- Playing
- Farm Workers Need Drastic Action
- From
- Dick Meister
Gov. Jerry Brown of California has struck a heavy blow against the attempts of poverty-stricken farm workers nationwide to win the union bargaining rights they desperately need.
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Related Pieces
Piece Description
Gov. Jerry Brown of California has struck a heavy blow against the attempts of poverty-stricken farm workers nationwide to win the union bargaining rights they desperately need.
Broadcast History
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Transcript
No workers are more in need of union protection than the country's miserably treated farm workers. Yet a promising new effort to ease their path to unionization has been blocked by one of their former champions, Democratic Governor Jerry Brown of California, the country's leading farm state.
Brown was rightly praised for signing, in an earlier term as governor, the 1975 law that granted farm workers in California the collective bargaining rights denied farm workers nationwide. It's the weapon farm workers must have if they are to escape poverty and the arbitrary and often harmful actions of grower employers.
But now, Brown has vetoed a bill sponsored by the United Farm Workers union - the UFW - that would have made it much easier for farm workers to unionize. Currently, they can be granted bargaining rights only if a majority working for a grower votes for unionization. "
The vetoed m...
Read the full transcript
Intro and Outro
INTRO:Author Dick Meister says farm workers have lost a major battle.
OUTRO:Dick Meister is co-author of "A Long Time Coming: The Struggle To Unionize America's Farm Workers."
