University of California

10/11/97 News Report -- Associated Press 

WATSONVILLE, Calif. -- More than four years after the death of Cesar Chavez, seeds are being planted up and down the West Coast in hopes of reviving the late labor leader's wilted union, the United Farm Workers.

This time, organizers are going after strawberry, raspberry and apple growers from Irvine, Calif., to Washington state. They are forming unprecedented partnerships with such unions as the Teamsters, once a bitter competitor.

"We've had our ups and downs over the years," said Arturo Rodriguez, the UFW's president and son-in-law of Chavez as he walked among the rows of strawberry fields in this town 70 miles southeast of San Francisco. "It's still highly confrontational, highly emotional."

Rodriguez's goals are ambitious for a union that saw its membership drop from as many as 70,000 in the 1970s to less than half that in the 1980s. His plans include unionizing California's $550 million strawberry industry, concentrating on the Watsonville-Salinas area and its more than 10,000 workers, most of them from Mexico.

"Cesar always taught us one thing -- that we've got a true cause," Rodriguez said. "We've got an honest message. . . . That's something to fight for."

In fact, some say it was Chavez's death that has stirred the union he cofounded with Dolores Huerta more than 30 years ago. Others point to a renewed disgust with health and safety violations at some farms -- from unsanitary toilets and bad drinking water to claims of sexual harassment. The average strawberry worker, the UFW says, makes $8,000 a year.

Growers say the latest push to unionize farm workers on the West Coast is simply the work of unrelenting union organizers, most of whom do not hail from the towns they target.

"It's kind of a carpetbagger approach. And I think that stirs mistrust and resentment," said Mike Gempler, executive director of the Washington Growers League. The group includes 900 growers, 70 percent of whom produce apples.

"We have no reason to mistreat our workers. We depend on them as much as they depend on us," said Peter Navarro, a second-generation strawberry grower who leases 115 acres, including Peckham Farms, near Watsonville.

Navarro said he paid above-average wages to his workers -- many of whom have worked for him for more than a decade. He pays them up to $13 an hour in the peak summer season and about $6 an hour during nonpeak times, which the UFW says is the industry average.

"It's not a perfect industry," said Navarro, who also pays 80 percent of his employees' health insurance. "But it's not the way the UFW says it is."

Violators, he said, should be and are handled by state regulators.

The UFW has made little progress with Navarro's workers, but it is moving ahead at Coastal Berry, one of the state's largest growers of strawberries. This summer, the company signed a so-called "neutrality agreement" with the union, meaning it promises not to interfere with organizing efforts.

Contract negotiations would begin only if the union were to win a secret-ballot election among workers at Coastal Berry, which employs about 1,500 people at peak season.

Such an election will not happen this year. But -- while the UFW has had smaller victories in such industries as mushrooms and roses -- all eyes will be on Coastal Berry next season in what could be the first major break for the UFW on the West Coast in more than 25 years.

Some Coastal workers are clearly pleased with the idea of the union.

"Seems to me it's a good thing because we've always been alone," Jose Orozco, a Coastal Berry worker from Mexico, said in Spanish.

Orozco makes $6.50 an hour. He and others say they would like to make a minimum of $8 an hour.

But others -- some who wear baseball caps with antiunion logos and keep their distance or bow their heads when organizers approach -- say they are happy with what they have.

"We have no interest in the union," Coastal Berry worker Maria Cervantes said, also in Spanish, her face covered with a bandanna. "We are doing fine without them."

The UFW decided to descend upon Watsonville and Salinas to take on the industry after VC & M Farms, a Watsonville strawberry grower, plowed under its crop and restructured the company in 1995, leaving hundreds of workers unemployed. The workers had just voted in the union.