SANTA ANA : Drywall Workers Rally for Solidarity

Saying their struggle will not die, nearly 500 striking drywall workers, relatives and friends Tuesday staged a rally at the Civic Center Plaza.

Organizers said the rally, which was preceded by a noisy, chanting march around Plaza of the Flags, was held to strengthen solidarity among workers, many of whom have not received a paycheck since June 1, when they walked off their jobs.

The workers are a portion of the more than 1,000 drywall workers across Southern California who are demanding wages higher than the $300 a week they say many of them were earning. They say they have not had a raise in 10 years.

The strike has grown bitter with each week. Striking drywall workers have allegedly smashed windows of uncompleted houses in Orange County and have allegedly stolen equipment from construction sites and tools from other construction workers who refused to join the strike.

During a demonstration two weeks ago in Mission Viejo, violence again flared, resulting in the arrests of more than 150 drywall workers after several construction workers on a job site were allegedly held against their will.

At Tuesday’s rally, Miguel G. Caballero of the California Immigrant Workers Assn. in Los Angeles said 11 workers out of 49 who were arrested in Mission Viejo and turned over to immigration authorities for deportation proceedings will have a hearing today at Terminal Island.

Also in attendance at the rally was Santa Ana City Councilman John Acosta, who gave support to the striking drywall workers in a compassionate speech in Spanish. Acosta told the workers that “I know you’re not criminals. . . . I support your movement.”

Antonio Hernandez, who is on the strikers’ negotiating committee, said an Orange County company, Five Star Co., that hires drywall workers, signed a contract agreement Tuesday. But Hernandez refused to comment on the company’s size or details of the agreement.

“It doesn’t matter right now on the size,” Hernandez said. But, he admitted, “it’s not a big company.”

O. Randolph Hall Jr., president of the 2,000-member Building Industry Assn. of Southern California, said he had no knowledge of Five Star, but he did say that he heard on Tuesday that MB Drywall in Orange County had received a petition to have a union election.

However, a union at MB Drywall, which is not a member of the BIA, recently had been voted out, Hall said. Whether the petition was related to the striking drywall workers or an attempt to install a union again was uncertain, he said.