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Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Sunday, September 4th, 2016

Familias Unidas por La Justicia ends Sakuma Farms boycott, unionization vote scheduled

Read­ers, here’s some very encour­ag­ing news from our broth­ers and sis­ters at Famil­ias Unidas por La Jus­ti­cia that we just received min­utes ago:

Dear Sup­port­ers:

As of today, Saku­ma Broth­ers Farms and Famil­ias Unidas por La Jus­ti­cia have mutu­al­ly agreed to con­duct a secret bal­lot elec­tion with­in the next 8 days. The elec­tion will deter­mine if the employ­ees want to be rep­re­sent­ed by Famil­ias Unidas por La Jus­ti­cia in col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing with Saku­ma Farms. Thanks to your tire­less efforts we are enter­ing into this next phase of our union’s devel­op­ment with hope and deter­mi­na­tion. At this time we are call­ing for an end of the boy­cott, and all boy­cott activ­i­ties. Out of respect for the process and our mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing with the com­pa­ny please do not con­tact past, present or poten­tial cus­tomers, pur­chasers, sell­ers or users of prod­ucts com­ing from Saku­ma Bros Berry Farm to con­vey crit­i­cism of any and all aspects of Sakuma’s busi­ness and operations.

Please stay tuned at the Famil­ias Unidas por La Jus­ti­cia Face­book page for updates.

Gra­cias,

Ramon Tor­res
Felimon Pineda
FUJ

In Span­ish:

A todos los que nos han apoyado,

A par­tir de hoy, Saku­ma Broth­ers Farms y Famil­ias Unidas por La Jus­ti­cia han acor­da­do de man­era mutua lle­var a cabo una elec­ción de bole­ta sec­re­ta den­tro de los próx­i­mos 8 días. La elec­ción será para deter­mi­nar si los emplea­d­os serán rep­re­sen­ta­dos por Famil­ias Unidas por La Jus­ti­cia en una nego­ciación por un con­tra­to colec­ti­vo de tra­ba­jo con Saku­ma Farms. Gra­cias por todos sus esfuer­zos incans­ables, esta­mos entran­do a esta nue­va fase del desar­rol­lo de nues­tra unión con esper­an­za y deter­mi­nación. En este momen­to esta­mos lla­man­do a un fin del boicot y a todas las activi­dades del boicot. Por respeto a este pro­ce­so y a nue­stro mem­o­ran­do de entendimien­to con la com­pañía favor de no con­tac­tar a clientes ante­ri­ores, actuales o en poten­cia, com­pradores, vende­dores o usuar­ios de los pro­duc­tos de Saku­ma Bros Berry Farm y no criticar uno o todos los aspec­tos del nego­cio y opera­ciones de Sakuma.

Man­tén­ganse al tan­to de Famil­ias Unidas por La Jus­ti­ca a través de eta pági­na para más actualizaciones.

Gra­cias,
Ramon Torres
Felimon Pineda
FUJ

The Boy­cott Saku­ma web­site has also been updat­ed with this mes­sage.

Democ­ra­cy Now, host­ed by Amy Good­man, aired an excel­lent seg­ment back in May which reviewed the his­to­ry of this labor dis­pute. If you haven’t been fol­low­ing FUJ’s work, read the tran­script or lis­ten to the show to put today’s news into context.

Marching to Sakuma

March­ing to Saku­ma: NFWM Board Meet­ing in Belling­ham, WA with Famil­ias Unidas por la Jus­ti­cia, July 10th-11th, 2015 (Pho­to: Alexan­dria Jonas/National Farm Work­er Min­istry. Repro­duced under a Cre­ative Com­mons license.)

We con­grat­u­late Famil­ias Unidas por La Jus­ti­cia on get­ting to this point. This tru­ly is a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone — and very fit­ting news for a Labor Day Eve!

We hope to soon extend our con­grat­u­la­tions to Saku­ma’s striv­ing work­ers and to FUJ on a suc­cess­ful union­iza­tion vote in the near future.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 10:12 PM

Categories: Economic Security, Policy Topics

Tags: ,

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