Latino Dairy and Dock Workers struggle for respect

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Produced by: 
KBOO
Program:: 
Air date: 
Mon, 11/24/2014 - 6:00pm to 6:30pm
Latino Dairy and Dock Workers struggle for respect
The United Farm Workers are organizing dairy workers associated with Darigold in Washington state.  Jamie Partridge interviews UFW organizer Indira Trejo and Luis, a dairy worker, about their struggles for safe, dignified and healthy working conditions. 

In the second half of the show, John Walsh interviews Jhon Jairo Castro, president of the Buenaventura, Colombia chapter of the Unión Portuaria, the dockworkers’ union.  Buenaventura is Colombia’s biggest port and ground zero of the contradictions of free trade, where wealth both commercial and illicit flows through an impoverished and violence-stricken city with a predominantly Afro-Colombian population. 

The dockworkers, whose labor rights ostensibly get priority attention under the US-Colombia “Labor Action Plan,” continue to lack direct employment relations, health and retirement benefits, and safe working conditions, while being subjected to degrading personal searches when they enter the workplace.  The communities suffer water and power outages, “invisible frontiers” between paramilitary successor groups, and forced displacement to clear the way for megaprojects. 

All this might seem far away until you remember that ICTSI, the operator of Portland’s container terminal, is building a new terminal in Buenaventura, and that both cities are Pacific coast ports.
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