Industrial Workers of the World - Los Angeles GMB

Gunkist Oranges

x344543 — Sun, 13 Sep 2015 17:35:38 +0000

By Gustavo Arellano - Orange County Weekly, June 8, 2006

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

BITE ON

Seventy years ago this week, Orange County’s most brutally suppressed strike began with a bite.

On June 15, 1936, at the break of dawn, about 200 Mexican women gathered in Anaheim to preach the gospel of huelga—strike. Four days earlier, about 2,500 Mexican naranjeros representing more than half of Orange County’s crucial citrus-picking force dropped their clippers, bags and ladders to demand higher wages, better working conditions and the right to unionize.

The women spread across the groves of Anaheim, the heart of citrus country, urging workers to let the fruit hang. Twenty Anaheim police officers confronted the women; they refused to disperse. At some point there was an altercation, and 29-year-old Placentia resident Virginia Torres bit the arm of Anaheim police officer Roger Sherman. Police arrested Torres, along with 30-year-old Epifania Marquez, who tried to yank a strikebreaker—a scab—from a truck by grabbing onto his suspenders.

Little else is known about the Fort Sumter of Orange County—newspaper accounts say only that Torres and Marquez received jail sentences of 60 and 30 days, respectively. But Orange County responded with an organized wrath years in the planning. Growers enlisted the local chapters of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion to guard fields. They evicted families of strikers from their company-owned houses. The English-language press became a bulletin board for the growers—The Santa Ana Register, for instance, described the 200 Mexican women in Anaheim as “Amazons with fire of battle in their eyes.”

Orange County Sheriff Logan Jackson deputized citrus orchard guards and provided them with steel helmets, shotguns and ax handles. The newly minted cops began arresting strikers en masse, more than 250 by strike’s end. When that didn’t stop the strike, they reported workers to federal immigration authorities. When that didn’t work, out came the guns and clubs. Tear gas blossomed in the groves. Mobs of citrus farmers and their supporters attacked under cover of darkness.

What county residents tried to dismiss as a fruitless strike quickly escalated into a full-fledged civil war in which race and class were inseparable. The Mexicans of Orange County, the county’s historical source of cheap labor, were finally asking for better working conditions; their gabacho overlords wouldn’t hear it. And so both sides fought for a month until the lords of Orange County won.

Wonder why Orange County trembles whenever its Mexicans protest? Welcome to the Citrus War of 1936, the most important event in Orange County history you’ve never heard of.

May Day Resolution by the Los Angeles Ricardo Flores Magon General Membership Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World

IWW.org Editor — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 01:12:22 +0000

Whereas increasing numbers of working class and dispossessed people in the United States have begun to meet face to face to proclaim their opposition to economic injustice and define their interests in democratic popular assemblies, autonomous from political parties, as part of the Occupy Movement, which resonates deeply with the IWW's traditions and principles, and

Whereas millions of working class and dispossessed people around the world, but especially in Northern Africa and Western Asia, have been organizing themselves to overthrow the governments that enforce the capitalist and neocolonial domination and exploitation they have resisted for generations, and

Whereas the IWW has stood since its founding in 1905 for the proposition that:

"The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.

Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth." and

Whereas since 2006 the tradition of the movement for the rights of migrant workers in the U.S. has been to mobilize themselves and their allies for mass actions on May 1 to disrupt the functioning of the economic system and political discourse of the 1%, and

Whereas every year May Day is celebrated globally as International Workers Day to commemorate the struggle of the international working class to emancipate itself through the class war over the centuries, and

Whereas May Day 1890 was proclaimed to be an international day of working class protest by the Second International against the repression of the 8 Hour Day movement in the U.S. where 8 mostly immigrant anarchist labor organizers were arrested, with 4 being hanged and one committing suicide the night before the hangings, after an unknown person threw a bomb at police who were repressing a protest against police brutality in Haymarket Square in Chicago, and

Whereas the Los Angeles branch of the IWW welcomes this opportunity to organize alongside OccupyLA and other participants in the Los Angeles General Strike Coalition to help the working class build the skills, the community, and the combativeness necessary to defend ourselves, our elders, and the generations to come from the global threats of austerity, exploitation, imperialism and ecocide.

