Union Vote Is Friday at O.C. Vans Plant : Labor: Election may presage wider organizing efforts, especially among immigrant workers.

For the first time in the company’s 28-year history, Vans Inc. will watch as its 1,400 manufacturing workers vote Friday on whether to form a union at the fashionable canvas shoe maker’s largest plant.

Not only does the vote signal dissatisfaction among some of the company’s mostly Latino employees--who the union says can’t afford to pay their share of the company health plan--it may foreshadow increased union activity in Orange County. Many manufacturing workers, especially eager-to-assimilate immigrants, are seeking additional workplace benefits, according to labor leaders.

“There is likely to be an increase in union activity in Orange County because the manufacturing system is maturing now,” said Allen Scott, director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies at UCLA. “We are going to see a period of rising expectations of the blue-collar workers there, especially the immigrants, as they become politically educated. The right to unionize is part of that.”

In Orange County, widely considered a conservative area hostile to unions, an estimated 30% of manufacturing workers were unionized in 1965. But by 1979, as the strength of unions declined nationally and the makeup of the manufacturing industry shifted, that number had fallen to only 10%, Scott said, and it is now well below that.

This could all change. More than 100 workers, mostly Latino, at Taormina Industries, an Anaheim recycling firm with 500 employees, voted to unionize in November. Hotel Restaurant Employees Union Local 681 has been busy canvassing Latino neighborhoods in Anaheim. And Teamsters Local 396 is trying to recruit workers at three Orange County companies in addition to Vans. These include 2,000 workers at a large local manufacturing firm.

The central dispute in the Vans election is over workers’ ability to afford company-sponsored health benefits. The average Vans worker, according to the union, makes about $5.75 an hour, and finds health care too expensive.

“There is currently a genuine interest in organizing within the immigrant community, especially Latinos,” said Miguel Caballero, legal director of the California Immigrant Workers Assn., a union-funded group in Los Angeles. “For years there has been an anti-immigrant bias by some units that saw immigrants used to break strikes or lower wages. But I think unions nationwide are taking a look at their policies.”

Organizing immigrant workers--whom unions actively courted in the early part of this century--is again in vogue not only in California but throughout the Sun Belt. Still, some areas, such as Los Angeles, receive more attention than others.

“Orange County is talked about as a particularly difficult place to organize, so unions often focus their efforts on metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles and the Bay Area, especially Silicon Valley,” said Scott. “Hispanic workers are prime candidates, because they work in industries that are typically low wage, with particularly disagreeable working conditions.”

Latinos in Southern California have been slow to organize, because many did not know their workplace rights and because many were afraid of losing their jobs or being deported if they were in this country illegally, labor leaders said.

But a successful strike by drywall installers in 1992 sent a signal to Southern California employers. Mostly Mexican immigrants--many in this country illegally with little formal education or English skills--these workers took on the drywall subcontractors and the multibillion-dollar home-building industry and won.

On Wednesday, in front of a Vans shoe plant in Orange, union organizers held an afternoon rally as some work shifts ended and others began, attracting nearly 30 workers.

Carrying a Local 396 sign and waving to honking cars, Filomena Ramirez, 36, who has worked for the company for 14 years as a shoe seamstress, said she makes $6.50 an hour, or about $218 per week. She said she can’t afford the company’s health plan, which would cost $60 each week to cover her and her family. Her sister, Berta Vargas Lopez, 34, also works at the company.

“Yes, we’re afraid we will lose our jobs, but we want to have benefits and we just can’t afford it,” said Ramirez. “I expected better conditions in the United States, but I see now that with the union we can get it.”

Vans attorney Craig Gosselin agreed the company’s health care plan is costly but said it would be less expensive if more of the workers would join.

He said Vans gave a 2.7% across-the-board pay increase to workers in March, pays 60% of health insurance benefits for all employees, provides life insurance to workers after one year of work, and provides one week of paid vacation after one year and three weeks after five years. He said all Vans employees are entitled to at least eight paid holidays each year, most recently Good Friday.

“We pay at least 25% higher than minimum wage and these are low-skilled jobs. You’re talking about making shoes,” said Gosselin. “The union is creating a lot of confusion and unrest here. That’s their job, but it’s infuriating. We’ve had to spend a lot of money fighting this because they are confusing people.”

But union supporter Hector Sanchez, a 28-year-old shoemaker who has worked at the company since 1983, said he is not confused. Workers are under pressure to produce more, he said, claiming he makes 750 pairs of shoes a day and was recently asked to increase production to 800 pairs.

“We are under so much pressure and if we have a problem there is nobody to help us,” he said. “The company just says if you don’t like this job--the door is over there. Sometimes people cry and don’t say anything if they want to keep their job.”

Gosselin said the company has dropped plans to increase production.

Inside the Vans plant, at least 10 workers sporting “Viva Vans” buttons bearing the word “union” in a circle with a slash through it said they supported the company and didn’t want any part of the union. Many signed a petition asking the union to leave Vans alone and let the workers themselves negotiate with company officials.

Gosselin said the union is using misleading statements to persuade workers.

“I think the union is singing a real seductive song, they are telling people they are going to make $15 an hour and have full health benefits,” he said. “They make it into a class-warfare kind of game, telling workers that there are all these fat cats and no money goes to the people.”

The workers will begin voting Friday at 10:30 a.m. Typically, a union organizes a company by collecting signatures from at least 50% of the workers. If a majority of the workers casting ballots vote for the union, then the union bargains with the employer for an initial contract.

The number of Latino workers who are unionized remains relatively small nationwide. The latest figures show that only 1.3 million of the 13.3 million members of the AFL-CIO are Latino. This is at a time when union membership continues to drop; in 1991, the national AFL-CIO had 14 million members.

To combat this, the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union Local 681 is conducting a grass-roots organizing campaign among Latino hotel workers in Anaheim. Since mid-February, union leaders have canvassed neighborhoods at night, meeting with workers after they leave their jobs.

“We are contacting people in their homes where they feel more comfortable, rather than approaching them in a more stressful situation such as the workplace,” said Angela Keefe, president of the Local 681.

At Taormina Industries in Anaheim, more than 100 workers who sort recyclables from the trash elected to unionize in November.

“They are looking for medical benefits and representation,” said Vincent Taormina, chief executive officer for the company. “We are now in negotiations with them and things are going fine.”