Workers organized with UNITE HERE local 9 at Vancouver’s Hilton Hotel are in struggle for a fair union contract. Their wages are so low that some have to rely on food baskets to feed their families. Their medical benefits are so expensive that less than 5% of the workers are on the plan. Co-host Jamie Partridge brings us testimony from the Jobs with Justice Workers Rights Board hearing held at the Vancouver Library last Thursday.
In the second half of the show, co-host John Walsh interviews an undocumented Guatemalan worker who was picked up in an immigration raid on Fresh Del Monte Foods in June, 2007. In legal limbo some five years later, this worker is still unable to legally support her family, continues to face the threat of deportation, but remains active in a support group of Del Monte workers who are fighting for legal status.