David Bacon

WATSONVILLE - Last year, when the AFL-CIO engineered the sale of Gargiulo Corp., the largest strawberry grower in the Pajaro Valley, to a pair of pro-union investors, most observers believed the United Farm Workers to be on the verge of a major breakthrough in its three-year campaign to unionize the......

Maria Villela and her husband, Raquel, spent a combined 32 years working at Friction, an auto-parts plant in Irvine. They worked there when the business was bought by Echlin, a Connecticut-based auto-parts giant with global holdings currently valued at $3.9 billion. The Villelas were leaders in the organizing drive that......

TIJUANA, Baja California - As dawn broke over Tijuana on May 22, dozens of rough-clad workers began gathering in a narrow road facing an old industrial building, high on one of the mesas surrounding the city. An undercurrent of tension and anticipation filled the dusty street in front of the......

TIJUANA - The effort to crush an unprecedented strike of Tijuana maquiladora workers is provoking international reaction, and within the city has led to surging voter support for Mexico's leftist opposition party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). Statewide elections in Baja California, and municipal elections in Tijuana, are......

TIJUANA - When Norberto Cordoba left his home and family to seek steady work, he landed a job at the Han Young plant in Tijuana, making truck chassis for Hyundai Corp. The pay was nearly double what he had made as a welder in his home state of Veracruz, but......