Fieldworkers Deal Big Blow to UFW
In a stunning setback that raises questions about the United Farm Workers’ ability to connect with today’s agricultural workers, the union has failed to win a high-stakes organizing vote at California’s largest strawberry farm.
Official results from the union election at Watsonville, Calif.-based Coastal Berry Co., announced early Thursday morning, showed a slight margin of workers favored a rival union formed by company employees last year.
The Coastal Berry of California Farmworkers Committee--a group with no official leader and few apparent resources--took 646 votes, compared with 577 for the UFW, which has waged a costly and nearly futile three-year campaign to organize California’s 20,000 strawberry pickers. An additional 79 workers voted for no union at all.
Observers say the UFW may have spent as much as $90,000 a month in a statewide campaign that has succeeded in attracting only about 50 new members.
“We knew we would win, because we know the workers. We are the workers,” said Martin Vazquez, a committee member who characterized union organizers as slick and patronizing outsiders. “The UFW doesn’t want to admit that the workers prefer us, but now they have to.”
The UFW still has a shot at a runoff election, depending on the outcome of a state investigation into 60 challenged ballots, some of which were allegedly cast by field supervisors. Under state law a union must earn more than 50% of the vote to win the right to represent workers. That investigation will determine whether the committee has the required majority or must face the UFW again, as early as next week. As it now stands, the group is a mere six votes short of a majority.
Union leaders tried gamely to put a positive spin on the results, but there was no masking the deep disappointment of UFW supporters, more then 100 of whom crowded into the offices of the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board in Salinas, Calif., for the vote count Wednesday night.
Some fresh from the strawberry fields, they began the evening with rousing chants, prayer and tributes to the late UFW founder Cesar Chavez. But as the count ended at about 1 a.m., only a handful remained, quietly slumped in chairs.
“It’s a hard thing to swallow,” said Alberto Gonzalez, a UFW contract administrator and activist for 32 years. “We thought we had it. . . . I don’t know what happened.”
The vote was widely viewed as a crucial test of the union’s efforts to rebuild membership and regain its lost clout in California agriculture. Once a formidable national presence, with about 80,000 members at its peak in 1973, the union suffered decades of declining membership and was barely at 20,000 members when Chavez died 20 years later.
New President Arturo Rodriguez pledged to rebuild the struggling union by returning to field organizing. With backing from AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney, the UFW specifically targeted California’s fast-growing strawberry industry.
The AFL-CIO refuses to say how much it has spent on the three-year effort, but one researcher said the cost may have run as high as $90,000 a month. AFL-CIO spokesman Rich Greer said the group had no intention of pulling out now: “Our commitment continues.”
Despite its ambitions, the UFW moved cautiously. It slowly cultivated strawberry workers, and waited until it was confident of a win before calling for an election. That’s one reason the poor showing at Coastal Berry--a grower that had pledged neutrality on the union issue--was so perplexing.
Organizers said they had expected a difficult race at the grower’s main operation in Watsonville, but anticipated a strong showing in the company’s fast-growing operation at Oxnard in Ventura County. Activists had been talking to workers there for months, while members of the committee said they made only one visit, for two days, last week.
Yet the Oxnard vote gave the UFW only a slight lead, which was devoured by the committee’s strong showing in Watsonville. Some critics of the UFW said its miscalculation pointed to a union that is out of touch with workers.
“As far as I’m concerned, this is the biggest black eye the UFW has incurred in its history,” said Rob Roy, president of the pro-grower Ventura County Agricultural Assn. “What does the UFW have to sell these workers other than 2% dues and a bunch of nostalgia?”
Rodriguez attributed the outcome to a variety of factors, but singled out two as most important.
A hugely successful UFW election at a mid-sized strawberry grower near Salinas in 1995 ended in massive job loss after the grower closed operations. Those workers fanned out to strawberry farms throughout the region, spreading the word that a UFW vote could cost workers their jobs.
More recently, the UFW uncovered canceled checks that appeared to prove strawberry growers financed “workers’ committees” to compete with the UFW. Earlier this month, 20 growers signed a court decree pledging not to fund such committees in the future.
Rodriguez and others have charged that the Coastal Berry of California Farmworkers Committee is a similar, grower-financed group set up to thwart the UFW drive--a charge that committee members vehemently deny.
Rodriguez said the combination of fear and confusion in the fields has hampered UFW efforts.
“They’re in a situation where they may have to choose between a job and a better way of life,” he said. “That’s a tough choice. Workers need to be willing to take the risk, and I know that sooner or later, they’re going to understand.”
But Jim Gumberg, an attorney representing the committee, said the UFW’s days may be waning.
“They will try to obfuscate, delay, there will be a bunch of objections,” he said of the election results. “They will try and drag it out, because it’s clear the committee is going to win this runoff.”
Times staff writer Fred Alvarez contributed to this article.