University of California

9/97 Report -- Santa Rosa Press Democrat 

Gallo, UFW Finally Negotiating Labor Pact

 E. & J. Gallo Winery has begun negotiating a labor contract with the United Farm Workers, three years after farm laborers voted 3-1 at Gallo's Sonoma County vineyards to let Cesaer Chavez's UFW represent them in contract talks.

 The state's Agriculture Labor Relations Board in July ordered Gallo into collective bargaining, following the Modesto, Calif.-based winery's unsuccessful appeals and even a state court case to halt the labor talks. Gallo argued that not enough of its employees had been allowed to participate in the union election in July 1994. The board and the courts disagreed, and the ALRB ordered Gallo to make a UFW contract retroactive to September 1995, saying Gallo's actions were not legitimate.

 Gallo "was motivated not by an effort to seek resolution of open questions of law but rather by a desire to delay its obligation to bargain with its employees' chosen representative," wrote the ALRB in its July 1997 decision. Gallo is appealing the retroactive order.

 A spokesman for the winery said it would have no comment until a contract agreement is reached. Although a UFW contract with Gallo would represent the union's first successful collective bargaining effort on California's North Coast wine country, it is not the first Gallo-UFW labor pact. Gallo signed a collective bargaining agreement with Cesar Chavez in the late '60s after several years of labor strife. Gallo took a more aggressive stance against the union a few years later and the union was decertified in the early '70s.

 UFW officials also declined comment this week. Union spokeswoman Jocelyn Sherman said an agreement with Gallo requires that neither party comment until a contract agreement is reached.

 North Coast grape growers, who pay some of the state's highest farm labor wages and most extensive benefits, reacted cautiously to the news. Several large wineries already are unionized. Most predicted a Gallo-UFW contract would have little direct impact on labor relations, but instead would likely speed up the conversion of many large vineyard operations to mechanical harvesting and pruning.

 "You've already got one of three acres just in Sonoma County that are mechanically harvested, and this is going to help push it to one in two within the next five to ten years," predicted Dick Steward, a Healdsburg grape grower.