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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the April 17, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Strawberry workers organize

Time is ripe for union drive

By Gloria La Riva and Jahaziel Bonilla in San Francisco

There are 700,000 farm workers in California. They are the backbone of the state's giant agribusiness industry.

Yet they are getting poorer than ever as the growers get richer.

In the last 15 years, the government and growers have conspired to try to destroy anything that stands in the way of higher agribusiness profits: the United Farm Workers, laws to protect farm workers, and immigrants' civil rights.

Several recent studies reveal the effects of this offensive. Don Villarejo, executive director of the California Institute for Rural Studies, told the March 31 New York Times, "In terms of constant dollars, there's been a significant decline in wages, we think by over 25 percent, over the last 20 years."

Behind the statistic is a life of hardship and suffering for farm workers and their families. Low wages, no benefits, deplorable sanitary conditions-all this explains why the Farm Workers' union drive to organize California's strawberry workers is picking up steam.

On April 13, tens of thousands are expected to march in Watsonville, center of the California strawberry industry, to demand union rights for farm workers. The action, called by the Farm Workers and the AFL-CIO, has stirred national excitement in the labor movement and among students and young workers.

It will be a show of force, demonstrating to the big agribusiness bosses what deep solidarity there is with the Farm Workers.

Hard work, low pay

Field work is one of the most labor-intensive occupations.

Workers stoop in the fields 10 to 12 hours a day.

Strawberry workers in particular work bent in half. They have to pick by hand the fruits that are too fragile to be harvested any other way.

Doubled over, they move swiftly along narrow furrows a foot deep in water, bending to the ground to snatch up the berries. There's no time to stand upright.

In the Watsonville area, the average wage for strawberry workers has dropped from $6.55 an hour in 1985 to $6.25 today. And that doesn't take the rising cost of living into account-so real wages have dropped even more.

Most farm workers used to live in housing that, while inadequate, was provided by the grower. Then federal laws were passed to set norms. The growers reacted by not providing any more housing.

Now most workers have to pay high rents, and pay for transportation from home to field.

The great struggles of the Farm Workers in the 1960s improved farm workers' lives. Great organizing campaigns brought some 80,000 people into the union by 1970.

But those gains have been eroded because of union busting in recent years. Without union contracts to protect most workers, the bosses have grabbed ever greater profits from their labor, exploiting them more and more.

For example, as a result of the national grape boycott in solidarity with the union in the 1960s and 1970s, every California table-grape grower finally signed a union contract. Today, there is not a single contract with table- grape growers.

By 1993, UFW memberhsip was down to 21,000. What led to the decline?

A war against the workers

States have weakened laws that had established basic rights for farm workers. Only three states besides California have had such laws. They are Arizona, Florida and New York.

In California, the Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975 established rights for farm workers. The ALRA, and the board that it established, were California farm workers' counterpart to the National Labor Relations Act and National Labor Relations Board.

Like every other right won by workers in this country, it came about from the struggle-in this case by the UFW.

The ALRB is supposedly a neutral mediator between worker and owner. But the governor appoints the five board members and the general counsel.

The workers have no say. And in capitalism, "neutrality" weighs heavily in favor of the owners.

Workers World spoke with UFW press representative Jocelyn Sherman. She said: "The ALRB was set up to protect the farm workers, but now often it protects the growers. [Former Gov. George] Deukmejian and [Gov. Pete] Wilson were elected with agribusiness money.

"And they in turn paid the growers back at the expense of the farm workers. They've brought in a lot of people who are pro-grower."

An example of that payback is the pesticides issue. Methyl bromide, a ground fumigant, is extremely toxic. Union and public pressure forced the state legislature to ban methyl bromide in California by March 31, 1996.

But Wilson called a special session in the legislature to allow another vote. The result? Growers can continue to use it.

Sherman says methyl bromide is so dangerous that a study using dogs for testing was canceled "because it drove the dogs crazy. So why should people have to work with this pesticide?

"Farmworkers' babies are sometimes born without arms or legs. That's why the UFW has always been in the forefront of trying to ban these chemicals."

Added to the attacks on farm workers' labor rights, Wilson's racist, anti-immigrant assault is aimed at stripping all rights from undocumented workers. In late March, the governor announced that over 200 state programs-such as unemployment insurance, workers' compensation and state disability-would be denied to all undocumented workers.

Hundreds of thousands of undocumented workers would continue to pay unemployment and disability taxes. But they would receive not a penny in benefits.

Denying unemployment insurance could be especially devastating to farm workers, because they often work on a seasonal basis. More farm workers' families may be forced to migrate more often.

This action by Wilson is more sweeping than Proposition 187, the anti-immigrant law that has not been implemented because of a legal challenge to its constitutionality.

The fight for a union

The United Farm Workers' battle to win union rights for 20,000 strawberry workers has been raging for more than two years in the Salinas and Watsonville areas. This is where more than half the strawberries consumed in the United States and Canada are produced.

It is the heart of a $650-million-a-year industry.

The UFW and the AFL-CIO are mobilizing a campaign of mass public support before the union seeks representation elections for the strawberry workers.

Sherman says the owners intimidate the workers heavily. That makes it harder to win union elections outright. "We know we have the workers' support. They're very aware the company provides toilets or clean water because of the union's presence.

"These workers have no medical benefits, no pensions, the women have to deal with sexual harassment. We're in an active union drive, but we're waiting until we can create an environment free of company harassment before we seek an election date.

"And that pro-union environment will happen with actions like this weekend's march. It will be the biggest march Watsonville has ever seen," Sherman said

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