The taco place is popular, located in downtown McAllen.
“Expensive, though,” said a friend.
But no one bought lunch there last Thursday. About twenty of
us gathered in front of the place at noon, having been asked by Fuerza, the
Equal Voice Network’s workers’ center, to protest on behalf of some of the
restaurant workers. Two of the cooks who had been working in the kitchen had recently complained to the
Fuerza leaders that the owner was refusing to pay them, claiming that he “was
short of cash.”
Hector, the charismatic Fuerza leader, had taken the
workers’ complaints and then had gone through the protocol—making sure of the
facts, getting names and dates, seeing if the Department of Labor would take
the complaint, and then, called the owner, asking for restitution.
Normally the owner gives in, although rarely admitting
guilt. This time, though, the fellow kept putting the workers off. Days of
delay turned into weeks and then months. Hector felt that it was time to
pressure the guy, to show some force.
Thus, our lunch time protest.
We had signs that said “No to wage theft!” and “Justice for
Workers!” and a small megaphone for chants.
The restaurant owner refused to come out to talk. He locked
the door, and placed a “Closed” sign in the window. Every now and then a
potential customer would come up, pull on the locked door, then look at the
protesters, and move on, his inconvenience written across his brow.
Juanita, one of the workers, walked with us in front of her
former workplace. She was so angry that
tears welled up in her eyes when she explained how she had helped the owner set
the restaurant up. “The menu, the recipes, I created those. I feel humiliated.”
As the noon hour came to a close, we gathered into a circle,
and, speaking past the closed front door, assured the owner that we would be
back, again and again, until he did right by his workers.
Two days later, and on the other side of the Rio Grande
Valley, stands at a ballpark were filled with fans looking forward to a last
baseball game of the summer. Two of my friends joined the crowd. They struck up
a conversation with another spectator, a woman who turned out to be married to
the home team’s pitcher.
As game time approached, my friends noticed that only the
visiting team suited up. The pitcher’s wife, speaking on her cell phone,
quietly said, “Our team is refusing to play. The owner won’t pay them their
salaries. The checks that he wrote them bounced. So they won’t come out of the
locker room.” Not a lot of money in any case, the wife explained—only about
$600 a month. She, pregnant, and her husband, share an apartment with two other
players.
After a while, the ballpark manager invited the kids to come
down to the field to engage in a dance contest. And then, to a second dance
contest. It was now forty-five minutes past starting time, and it was clear
that there would be no game.
My friends got up, headed down to get their money back, and
then set out for home. They stopped by
our house to share their excitement. “We saw a strike! Imagine that, we saw a
strike on Labor Day weekend! What a great thing!”
The Labor Day weekend is bookended this year by the two
major political parties’ campaigns. Both campaigns are making promises about
having the answer to our nation’s economic woes, both campaigns claiming to
understand “the big picture,” and that “big picture” seems to be all about
powerful, untouchable greed
Locally, a couple of cooks and some minor league ball
players are doing their best to get paid their very small wages. However small,
they are their wages, and they are wages that had been stolen.
While the greedy ones are indeed quite powerful, on this Labor
Day weekend, I was pleased to be reminded that workers, in their own way, also
have a good deal of power, of “fuerza.” What could happen if all that fuerza
were harnessed and then unleashed? Now that would be a ball game worth
watching.
