Striking Drywallers Clash With Workers on Freeway

Striking drywallers threw rocks at replacement workers on a freeway early Friday morning, the latest incident in a 2-month-old battle to form a union that has crippled the Southern California building industry.

Authorities said one man was arrested during the morning incident and another suffered minor head injuries.

Police believe that the freeway attack was planned as part of the drywallers’ wildcat strike, which began June 1 and has led to demonstrations at construction sites from Ventura County to the Mexican border.

The striking drywallers denied that they were chasing the other workers or that they threw objects at them. They said they were on their way to President Bush’s speech in Riverside when they saw the workers at a weigh station and stopped to talk with them about unionizing.

According to California Highway Patrol Officer Mike Lundquist, about 30 employees of the San Dimas-based Gateway Drywall Co. were eastbound in a long-bed truck on the Riverside Freeway just after 6:30 a.m. when four or five pickup trucks filled with striking workers pulled up alongside them and began throwing rocks and bottles.

Gateway supervisor Wayne Eddy, who was driving behind his workers, told police that his employees pulled off at a weigh station near Weir Canyon Road to escape the attack. But the strikers’ vehicles pulled over to the shoulder, and about 150 men were facing off on the side of the freeway, Lundquist said.

About 30 law enforcement officers, including police from Anaheim and Brea, sheriff’s deputies and CHP, quickly ended the confrontation, sending the strikers back to their trucks.

Lundquist said traffic was backed up about 1 1/2 miles and slowed the eastbound lanes for more than two hours.

Police charged Gabriel Acosta, 36, a striker from Paramount, with failing to obey authorities and for loitering on the freeway, Lundquist said. One truck with about 17 strikers was detained for an hour, but no arrests were made, Anaheim Sgt. Richard Buchholz said.

Spokesmen for the strikers accused the replacement workers of instigating the violence.

“They saw all these people in these trucks, they thought they could talk to them about joining the strike,” said Roy Navarro, who later Friday spoke at a union hall in Orange where the drywallers have been meeting. “We don’t want to see them (replacement workers) on the freeway. We’d rather see them staying home.”

The strikers include about a quarter of Southern California’s 4,000 drywallers. The group is trying to form a union, but area drywall companies oppose the effort, fearing that housing developers would turn to cheaper, non-union labor and drive union subcontractors out of business. The drywallers, who have complained about not receiving a raise in a decade, say their pay averages about $300 a week.

Sixty-eight drywallers were arrested a week ago when a demonstration spilled over onto the Hollywood Freeway. Earlier this month, 149 drywallers were charged with trespassing and conspiring to kidnap workers at a Mission Viejo construction site. Officials identified many of those arrested in Orange County as illegal immigrants and deported about two dozen workers to Mexico.

Several hours after Friday’s freeway altercation, Anaheim police returned to the area, chasing strikers away from a housing tract under construction in Anaheim Hills.

Times staff writer Michael Flagg contributed to this story.