Be it resolved that the LA Branch of the IWW endorses the May 1, 2012 General Strike and commits to work as part of the Los Angeles General Strike Coalition by conducting trainings and participating in actions in the lead up to May 1.

IWW Wobblies March Hillcrest /Picket New Alternatives Inc.

x344543 — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 02:15:05 +0000

Fellow Workers,

I am a Wobbly in IU 650 who was trying to organize my workplace, here in San Diego. I was working at a group home for children with Severe Emotional Disorders run by a nonprofit called New Alternatives Incorporated. I started talking to my coworkers on my shift about taking collective action when I observed it to be an environment of intimidation and favoritism.

A former Coworker told me it was standard procedure to harass employees into quiting at New Alternatives Inc. because they didn't want to pay unemployment. I know when a friend of mine quit without a two week notice the management called her up two weeks later yelling at her saying she would not get a good reference from them.â€

I also heard coworkers from another program stating when they wrote a letter about the problems with a Shift Supervisor to the Program Manager, the Program Manager gave that letter to the Shift Supervisor, who met with the signatories individually and scolded them. This same shift supervisor once said that the employees of her shift should not expect a break during their eight hour shift.

I had also talked to an employee who had worked a double shifts which amounted to double-time hours, in California double time is anything in the excess of twelve hours in a shift, and distribute them throughout the week so he would not be paid for double-time. These are just some of the incidents as I had been the target of harassment as well.

In response to several incidents I began drafting petitions and distributing amongst my shift. The first petition letter, which was sent to our Program Manger and courtesy copied to the Executive Director, dealt with a letter of expectation that we as shift singled us out. Three of us signed this letter. The result of the meeting is we were able to meet the Assistant Executive Director who heard our grievances but was sort of standoffish about the whole incident. The effect was we stood by our decision not to sign and the whole incident dropped off the map.

A Heavy Load - The ports say they have a plan for cleaner, safer trucks. But do they have a plan for the truckers?

x344543 — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 19:48:24 +0000

Disclaimer - The opinions of the author do not necessarily match those of the IWW. The image pictured to the right did not appear in the original article, we have added it here to provide a visual perspective. This article is reposted in accordance to Fair Use guidelines.

By Judith Lewis - LA Weekly, July 27, 2005

Before sunrise on a Monday morning, outside a sterile office park in Compton, a convoy of small, beat-up cars, none of them newer than 1995, arrives at the offices of the trucking firm Calko Speedline. One by one, the car's drivers emerge, ranchera and mariachi and est?s escuchando a Piol?n por la ma?ana! competing from their radios. They buy coffee from the taco truck that follows them in, and assemble in small groups, huddled in circles among their big rigs - hulking red, green, blue and white mammoths lined up along the curb, their diesel-burning engines grumbling into action one by one.

The drivers' day of waiting begins.

"My name's Chicho. Everybody knows me. You can ask anyone, 'Do you know Chicho?' and he'll say yes."

Chicho, born Hernan Robleto, is short, round, nearly bald and, when he speaks, energetically animated. His English is nearly indistinguishable from his Spanish; sometimes, while listening to him, it's possible to lose any conscious sense of which language he's speaking. At the Calko office, he paces among the various groups while office personnel inside quietly field calls from terminal operators at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach about ship traffic and schedules; later, they'll give each of the men directions to their first load of the day, a container of goods destined for an intermediate shipping facility somewhere inland or farther down the coast, where it will be transported still farther, to distribution centers all over the country, by truck or train.

HUDD Strike Report

x344543 — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 19:43:14 +0000

Disclaimer - this campaign is not an official campaign of the IWW nor is this report confirmed.

December 17, 2007
300 troquer@s based in South Gate and Mira Loma went on strike against HUDD et al.
These workers were mostly young latino migrants with a very visible participation of women truck drivers. Most of them had been in the harbor about 5 years with maybe as few as 10% going back to the CWA days of 1996 and only a handful that were present during the 1980s.

