Judge Calls for 2 Separate Labor Units

In a decision that could produce a victory for the United Farm Workers union in Ventura County, a state labor judge has recommended that workers at the nation’s largest strawberry grower be represented by separate bargaining units in Oxnard and Watsonville.

The decision is considered a coup for the UFW, which last June lost a statewide election effort to represent pickers at the Coastal Berry Co. to a rival union, the Coastal Berry of California Farm Workers Committee.

Although the Coastal Berry committee got more than 50% of the ballots cast statewide in the June election, the UFW won a majority cast by the company’s 600 harvesters in Oxnard.

The UFW said Coastal Berry’s pickers would be better served by separate bargaining units.

Administrative Law Judge Thomas Sobel agreed, concluding that the two regions have different harvests and different labor pools.

Sobel’s decision now goes to the Agricultural Labor Relations Board for consideration.

If the ruling is upheld, the UFW could ask to be declared the winner in the June election.

“It’s a key ruling,” said UFW spokesman Marc Grossman, adding that the union intends to continue to challenge the election results in Watsonville. “Really, what it comes down to is that workers in Ventura County have now twice voted for the UFW. They want the union, so they should have what they voted for.”

Salinas attorney James Gumberg, who represents the Coastal Berry committee, said he plans to file objections to Sobel’s ruling, which was issued Monday.

Gumberg said the labor relations board--established in 1975 to referee labor disputes and oversee union elections--made it clear before the June election that it believed workers should be represented by a single bargaining unit.

He said members of the Coastal Berry committee would have campaigned harder in Oxnard, had they known there was any chance that the bargaining unit would be split.

Even if the state labor board upholds Sobel’s decision, Gumberg said, he will fight any effort by the UFW to be declared the winner in Oxnard. At the very least, he said, another election should be held for Ventura County workers.

Sobel’s ruling is the latest twist in a high-stakes contest to represent Coastal Berry’s 1,500 employees. The UFW launched a campaign four years ago to unionize the more than 20,000 pickers in the state’s $600-million-a-year strawberry industry.

But it so far has been thwarted by the upstart committee, a loosely knit group formed only last year by workers in Central California.