Strawberry workers fight for union rights: Labor's strawberry campaign draws national attentiontitle

by Marilyn Bechtel

This article was reprinted from the April 12, 1997 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

OAKLAND, Calif. - For the labor movement and its allies in California and beyond, all roads lead to Watsonville this Sunday as members of unions and religious and community organizations prepare to board hundreds of buses bound for the Pajaro Valley community in the heart of the state's - and the country's - strawberry-growing region.

That national AFL-CIO leaders John Sweeney, Richard Trumka and Linda Chavez-Thompson plan to march alongside United Farm Workers of America (UFW) leaders Arturo Rodriguez and Dolores Huerta shows just how important the demonstration, and the Strawberry Workers Campaign of which it is a part, are to the entire labor movement. Marchers are expected from as far away as New York State and Ontario, Canada.

"Clearly only public support will force the industry to recognize workers' rights to support the union free of intimidation and coercion, and to bargain in good faith," UFW President Arturo Rodriguez told reporters earlier this year.

The demonstration will kick off this year's strawberry season "by letting the growers know the workers' demands are not something they can ignore," UFW spokesperson Marta Benitez told the World. It will show that local people and people from far beyond the area "are behind the drive of these workers to gain basic rights that they deserve, just like anyone else," she added.

The workers are campaigning for a living wage, health care, clean drinking water and toilets, and protection from sexual harassment and arbitrary loss of their jobs. The campaign has as its slogan "5 cents for fairness" because raising the price of berries by a nickel a box could boost workers' pay by at least 50 percent.

The strawberry campaign is one of two organizing campaigns with low wage workers to which the national labor federation is giving top priority. Area labor leaders call it the labor movement's largest single organizing campaign in over four decades. The entire industry is targeted, with emphasis on the eight large "coolers" that process and market the berries.

The area's 20,000 strawberry workers, who harvest four-fifths of the country's strawberry crop, are among the most harshly exploited in the U.S. The increasingly profitable industry reaped sales of over $650 million last year, leading growers to add a thousand acres in the Pajaro Valley alone. But strawberry workers have not had a wage hike in a decade, and have seen their real wages decline by as much as half during that period.

They also suffer some of the worst conditions. For as much as 12 hours a day, workers must squat or bend over the ankle-high plants searching out berries hidden in the dirt under the leaves.

Most workers lack medical coverage. Because their wages are so low, two and three families must often crowd together in a small apartment. The financial pressures create conditions for child labor. Strawberry workers' life spans are significantly shorter than those of the people who profit from their work.

California strawberry workers average about $8,500 a season. No matter how long they have worked the fields, they have no job security. Foremen often demand sexual favors from women workers in exchange for a job.

Pesticides such as methyl bromide and captan are a serious hazard in the fields, Benitez said. The UFW and a coalition of environmental groups last month filed notice under California's Prop. 65 that strawberry growers have failed to warn workers about captan's effects. "The use of captan has increased sevenfold in the past six years in the strawberry industry, even though the EPA has restricted its use in other fruits and vegetables," UFW secretary-treasurer and co-founder Dolores Huerta told journalists in San Francisco in late March. The ballot measure provides for penalties of up to $2,500 per violation per worker.

The union says farm workers take jobs in the strawberry fields only when they have to, because wages are so low and conditions so harsh. Benitez said no strawberry workers are currently covered by union contracts. She said workers at a number of berry farms - such as VCNM where workers last year voted 332 to 50 for the union - have voted to join the United Farm Workers, only to have the growers plow the plants under and go out of business.

In addition, Benitez said, as the current season starts, growers are refusing to hire known union supporters. But, she said, the influence of the organizing drive is shown by such things as the increasing availability of clean bathrooms and drinking water in the fields. "The workers know if we weren't having this campaign, these facilities wouldn't exist," she said.

The strawberry workers are backed by the National Strawberry Commission made up of over 40 civil rights, environmental and religious groups including the National Organization for Women, the NAACP, the National Council of Churches, organizations of Catholic and Protestant Latino clergy, the Southern Christian Leadership Council and many others.

Labor and community supporters have waged a highly successful campaign for food retailers to sign a pledge declaring their support for the workers' rights. Among signers are Ralph's - California's largest food retailer - and the east coast chains Gristedes, Sloans and Key Food.

Sunday will mark the third major march in Watsonville by farm workers and their supporters in less than two years, as the United Farm Workers of America has targeted area agribusiness, and the strawberry industry in particular, for organization.

Thousands gathered there in September 1995 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the UFW's historic vegetable strike and to renew organizing among vegetable and strawberry workers. In April 1996 over 5,000 demonstrators - a large majority of them area farm workers - marched to kick off the drive to organize the entire strawberry industry in the area.