DOSSIER / (2) Boycott Driscoll’s Global Day of Action in Tijuana (Mexico) 

On August 16, the People’s and Workers’ Political Organization (OPT), together with the Tijuana People’s Assembly, joined the call for a boycott of the transnational Driscoll’s Corporation in the framework of the fight against NAFTA, which is a trade agreement that has enabled the bosses and their hired hands to dismantle (1) Mexico’s agricultural and industrial base and (2) the labor rights and conquests of the Mexican working class.

In Tijuana, since March 2015, we have responded to the call of the farmworkers of the San Quintin Valley in Baja California, who at that time went on strike in the strawberry fields to demand a union of their choice and a collective-bargaining agreement to improve their wages and working conditions. Eighty thousand farm workers said, « Enough! No More Exploitation and Misery!”

In November of that same year, the National Independent Democratic Union of Agricultural Laborers (SINDJA) was founded. The workers, and their union, continue to fight for a collective-bargaining agreement with Driscoll’s and its BerryMex subsidiary to demand better wages and benefits and to protest high child labor, high sexual harassment, and near slave-like working conditions.

We joined this Call for a Global Day of Action in the context of a deepening political crisis in our country as well as the growing mobilizations of workers, peasants and youth against the government’s privatizations and structural counter-reforms that have increased the discontent among all the different sectors of the working class.

The Driscoll’s Boycott Global Boycott Action took place in Mexicali, Tijuana, Mexico City and in more than 30 cities across the United States, including, Sacramento and San Francisco, where banners also read: “No to NAFTA! No to Racism, Stop the Deportations!”

In Tijuana, we gathered at COSTCO and held an informational picketline to educate the public about the struggle of the workers of San Quintín and inviting them to join us in organizing Driscoll’s Boycott Committees.

— Alejandra (Tijuana)