12:30-1:10 p.m. Tues. in Sacramento just before UFW founder’s birthday
Chavez granddaughter, Councilman McCarty join Hiram Johnson high schoolers at a noontime rally/fast urging governor to preserve farm worker lunch breaks
Two days before the state holiday honoring his birthday, Cesar Chavez’s granddaughter, Christine Chavez, and Sacramento City Councilman Kevin McCarty will join Hiram Johnson High School students on Tuesday during their lunch period to protest Gov. Schwarzenegger’s proposed regulations that would deny many farm workers rest and meal time breaks.
Johnson High pupils are volunteering to go without lunch on Tuesday to oppose the denial of meal breaks for farm workers. They will discuss the issue with Chavez and McCarty and write letters to the governor. Chavez, 33, Southern California political director for the United Farm Workers of America, will talk with students about her grandfather, who “sacrificed for decades through strikes, boycotts, marches and fasts to win basic protections for farm workers such as meal and rest breaks,” she says.
Even under current practices, Chavez says, many farm workers routinely work through guaranteed breaks, especially when laboring on piece rate, so many cents per unit. They are afraid of losing money or facing retaliation from foremen or labor contractors. Now government statistics show the majority of California farm workers are undocumented, “living and working constantly in the shadows of society, always fearing exposure and deportation,” she adds.
Under the governor’s proposed regulation shifting the burden of guaranteeing meal breaks from the employer to the worker, “how many believe undocumented farm workers will demand their employers provide them with breaks?” Chavez asks.
Since 2000, California has marked Cesar Chavez’s March 31 birthday as an official state holiday under legislation signed into law by former Gov. Gray Davis. State workers get the day off on Monday, March 28.
Who: The quad at Hiram Johnson High School; Cesar Chavez’s granddaughter, Christine Chavez; Sacramento City Councilman Kevin McCarty.
What: Fasting during lunch period two days before Cesar Chavez’s birthday against Gov. Schwarzenegger’s proposal that would deny many farm workers guaranteed meal and rest breaks.
When: 12:30-1:10 p.m., Tuesday, March 29, 2005.
Where: Hiram Johnson High School Quad, 6879 14th Avenue (65th and 14th), Sacramento.
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