(Utica, NY – May 2014) On Sunday, May 4, an 11-day-long statewide peaking tour will stop in Utica to draw attention to the plight of immigrant dairy farmworkers and to build support for the Justice for Dairy Farmworkers campaign. A presentation entitled “Dairy Farm Workers Organizing for Justice” will be given at 7 p.m. at the Cornerstone Community Church, 500 Plant Street, Utica. The church is located on Oneida Square. The event is free and open to the public. Local co-sponsors include Central New York Citizens in Action, Inc., IWW, Mohawk Valley Freedom School, Occupy Utica, Workers Center of Central NY, Working Families Party, and MoveOn. For more information, please see www.workerscentercny.org.
The tour coincides with Workers’ Memorial Day (April 28), May Day (May 1) and Farmworker Advocacy Day (May 5). The featured speaker on the tour is Jose Cañas, an immigrant farmworker from El Salvador who has worked on upstate dairy farms for over three years. He will be taking 11 days off of work, unpaid, to be part of the speaking tour. He will be joined by other immigrant dairy farmworkers and Rebecca Fuentes, the daughter of a farmworker from Mexico and the lead organizer of the Syracuse-based Workers’ Center of Central New York, and Carly Fox, organizer with the Worker Justice Center of New York.
The dairy industry is New York’s leading agricultural sector and New York is a leading dairy producer in the nation. In fact, in 2012, New York became the country’s number one producer of yogurt. This boom in dairy production, however, has come at a significant cost to the workers whose labor has made it all possible. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there have been 55 fatalities on dairy farms in New York State since 2006.
As Jose Cañas said, “The goals [of the tour] are to denounce the social injustice that is happening to us. The oppression we feel at work is something that exists towards Latinos on all farms. The key to success is to make ourselves more powerful, the labor force, us Latinos…” Cañas has directly witnessed or suffered accidents and injuries due to employer negligence, nightly fevers due to indecent housing and depression from social isolation.
“Our goal, like Jose expresses it, is to denounce the injustices that workers are going through, but also to organize to improve the conditions,” Fuentes said. “We have already accomplished a lot, by organizing delegations of workers to meet with OSHA (Occupational Health and Safety Administration) to speak up about unsafe and unhealthy workplace conditions.” These efforts were the catalyst for OSHA’s implementation of a local emphasis program that will, for the first time, include unannounced inspections on dairy farms throughout the state.
For more information about this tour or to set up an interview with one of the speakers, please contact Rebecca Fuentes or Carly Fox (contact info above).