Support Workers’ Rights, Family Farmers, 
Safe Food, and Global Justice 

UNITED FARM WORKERS 23jun03

On June 23rd-25th, the Bush administration and agribusiness corporations are hosting a conference in Sacramento with the trade and agriculture ministers from over 170 countries around the world. 

Their agenda: expanding industrial agriculture and free trade policies that have undermined workers rights, destroyed sustainable family agriculture and poisoned farm workers

WORKERS’ RIGHTS ARE GETTING CANNED:

Giant agribusiness companies and growers have an appalling track record of tramping workers’ rights at every turn-they bust union, undermine contracts, suppress wages and fail to provide basic protections and benefits such as healthcare.

Labor groups have historically been excluded from any meaningful role in trade negotiations, and the Sacramento event is just another example of government and big business shutting workers out.

POISONING OUR FARM WORKERS AND OUR FOOD:

The chemicals sprayed on crops and applied to soil routinely poison agricultural workers. Millions of pound of toxic pesticides are used every year, dousing workers and the environment with nerve poisons, reproductive and developmental toxins, hormone disrupting chemicals and carcinogens. In California, with some of the most strict pesticide use and worker safety regulations, acute poisonings, birth defects and pesticide related cancers among farm workers are much greater than in the general us population.

Because farm workers are the single population most affected by pesticides, the UNTIED FARM WORKERS OF AMERICA works with environmental groups and worker advocates in California and through out the U.S. To ban the most dangerous pesticides and support farm workers’ rights to a safe and healthy work place.

Yet, the agenda being promotes at this conference seeks greater deregulation and less worker protection such as the continued use of methyl bromide.

FREE TRADE DESTROYS LIVELIHOODS:

All around the world, small farmers are being pushed off their land by economic policies that favor big corporations above the right of countries to have diversified crop production and to feed themselves. In Mexico, NAFTA has displaced up to 15 million small farmers off their land because they are unable to compete with highly subsidized crops like to seek jobs in the U.S. where they are routinely criminalized for being immigrants and denied the right to organize.

HOW YOU CAN HELP:

Join the mobilization! Rallies, teach-ins, and creative street actions are being organized to demand that promoting workers’ rights, not corporate profits and toxic technologies, will keep our farm workers, our families and food safe.

• To endorse and get involved: Call 916.497.1111, or http://www.sacmobilization.org 

source: http://www.ufw.org/AGMIN03.htm 23jun03