.

“Taylor Farms treats its workers in Tracy like dirt,” said Rodriguez. “I wanted a better life for me and my coworkers – and for that I was fired.”

BIG BUSINESS, BIG BULLY

Hernandez is right about the size of Taylor Farms’ business. The company has operations in ten states and in Mexico. It employs up to 7,000 workers who manufacture and distribute prepackaged salads and fresh-cut fruits and vegetables to major companies like McDonald’s, Subway, KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Darden Restaurants and retailers like Walmart and Kroger.

Still, Taylor Farms CEO Bruce Taylor insists that his workers are his “family,” according to an article he wrote in the BerkleyHaas alumni magazine in 2012. The workers in Tracy don’t feel they’ve been treated that way. And the company’s overall track record certainly tells a different story.

Production workers in Tracy, such as those who work on the tomato line, work up to 17 hours a day and five days a week or more during the busy season. They typically make $8 an hour. Taylor Farms has accumulated over $80,000 in OSHA penalties in the last five years. It also faces an ongoing class-action case for requiring employees to work off-the-clock and without pay. In Tracy, workers are penalized by the company for taking time off due to illness. They are denied workers’ compensation when they are injured on the job. And workers also say that complaining about safety issues or not being paid for overtime often results in being fired.

One worker recently quit after 17 years with the company. The physically-demanding, repetitive work had taken a toll on her body and she was having major health problems. She repeatedly asked to be moved to a position that would involve different repetitive motion, but the company refused. So she was forced to quit. She received no workers’ compensation, no retirement benefits – nothing.

Workers in Tracy say the company has cracked down ruthlessly on union supporters. Managers and supervisors have taken to accusing pro-union workers of sabotage. Workers have been told they will lose their jobs if they join the union. They’ve also been told they are prohibited from talking about the union at work.

But the company isn’t satisfied with making its workers afraid of the union. It wants its workers to be actively hostile to the organizing drive. Recently workers were taken to a manager’s office and told to sign an anti-union petition. Workers inside one of the plants report being forced to join supervisors and managers for a counter-demonstration against the union during the strike. Supervisors held signs that said “Union Go Away.” But more offensive than that was hearing the plant manager lead a chant of “No se pudo” (You can’t) – a cynical and ugly twist on the popular slogan “Sí se puede” (Yes we can) made famous by Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers.

So why is Taylor Farms reacting so mercilessly to organizing efforts in Tracy? It could be because it knows what a Teamster-represented shop within the company looks like. Teamsters Local 890 represents some 2,500 workers at Taylor Farms in Salinas. The union contract there provides a grievance procedure, safeguards against favoritism, protective gear for worker safety, regular pay raises, fair treatment of injured workers, affordable health insurance, paid sick time, and paid holidays.

FEEDING THE FAMILIES THAT FEED THE NATION

Taylor Farms may also be worried about what a victory for its workers in Tracy might mean across the food processing industry in California’s Central Valley. It is a cruel irony that this region that produces a quarter of the food that Americans consume also experiences some of the highest levels of hunger and poverty in the country.
The Teamsters say the campaign at Taylor Farms is part of a larger coalition effort to organize and build political power for Latinos in the region. The food processing workers in the valley may yet open a new front in the national strike movement against the low-wage economy. Those strikes have been bubbling further up the supply chain at fast-food restaurants and Walmart stores. But they’ve also been simmering behind the scenes among warehouse workers, port truck drivers and low-wage government contractors.

Taylor Farms workers are calling attention to the fact that poverty wages and disrespect for workers’ rights isn’t merely a fast-food problem, or a Walmart problem. It’s a problem that afflicts workers up and down supply chains across multiple industries. It’s a national problem.

Back in Tracy, workers and organizers are discussing next steps for the campaign to win justice at Taylor Farms. On the day of the strike, a worker getting off of her shift walked out to the parking lot entrance where Julian and others were still picketing. She wore a Teamster t-shirt underneath her black snow pants overalls that workers wear to protect them from cold temperatures in the plant.

“Sí se puede,” she said to Julian as she walked by, thrusting her fist in the air.

Julian hopes the union will win his job back. But the organizing struggle at Taylor Farms is about something even more fundamental than his job. It’s about the basic right of human beings – no matter where they work and no matter where they come from – to be treated with dignity and respect.

More than any job, that’s what Julian and his coworkers are fighting for at Taylor Farms.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/01/02/low-wage-movement-strikes-fast-food-processing-at-taylor-farms/

Taylor Farms, Big Food Supplier, Grapples With Frequent Recalls

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

A Taylor Farms vegetable processing plant in Yuma, Ariz., where shredded cabbage and carrots are mixed with lettuce.

By STEPHANIE STROM

Published: August 29, 2013

Taylor Farms, the large vegetable producer whose salad mix is being investigated in connection with an outbreak of illness involving hundreds of people in 22 states, has had an unusual number of voluntary recalls for potentially tainted products in the last three years.

Related

• Recalls by Taylor Farms (August 30, 2013)

Enlarge This Image

Nati Harnik/Associated Press

Taylor Farms salad packages in an Omaha supermarket.


