David Bacon

The men and women of the docks went back to work this week, not voluntarily, as they had offered to do, but under a federal injunction won by their employers. The coming 80 days covered by the Taft-Hartley back-to-work order, however, will be far from productive. The basic disagreement at......

The wrecked election at Duro Bag hasn’t stopped a wave of efforts in Mexico to organize independent unions. Nor has it halted the support coming from U.S. unions. A number of U.S. unions now belong to a network called Enlace (which means "links" in Spanish), and last year they sent......

Photos by David Bacon MANEADERO, BAJA CALIFORNIA -- Every morning, the phone rings in the Sandoval house in Ca�on Buenavista. Julio Sandoval is making his daily call from the prison in Ensenada, 20 miles away, where he has been held since December. His adult daughter Florentina sits at a cable-spool......

For four days at the end of March, Rancho Camargo, one of five villages in the heartland of the indigenous Mayo in Sonora, Mexico, celebrates Easter. On the day before Easter, the deer dancer, a central figure in Mayo fiestas, comes. Pamfilo Lopez Ozuna, who's been dancing for almost seven......

Photo by David Bacon NOWHERE IN THE WORLD IS THE LIFE OF A UNION LEADER MORE dangerous than in Colombia. Last year, hit men murdered 159 leaders of trade unions; in 2000, 129. Since 1986, 3,800 trade unionists have been assassinated in Colombia, said Hector Fajardo, general secretary of the......

ALTAR, SONORA, Mexico -- Desperation is growing along the border. Many Mexicans thinking of looking for work in the United States know the recession will make it harder than usual to find a job this winter, when the demand for farm laborers, the first avenue of employment for many, is......

Last week an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. seemed tantalizingly close to achieving new rights and legal status. But the problems dogging that possibility were never clearer than in the mixed signals emanating from the White House. And as usual, the new fault lines in the......

PALM SPRINGS -- When Maria Sanchez got a job at Palm Springs‘ luxurious Palm Canyon residential resort in 1997, her wages came nowhere near the affluence of the establishment and its guests. She and her co-workers cleaned five complete apartments each day for $4.75 an hour. A willingness to work......

Bert Corona belonged to that heroic generation that gave us Social Security, unemployment insurance and industrial unions. Hardened by the Great Depression -- the Los Angeles of Corona‘s youth was the scene of violent industrial wars at North American Aviation and on the waterfront. It was the Los Angeles where......

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS -- Plant managers called them the jonkeados, the junked ones. They were workers who got so sick, so chronically disabled, that they were given special jobs. But they weren’t put on “light duty,” to tide them over until they could go back to the line. Instead, these......