Pay Day Arrives a Decade Late in Labor Dispute

A nearly decade-long labor dispute ended Thursday in the Coachella Valley when 58 agricultural workers--46 women and 12 men--received checks from a $1.4-million settlement with Sun World Inc., which was found guilty of unfair labor practices for refusing to hire them after a brief strike.

Union officials in Washington called the award the largest of its kind for a small group of workers. The employees are represented by the Fresh Fruit & Vegetable Workers Local 78-B, of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, AFL-CIO and worked in a carrot-packing shed.

Representatives of the National Labor Relations Board, which found Sun World guilty of unfair labor practices, distributed the checks to the employees and their heirs in a morning ceremony in the desert community of Thermal in Riverside County. According to union officials, the individual awards ranged from $15,000 to more than $50,000.

The case dragged on so long that at the end only 14 people were still employed at Indio-based Sun World, one of the largest packers of fresh vegetables in the world. Two workers died in the interim and their heirs were awarded the money. Another worker, identified as Julio Carrasco, has not been located.

Former labor attorney Ronald Domnitz, now a San Diego County Municipal Court judge, opened the case in 1981, when Sun World refused to hire the workers after they struck for a few days during contract negotiations. When Domnitz was appointed to the bench, San Diego attorney Byron Georgiou took over the matter in January, 1983.

In 1982, an administrative law judge ordered Sun World to reinstate the employees with back pay. The company appealed the order to the NLRB, which upheld the judge’s ruling in 1984 and found Sun World guilty of unfair labor practices.

Georgiou said the workers were rehired in 1984, but the company argued that it was required to give them back pay only up to March, 1982. The union then brought the back pay issue before another administrative law judge, who ruled that employees were entitled to back pay from 1981 to Nov. 10, 1984. The company appealed again to the NLRB in Washington, which upheld the judge’s ruling in January, 1987.

A lengthy court fight ensued, with the U.S. 9th Circuit Court upholding the NLRB’s back pay decision in 1988. Sun World attempted to get the U.S. Supreme Court to review the 9th Circuit’s decision last year, but the court let the appellate ruling stand.