The recent investigation of greens used at Olive Garden, Red Lobster and possibly other restaurant chains follows three recalls by Taylor Farm this year. The company initiated three others in 2012 and three in 2011, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

Bruce Taylor, chief executive of Taylor Farms, attributed the number of recalls to the sheer size of his company — it sells as much salad as its next three largest competitors combined. “Just if you do the sheer math, our recalls relative to our size are fewer than anybody else,” Mr. Taylor said.

Only the most recent was prompted by an outbreak of illnesses, he added. Since June of this year, more than 600 cases of cyclosporiasis, an intestinal disease caused by Cyclospora cayetanensis, a parasite that is transmitted through feces, have been reported. Although not all reported cases were tied to Taylor Farms produce, this is the largest outbreak of cyclosporiasis since 1997.

Food safety experts said the number was somewhat higher than they would expect, even given Taylor’s size. “While produce companies have by far the most recalls among food companies in general, I’d say one every 12 to 18 months is more the standard,” said Gene Grabowski, a consultant who assists companies in dealing with the public and the media over food recalls.

Taylor competitors Dole and Fresh Express, a unit of Chiquita Brands, each had four recalls in 2012 and one in 2011. Neither company has conducted a recall so far this year, according to F.D.A. records.

Bill Marler, a lawyer who specializes in food safety litigation, also said that even for a company of its size, the rate of recalls by Taylor seemed a bit high. “That’s quite a number of recalls over that time period,” Mr. Marler said.

But several of those recalls could have been prompted by random inspections by state health agencies under a federal program that is now defunct, he said.

Taylor and other large produce companies had successfully lobbied to get rid of it, arguing that by the time the program identified a pathogen, the tainted product had already long since been consumed, making it hard to recall.
Shelly Burgess, a spokeswoman for the F.D.A., which is responsible for the safety of fruits and vegetables, among other foods, said there was no specific number of recalls that would require greater scrutiny by the agency.

“In assessing whether a firm should be subject to increased F.D.A. scrutiny, the agency takes many risk factors into account beyond the number of recalls the firm has initiated,” Ms. Burgess wrote in an e-mail.

Mr. Taylor said many of the recalls were prompted by the company’s own food safety regimen. For example, preliminary company tests drove the decision to issue a 39-state recall of organic baby spinach that was potentially contaminated with E. coli, he said.

“We have a protocol where we do an initial test and get an initial positive or negative and then follow that with a confirmation test that gives a positive or negative,” he said. “I violated that protocol, though, out of an abundance of caution, acting to recall the product before we got the final result.”

Mr. Taylor said the final testing found no contamination, turning the company’s recall into a withdrawal of any remaining products from the market. “It was a fire drill we didn’t need to do,” he said.

And two of Taylor’s recalls this year — almost 700 cases of its BBQ Flavored Ranch Salad with Chicken and a Black Forest ham and Swiss cheese sandwich sold under the Wawa stores’ name — involved undeclared allergens like peanuts, not pathogens. “We make 700 items with over 2,000 components,” Mr. Taylor said. “If an employee picks up the wrong item, we have a recall.”

This week, Taylor Farms resumed operations at its Mexican processing facilities, which were the source of the greens tainted with Cyclospora, after an inspection by the Food and Drug Administration found conditions met known safety protocols.

The Centers for Disease Control, which is working with the F.D.A. on the matter, said this week that while investigations in Nebraska and Iowa had linked the outbreaks there to products from Taylor Farms of Mexico, preliminary analysis of more recent cases in Texas suggested the greens involved did not come from there.

“Although the investigation of cases in 2013 is ongoing, available evidence suggests that not all of the cases of cyclosporiasis in the various states are directly related to each other,” the C.D.C. said.

Mr. Marler said he had not yet filed a lawsuit in the case for that reason. “Something else is going on, and I think it’s probably environmental,” he said.

Mr. Taylor wondered whether flooding earlier this summer in the areas where the problem surfaced provided the conditions for bacterial infections. He said notices posted in Nebraska, Iowa and Texas had warned residents in flooded regions to boil their water. “It’s pure speculation on my part,” he said, “Iowa and Nebraska represent somewhere around 4 percent of the salad sold from our plant in Mexico in any given week.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/bu...t-recalls.html

Recalls by Taylor Farms

Published: August 29, 2013

JUNE 2013 Salad greens used in restaurants. Tainted with bacteria sickening more than 600 people. A little more than 200 of those cases were linked to greens supplied by Taylor.

JUNE 2013 678 pounds of BBQ Flavored Ranch Salad with Chicken. Failure to disclose egg, an allergen.

JUNE 2013 A “limited number” of sandwiches sold in Wawa stores. Failure to disclose potential presence of nuts, an allergen.

FEBRUARY 2013 Organic baby spinach. Potential E. coli contamination. 39 states affected but no reported illnesses.

DECEMBER 2012 110 cases of romaine lettuce. Possible listeria contamination. No illnesses linked.

MAY 2012 Organic baby spinach. Salmonella. No illnesses linked.

