Strawberries at the grocery store are typically not from your local family farm. At the start of the 20th century, the “California” model of fresh fruit production emerged. Men in suits heading agribusinesses took control, and started running farms like “factories in the field,” with super-exploitation of workers to sustain profitability.

It was enabled by radical new economic policies. NAFTA regulations reduced tariffs and non-tariff barriers, established protections to ensure the profits of foreign investors, and expanded patent protections. Driscoll’s executives explicitly cited these policies as the government support they needed to expand to México, and that expansion propelled Driscoll’s into its current dominant position.

What other changes account for the availability of affordable berries to US consumers?

The massive expansion of strawberry production was part of a larger retail revolution. In the early 80s, the US government gutted anti-trust laws. One result is that Walmart alone accounted for a third of U.S. food sales by 2020. It used its monopoly power to pressure suppliers to depress labor costs and lower prices. This led to increased sales and a huge demand for uniform fruit year-around, and companies — like Driscoll’s — expanded as intermediary, coordinating companies.

Cheap labor enabled strawberry growers to meet growing demand. Neo-liberals in México and the US engineered a big surplus farm labor market. Around 4.9 million peasants were dispossessed of their land in the 1990’s, primarily in southern México’s indigenous communities. Around 2.9 million workers are employed in all of México’s agriculture, leaving 2 million more workers than available jobs.

No wonder many migrate to the US for work. The National Agricultural Workers Survey reports that 70% of all crop workers aren’t citizens, and 53% of those are Mexican. That doesn’t include temporary H2-A workers, of whom 93% are Mexican.

US labor and immigration policies created a highly exploitable agricultural labor force in the US. Farmworkers were excluded from the National Labor Relations Act in 1935. They have no protected collective bargaining rights. And what meager rights they have are not enforced. The Economic Policy Institute reports that only 1% of agricultural employers get inspected, although 70% of those inspections find violations.

Rosalinda Guillen, founder of Community2Community and an experienced farmworker organizer, was an important partner. Pro bono lawyers helped win wage theft cases and union rights under the state Little Norris-LaGuardia Act, bolstering workers’ confidence.

 It took three years before the employer recognized FUJ. FUJ ingeniously included a first-contract arbitration deadline in the election agreement that got the employer to the table. The new contract improved terms and conditions of work. Workers also created a cooperative farm, Tierra y Libertad. Over time, FUJ developed a problem-solving relationship with management. 

Tierra y Libertad, the workers’ cooperative, has its own important story. It signals how the workers are implementing their vision of a better food system. 

How about in México?

At the export agribusiness enclave in San Quintín, Baja California, workers were fed up with stagnant wages, rising living costs, and denial of benefits like pensions, healthcare, and paid vacations that are supposed to be guaranteed in the Constitution. In addition, they experienced rampant gender-based harassment and violence and corrupt of employer-protection unions.

The workers organized the largest strike in agribusiness in México to date, walking out during the 2015 strawberry harvest. Tens of thousands of workers struck. Hours into the strike, national police violently broke up the picket lines and arrested workers en masse. 

Even during negotiations, police with riot gear raided communities. The strikers lacked material support — most were dependent on fieldwork wages to live.

Why was the Sakuma Brothers strike more successful? What’s the secret sauce that produces long- term worker power? 

As FUJ built bargaining power through the strength of its expanding coalition, Sakuma Brothers was forced to enter into a dignity-based relationship. It had to recognize the workers’ capacity to co-govern the workplace, to co-create and implement new rules in their contract. For example, the union and management co-manage wage-setting by daily test picks of strawberries. The next day’s wage rate is based on actual conditions and a pre-negotiated range.

In San Quintín, workers faced many obstacles, and the process of dignity broke down during the strike. Several workers told me that women were marginalized, and that eroded solidarity. Splits grew within the Alliance during negotiations. Without a unified movement, workers didn’t stand a chance. Employers could easily replace workers, given a  labor surplus, and the need  to work to feed their families. Employers could count on the state to use force to suppress strikes. The workers couldn’t develop a defense against state violence or gain the financial support needed to sustain the strike. 

What must US activists do to stand in solidarity with Mexican workers?

Dignity is not the icing on the cake — it is the cake! We create power through solidarity and solidarity through dignity. It’s not helpful to tell others, in México or elsewhere, what to do. We achieve social change when we listen, learn, respect each other.

This means challenging the existence of borders. One compelling approach, articulated by the law scholar Jennifer Gordon, is transnational citizenship, a worker-to-worker system of protecting workers’ rights internationally. Organizing through dignity means organizing inclusively, breaking down nationalist, patriarchal, racist, and other hierarchies, and then compelling our governments to clearly establish and enforce the rights of workers. 

Bonded in solidarity, we can create the world we all deserve.