HUDD

High fuel costs least of truckers worries - Mandatory ID cards, new environmental regs putting them in a bind

x344543 — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 19:01:00 +0000

By Tatiana Prophet - Victorville Daily Press, November 14, 2007 - 8:16PM

HESPERIA — Bobby Powell spent $650 to fill up his big rig the other day, while it normally costs him $450. That’s enough fuel for about a day and a half of driving.

“I’m not making near the money I was,” said the truck driver as he passed through Hesperia on Wednesday afternoon.

Like many truck drivers, Powell owns his own truck and pays for his own fuel.

Fuel prices are just one of many concerns facing independent owner-operators at the close of this year.

Another is the new identification card required to pick up and drop off cargo at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles — the Transportation Workers Identification Credential — which officials plan to roll out as early as December.

Economist John Husing, a consultant to the ports, said the TWIC card might exclude between 15 and 22 percent of truck drivers — for either a criminal record or immigration violations, according to a survey recently conducted.

On top of that, the ports are considering new environmental regulations that would ban all trucks manufactured before 1989 at the ports, according to several sources.

The ports are in meetings to determine what kind of subsidy, if any, might be offered to truckers so they can buy new trucks.

“Nobody knows because the program’s not finalized,” Husing said. “There are major issues that have not been decided yet: Will the drivers be allowed to continue working as independent operators or will the drivers as part of the clean truck program be required to sell their trucks or become employees?”

Port truckers are some of the lowest paid in the industry, Husing said. Many truckers live throughout Southern California, including the High Desert.

And while the problems are many, the solutions are certainly not unified.

One union, the Industrial Workers of the World, is calling for a truckers shutdown on Monday from Dallas to Los Angeles to commemorate the death of Joe Hill, a union organizer who was hanged in Utah in 1915.

“There’s all these meetings going on behind closed doors, and everybody’s interests are being represented at these meetings, and there’s nobody there representing them except us,” said Jay Brophy, a representative of IWW.

The Teamsters Union supports making all drivers employees of the freight companies once again, Husing said, as they once were. Brophy, of the IWW, agrees.

“They have to pay for the fuel, they have to pay for the maintenance, the company doesn’t pay for their unemployment, worker’s comp, income tax, all of this is left on them.”

Stuart Hoynak, another trucker stopping off in Hesperia, does not mind being independent, nor does he mind being fingerprinted for a TWIC card.

“That I understand,” he said. “We got to be safe. They should document everybody. I feel it’s a security measure.”

What he does mind are the fuel costs.

“It’s hard for everybody,” he said. “I mean, it’s a major cut in pay. We don’t get paid for sitting unless the wheels are turning. And every fuel hike is hundreds of dollars out of our paycheck, not a couple of pennies. So right now with the price of fuel, we’re losing anywhere from 1,000 dollars-plus every week. ... When the fuel goes up sometimes an average of 5 cents every two days. There is no reason. There is no reason. It’s crazy. Everybody’s making a lot of money.”

Art Wong, spokesman for the Port of Long Beach, said he was not aware of a shutdown being planned.

But he acknowledged that big changes are ahead, both with the clean trucks initiative and the TWIC card.

“It will be a big change no matter what we do. Even if we leave it alone, everybody’s going to have to get new trucks, and even if we offer grants, I don’t know if these guys are going to be able to afford new trucks.”

About 40 percent of all goods entering the United States come through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Any strike related to the ports can cost millions in lost time.

In 2002, a dispute between longshoremen and terminal operators resulted in the loss of about $1 million a day for the Los Angeles/Long Beach ports, according to trade magazine Land Line.

Los Angeles Port Truckers Mobilizing for May Day Shutdown

x344543 — Wed, 02 May 2007 20:49:00 +0000

By Gideon Dev.

Truckers in the Port of Los Angeles/Long Beach are mobilizing to repeat their performance of a year ago, when over 90% of the trucks were off the road. The shutdown last year was a show of solidarity with the immigrant rights movement and expression of shop floor anger over work conditions. It gave immediate creditability to the protests and boycott in Los Angeles and throughout the nation.