AUGUST 2012 Various fruit products sold in Wawa stores. Potential salmonella contamination in mangoes from a supplier. No illnesses linked.

OCTOBER 2011 3,265 cases of salad blends sold under supermarket names. Potential salmonella contamination. No illnesses reported.

MAY 2011 Various salads supplied to retailers. A supplier notified Taylor that grape tomatoes in the products were potentially contaminated with salmonella. No illnesses known.

FEBRUARY 2011 64,000 pounds of chicken and pork meals. Contained broccoli potentially infected with listeria. No illnesses known.

Sources: Food and Drug Administration; United States Department of Agriculture
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/bu...lor-farms.html

Who is handling your FOOD?
FDA names Taylor Farms as source in parasite outbreak


BY JONEL ALECCIA
Infections from the rare cyclospora parasite have sickened at least 400 people in 16 states, health officials said.Taylor Farms of Mexico, a division of a California-based produce supplier whose greens go to national restaurants including Red Lobster and Olive Garden,
shipped parasite-tainted salad mix that has sickened hundreds in Nebraska and Iowa, U.S. health officials said Friday.

Food and Drug Administration officials did not say whether the same bagged salad is tied to a cyclospora outbreak or outbreaks that have sickened at least 400 people in 16 U.S. states.

"The FDA traceback investigation found that illness clusters at restaurants were traced to a common supplier, Taylor Farms de Mexico, S. de R.L. de C.V.," the FDA said in a statement.

Those restaurants included Olive Garden and Red Lobster, operated by Darden restaurants, a spokesman for the Orlando, Fla., firm confirmed.

"The FDA's announcement today regarding Iowa and Nebraska is new information," said Rich Jeffers, communications director for Darden. "Nothing we have seen prior to this announcement gave us any reason to be concerned about the products we've received from this supplier."

FDA's investigation did not implicate salad mix packages sold in grocery stores, officials said. As a result of the probe, the agency will step up surveillance of leafy products exported to the U.S. from Mexico.

The Mexican plant is part of Taylor Farms, a Salinas, Calif.-based firm that supplies lettuce and cut vegetables to national restaurant chains and grocery stores. Taylor Farms has 11 processing plants in the U.S. and one in San Miguel, Mexico, according to the company website.

FDA officials, in conjunction with company leaders, will conduct an environmental assessment of the processing facility in Mexico to determine the probable cause of the outbreak. State officials had said the salad mix included romaine and iceberg lettuce, along with carrots and red cabbage. A 2011 inspection found no "notable issues," the FDA said.

The firm's chairman and chief executive, Bruce Taylor, told NBC News in an email that the company has an extensive testing program in place in Mexico for both water sources and raw product.

"All our tests have been negative and we have no indication of the parasite in our product," Taylor said late Friday.

The contaminated salad mix is likely no longer in the food supply chain in Iowa and Nebraska, where at least 223 people have sickened, health officials emphasized. The last date people reportedly became ill in those states was July 2, they added. The typical shelf life for salad mix is about two weeks.

"Iowa and Nebraska health authorities have said this is not an ongoing outbreak and is no longer in the food supply in those states," said Jeffers, of Darden. "The health and safety of our guests is our top priority and it is completely safe to eat in our restaurants."

Taylor Farms has a history of recalling potentially contaminated leafy greens, including a February 2013 recall of baby spinach over fears it was tainted with Enterohemorrhagic E. coli, or EHEC, a particularly virulent bacterium that can cause severe infection and illness. The firm recalledbagged hearts of romaine in 2012 for listeria risk and bagged salad in 2011 over worries about salmonella contamination.

Food safety experts have criticized the investigation of the cyclospora outbreak, which began with two cases in Iowa on June 28, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most of the illnesses were reported from mid-June through early July.

Michael Osterholm, Minnesota’s former state epidemiologist who now heads the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said the search for the source of the rare parasite took too long and wasn’t as thorough or targeted as it should have been.

“I think it’s really a mess,” Osterholm told NBC News. “To me it’s a situation where we need a major review.”

Osterholm said state investigators, including those in Iowa and Nebraska, which first tagged premixed salad as the source of the outbreak this week, didn’t conduct case-control studies that would have quickly isolated the cause.

But Dr. Patricia Quinlisk, the Iowa state epidemiologist, has defended her state’s response, saying that cyclospora is a difficult bug to detect and track because of its long incubation period and special testing requirements.

States that have reported illnesses include Iowa, Texas, Nebraska, Florida, Wisconsin, Georgia, Illinois, Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, and Ohio.

Cyclospora is a parasite excreted in human stool. Illnesses have been associated with contaminated water or food. It causes gastrointestinal symptoms including prolonged diarrhea, fatigue, loss of appetite, vomiting and other flu-like symptoms.

Cyclospora infections are rare in the U.S., but past outbreaks have been associated with contaminated fresh produce including fruit and herbs. Raspberries imported from Guatemala were responsible for a 1996 outbreak that sickened 1,465 people in the U.S. and Canada and also for a 1997 outbreak that made more than 1,000 people ill, CDC records show.

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health...ak-f6C10833090