Dairy derechos.

• Author: Gupta, Charu
• Position: On the Line - Stoll Farms

Marshallville, Ohio

Stoll Farms has 3,000 dairy cows in northeastern Ohio. Working the farm are mostly natives of Mexico. They say they were not treated fairly. It started with one firing, then another, and quickly the number ballooned to eight in a matter of six months. The company also reduced its starting wage from $8.50 to $7.50. When a new manager fired an injured co-worker who couldn't work fast enough, Jorge Espinoza asked his colleagues--about forty other immigrant laborers--to stop working. Espinoza then went to owner Edward Stoll with some questions.

"He wouldn't talk to me as a representative of all of us," says Espinoza. "He told us to leave if we didn't talk to him one on one."

The workers formed their own union, United Dairyworkers of Ohio, Local 1. They went on strike November 2, and their demands include regular wage increases, grievance procedures, and an end to paycheck deductions for workplace accidents.

The workers, with help from the Immigrant Worker Project nearby, first tried to find backing from major unions like the Farm Labor Organizing Committee and the United Food and Commercial Workers. Despite words of solidarity, however, such unions hesitated to send resources to a small band of workers--no more than fifty--in a remote area.

Organizing dairy farm workers is a challenge. Like other agricultural workers in the U.S., they have no official rights to form a union, bargain collectively, or confront employers--rights granted to workers in most other industries under...