Rural News: July, 2002 - Volume #8

RURAL AMERICA

Meat and Poultry
Many towns in the Midwest and southeast have had their populations transformed by the hiring decisions of a large local employer.

California: San Joaquin Valley Jobs
The San Joaquin Valley has persisting high unemployment rates.

California: Census, Housing
Detailed "long-form" census data--53 questions from one in six US households--were released for California in May 2002.

California: Salinas, Watsonville
Census 2000 data indicate that immigration continued to change the socio-demographic face of the city of Salinas, California, during the 1990s.

FARM WORKERS

California: Farm Workers
Victoria Island Farms, owner of the property on which six migrant labor camps with "deplorable conditions" were found in San Joaquin County in 2000, agreed to pay $542,969 in September 2001

UFW: Arbitration, Members
The UFW is pushing a first-contract arbitration bill, SB 1736, that would require a certified union and an employer who cannot agree on a first contract to request that the ALRB appoint an arbitrator to resolve their differences

ALRB: Decisions, Unions
The ALRB issued five decisions in the first half of 2002. In Pete Vanderham Dairy, Inc, 28 ALRB 1, the Board certified Dairy Employees Local 17 as bargaining representative for three workers; the union won the election on a 2-0 vote.

Southeast: Migrants
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers is continuing to recruit college students to pressure Taco Bell, a subsidiary of Tricon Global Restaurants

Northeast: Eggs, New York, Fishing
DeCoster Egg Farms in June 2002 reached a $3.2 million settlement with the Mexican government and migrant workers who sued DeCoster in 1998 over alleged racial discrimination in housing and working conditions in a Turner

Northwest: Oregon, Washington, Colorado
Sodexho, a Norpac food-service client based in Maryland, pushed the 240-member farmer's cooperative into negotiating with Oregon's only farm-labor union

Employment Training, Data
President Bush proposed the elimination of the National Farmworkers Jobs Program, the old 402/303 training programs that train legally authorized farm workers for higher income and usually nonfarm jobs

IMMIGRATION

Sanctions: INS vs Tyson
On December 11, 2001, the US filed its largest-ever employer sanctions case, United States v. Tyson Foods Inc. in the Eastern District of Tennessee, which accuses Tyson of 36 counts

H-2A: California, South, Mexico
Ralph DeLeon, a custom harvester/FLC in Ventura county, brought 38 H-2A workers from Mexico to California to harvest lemons in March-April 2002.

SAW, Social Security
The Seasonal Agricultural Workers program attracted 1.3 million applications from foreigners who said they did at least 90 days of farm work in 1985-86 as unauthorized workers.

Border: Apprehensions Down
From October 2001 through April 2002, border apprehensions dropped 38 percent to 526,000, the lowest level since 1985

Mexico: Policy, Remittances, Braceros
Mexican President Fox has so far failed to achieve his major foreign policy initiative, progress toward a borderless North America.

OTHER

California Farm Sales: Tulare/Fresno
Tulare county had the most farm sales in 2001, $3.5 billion, compared to $3.2 billion for Fresno county.

California Commodities
In 1997, California's FVH sales-- fruits, nut and berries, vegetables and melons and horticultural specialties that range from nursery and greenhouse crops to Christmas trees, mushrooms, and sod- were $14 billion, or over half of the state's farm sales.

Farm Subsidies: US, EU
The 421-page Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 was approved in May 2002.

Russia: Land, Workers
Russia's lower house of Parliament, the Duma, approved legislation in June 2002 that would create a legal system to allow Russians, but not foreigners, to buy and sell farm land for the first time since farms were nationalized in 1917.

RESOURCES