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BUILDING BRIDGES: YOUR COMMUNITY AND LABOR REPORT presents the radio broadcast
A Thanksgiving Story: Harvest of Shame Again and Again
Produced by Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash.
These are the stories of the workers who produce the food we feast on this Thanksgiving. As we have learned time and again, agricultural workers rarely have reason to celebrate. From the Depression-born story of Tom Joad in Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" to Edward R. Morrow's groundbreaking broadcast "Harvest of Shame" we have learned and relearned that those who do the most necessary work receive the worst pay and work the most hours under the most shameful conditions. Today we continue that unfortunate tradition though there are some seeds of hope in unionization.
We begin our story in New York State where agricultural workers have long been excluded from most labor laws regarding wages, hours and the right to organize. We talk with Adrian Ramirez and Phil Pardee from the Independent Farmworkers Center and with Dennis Hughes, President of the New York State Federation of Labor. Conditions in the fields are so terrible that Adrian isn't sure it wasn't better in Mexico. But there is a movement growing to bring agricultural workers under New York State Labor Laws and the union movement in the State is beginning to join their forces with the farmworkers.
Next to turkey and poultry workers, those who produce the traditional centerpiece of the Thanksgiving feast. Our guests are workers from the Butterball Turkey processing plant in Carthage, Missouri and from the Kagel Chicken processing plant in Albany, Kentucky. The turkey workers, who have long been unionized, compare their pay and working conditions (and especially health and safety) with their brothers and sisters struggling to form a union in Kentucky. Through a back-and-forth dialogue, the clear advantages of unionism emerge.
Finally we turn our attention abroad to the Banana workers of Guatemala. However bad the situation was there in the past, they are worse now. We hear the story of Enrique Villeda from the Banana Workers Union along with Teresa Casertano from the AFL-CIO Field Office in Guatemala. The Del Monte Corporation recently announced layoffs there. When the workers protested, their Local Union Officers and Shop Stewards were herded into the Union Office by armed thugs who threatened their lives and beat up the Local President. They were then made to go to a Local radio station and tell everyone that the situation was settled, then forced to resign from the Union and their jobs.
Click below for each segment of our special Thanksgiving show:
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