University of California

2/11/97 News Release -- AFL and UFW

The defendant in the suit is Gargiulo Inc., a major player in the $650 million-a-year California strawberry industry. Gargiulo is a wholly owned subsidiary of Calgene Corp., a Davis, Calif., bio-engineering company that is majority owned by the chemical giant Monsanto Corp. of St. Louis.

Gargiulo is one the largest employers in the strawberry industry. The company, with headquarters in Watsonville, Calif., and Naples, Fla., not only employs berry pickers, who earn an average of $8,500 a season, but also cools the berries, markets and distributes them.

"What we are asking for is just" said Victor Amdrade Collazo, one of the plaintiffs in the suit. "We ask that Garguilo value our work."

According to the suit, the company's workers have been forced to work 'off-the-clock' for several years, a violation of state and federal laws. They were required to show up in fields well before they were to be paid -- in many cases to perform calisthenics for Gargiulo foremen -- and were required to remain at work to pack berries and tally their work without being paid. Workers who refused were subject to disipline..

The suit also alleges that workers were forced to pay for protective equipment -- mainly protective gloves -- in violation of California law.  The costs and lost wages, on average, amount to more than 5 percent of strawberry workers’ pay.

Although the suit does not ask for specific damages, the number of workers with potential claims could reach more than 1,000, with back pay and damages of more than $2 million. The suit also asks that Gargiulo pay statutory penalties, which could amount to several million dollars.

The case is being brought by Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a firm that specializes in employment and business law. Among the cases the firm has won is the acclaimed securities fraud suit against the Wall Street firm Drexel Burnham, as well as several sex discrimination and wage and hour cases in the agribusiness industry. They are also representing plaintiffs in the sex harassment case against Mitsubishi Motors.

Organizers with the AFL-CIO and the United Farm Workers learned of the work-without-pay allegations and other abuses during The Strawberry Workers Campaign. The workers were referred to the law firm.

The organizing drive is among the largest union organizing drives in the U.S. It aims to help improve the lives of 20,000 California strawberry workers who are struggling for a living wage, freedom from sexual harassment, clean drinking water and bathrooms in the fields, job security and health insurance. "This is an industry that feeds off its workers," United Farm Workers Secretary-Treasurer Dolores Huerta said at a news conference a t the entrance to Monsanto Corp. in St. Louis. "Monsanto can fix this problem."

UFW President Auturo Rodriguez, at a news conference in San Jose, said, "Workers want a living wage," and added, the lost wages are "a fortune to strawberry workers" but "not much to Monsanto."

As part of the joint project between the United Farm Workers and the AFL-CIO, the workers have been seeking support across the country. They have won the backing of major supermarket chains and a broad coalition of groups, including the NAACP, NOW, the Sierra Club, and the National Baptist Convention.