Above image: By David Beacon.
We are very excited to announce that at 1pm on Friday, June 16th Familias Unidas por La Justicia signed a historic collective bargaining agreement with Sakuma Bros. Berry Farm!!
On June 15th FUJ members turned out to overwhelmingly ratify the tentative collective bargaining agreement presented by their negotiations committee. After an overview of the contract the Mixteco and Triqui hand harvesters, men and women, lined up to cast their ballots. Official vote counters Jeff Johnson President of the WA State Labor Council and Steve Garey former President of the Steelworkers Local 12-591 tallied the vote and announced it was over 85% in favor of ratifying the tentative agreement.
The harvesting season will begin soon with contractual benefits for members of FUJ hand harvesting the berries. Among the benefits union members will receive is an average $15 an hour wage.
“This is a historic victory for all our members that harvest berries, they are happy to be working at Sakuma Farms with a union contract, everybody is ready to get to work, there will soon be union berries in the marketplace!” — Ramon Torres, President of Familias Unidas por La Justicia
To read a summary of the contract, you can visit FUJ’s website: famliasunidasjusticia.org.
As the news starts to spread about this historic victory, we want to take a moment and express our profound gratitude to all the supporters, volunteers, and members of Community to Community Development who enabled us to walk in solidarity with FUJ these last 4 years.
While this contract is truly a great victory, C2C’s vision for a better food system stretches far beyond this moment. Farmworker justice is also being cultivated through our cooperative development work—empowering workers to define economic relationships for themselves, our organizing fellowship program—training the next generation of food justice leaders, and our commitment to farmworker voices at the table in the fight for climate justice.
As we step up and into this next phase of our organizing work, we are counting on your support. Please consider making a donation to C2C to empower our vision for a better world into reality. DONATE TODAY!