However, despite success in preventing the reactionary HR4437 from becoming law, the immigrant rights movement has left much wanting. After a rising tide of historic marches whose crest was May Day 2006, the single largest day of protest in US history, there has been a visible dearth of organization to press the concerns of immigrant workers. What momentum there was in spring was lost in summer, as the corporate elite and their partners in government responded with the passage of S2611 by the Democratic Party, as well as the bipartisan ‘Secure Fence Act of 2006’. Highly publicized ICE raids continue to be made—with the expressed purpose of trying to pressure the Congress to approve bracero guest worker programs! Conditions did not change with the marches, but have been getting worse since.

The Los Angeles General Membership Branch (LA GMB) of the IWW has called for a complete shutdown of port trucking as well as solidarity from all related industries this May 1st, 2007. As of the time of this writing, the response and feedback from troqueros has been positive. Nearly all truckers have been encouraged by the news of solidarity from the ILWU locals in San Francisco and Seattle, who resolved to not work on May Day. We in the LA GMB were particularly heartened that their resolutions highlighted both our own involvement in last year’s May Day shutdown, and the current efforts of the March 25th Coalition, of which we are members. It was at the latter’s National Conference for Immigrant Rights that the call was made for a second ‘Great American Boycott’ on May Day, and that the LA GMB committed itself to putting the question of a May Day shutdown to the port truckers directly. However, it has become clear that the impetus for action by the troqueros this year will not solely be supporting the immigrant rights movement, or even reclaiming May Day as the workers’ day, but the condition of being exploited workers who drive international trade.

Troqueros Declare Victory!

x344543 — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 06:22:00 +0000

Written by Leslie Radford - Friday, 27 April 2007

Independent truckers announce the LA port will shut down on May 1, the first victory for the 2007 May Day Mobilization for Immigrants' Rights.

PORT OF AZTLAN, April 27, 2007--The independent truckers of the Port of Aztlan, working with the Industrial Workers of the World, made good on their promise to shut down the Los Angeles port on May 1, in support of nationwide migrants' rights protests scheduled for that day and the truckers' struggle to organize. This morning the Los Angeles Port Authority declared the port would be closed for a May 1 "holiday," thereby avoiding potential litigation from shippers facing dockers' and demurrage fees for goods left on the dock during the truckers' strike.

Truckers picket West Coast intermodal hub

x344543 — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 21:22:00 +0000

By Jill Dunn - etrucker.com, December 9, 2006.

The Industrial Workers of the World organized an owner-operator protest Dec. 7 over traffic tickets issued by the BNSF Railway at its Los Angeles-area facility.

More than 30 owner-operators held signs outside the Hobart, Calif., site, one of the busiest intermodal facilities in North America.

Ernie Nevarez, a protest spokesman, said truck traffic had been slowed by 90 percent. BNSF spokeswoman Lena Kent differed, saying the event did not slow business and the Sheriff’s Department was directing traffic.

The company is, however, evaluating its ticketing policy, Kent said.

Truckers object to unjust tickets issued for violations such as running stop signs and speeding, Nevarez said. “If you talk back, you get kicked out for life,” he said.

Truckers can be barred from the facility for no more than one calendar year, and that only after the third ticket, Kent said. “You are not banned for life,” she said. Violators must attend a class after the first ticket, and the second ticket bars them from the facility for 30 days, Kent said.

BNSF Railway, a subsidiary of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., operates one of the largest railroad networks in North America. In March, BNSF announced a $26 million expansion of parking and stacking at the Hobart facility.

IWW Victory for Taxi Drivers at LA Airport

x344543 — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 06:24:00 +0000

By Ernesto Nevarez, Port of Aztlan, [email protected] - Turning the Tide: Journal of Anti-Racist Action, Research & Education, Volume 19 Number 4, July-August 2006

The City of Los Angeles has issued 9 Franchise Contracts to taxi companies which allow them to work LAX. These companies have permission to use about 3,000 drivers. Most are poor immigrants from a variety of countries, such as Iran, Russia, Congo, Pakistan, etc. The companies have banded together and have invented a non-standard workplace with characteristics that have been institutionalized and accepted as the "standard" and which the workers have fatalistically believed was their reality. That was until the Nick Search Decision!