Court Refuses to Ban UFW Protests

The resurgent United Farm Workers won a major court victory Thursday clearing the way for the union to stage renewed protests at California supermarkets aimed at bolstering consumer boycotts against the agriculture industry.

The union’s triumph came in a California Supreme Court decision that effectively brushed aside legal challenges initiated by the grape industry five years ago--when an army of UFW members and supporters were holding demonstrations and informational picketing outside Vons and other supermarket chains.

Grape industry officials said they expected the UFW to launch new supermarket protests to encourage boycotts of grapes and, eventually, other crops.

“California agriculture can expect to see the United Farm Workers conduct boycotts on all kinds of products, and have no penalty or damages assessed,” said Bruce Obbink, president of the California Table Grape Commission, which represents 800 growers in the state.

Promising to take his concerns to the state Legislature, Obbink added that “agriculture in California will have to figure out how to legislatively correct this egregious error.”

Arturo Rodriguez, president of the UFW, said the high court’s decision “sets things up for further action in front of supermarkets, and gives us credibility among consumers and agribusiness.”

The court’s action Thursday--letting stand, without comment, an appellate court ruling issued in December--stemmed from a grape boycott launched in 1984 by the UFW under its legendary President Cesar Chavez, who died in 1993.

Union officials focused the boycott campaign on health issues, saying that pesticides used in growing grapes were poisoning farm workers, sometimes fatally, along with causing birth defects in some of their children.

To step up the campaign, the UFW began taking its cause to consumers by protesting and picketing outside California supermarkets--mainly Vons stores, but also those of Safeway, Hughes and other chains.

After the UFW beat back a legal challenge by Vons, the Table Grape Commission persuaded the state’s Agricultural Labor Relations Board in 1991 to file a complaint against the union. An administrative law judge ruled in favor of the industry. The UFW appealed the decision, but in the meantime backed off from the supermarket protests out of fear that it would face millions of dollars in damages.

In December, an appeals court ruled in the union’s favor largely on technical grounds, declaring that the Table Grape Commission, as a public entity established by the state government in the 1960s, lacked the legal standing to prosecute a private party such as the UFW on behalf of grape growers.

“When it was created by the Legislature, the Table Grape Commission was limited to marketing grapes,” said UFW general counsel Marcos Camacho. “Grape growers can’t use the commission to go after the UFW on the grape boycott.”

The appellate court ruling--and the decision Thursday by the Supreme Court to let it stand--never addressed the underlying legal issue and main complaint of the growers: that the supermarket protests amounted to an illegal secondary boycott aimed at attacking the growers by hurting the grocery stores carrying their products.

Agriculture officials said the court’s decision could quickly lead to new supermarket protests, including some aimed against the strawberry industry, where the UFW recently has stepped up organizing efforts.

UFW leaders noted the success the union has had recently even without supermarket protests. The union has won its last 13 election contests and has won more than two dozen contracts with growers in the last several years.

In fact, although the UFW drew national attention in the 1960s and 1970s with its high-profile grape boycotts, in recent years the union has advanced its cause primarily through organizing in the fields.

Still, Rodriguez said, the court ruling gives the union “another option that’s important in the work we do.”

The Supreme Court action marked the second major legal victory in the last two weeks for the UFW. Earlier, it reached a settlement with Bruce Church Inc., the nation’s third-largest lettuce grower, that led the company to drop a multimillion-dollar suit against the union and agree on a tentative labor contract.