UFW Wins Contract With Gallo

A quarter-century after the United Farm Workers of America created a national movement calling for consumers to boycott Gallo wines, the union has finally won a contract with the winemaker, the world’s largest.

Union leaders said this week’s agreement caps a watershed year that also saw the creation of a state holiday in honor of UFW founder Cesar Chavez’s birthday, the passage of a bill to increase regulation of farm labor middlemen and a victory in the long campaign to represent employees of the nation’s largest strawberry grower.

The successes will be touted today as the union assembles in Fresno for its national convention. Gov. Gray Davis is scheduled to address the gathering this afternoon and earlier in the day to sign legislation designed to improve the safety of vans that transport farm workers.

Labor experts say the contract and legislative victories represent incremental gains for the union, which is still struggling to regain the power, prestige and membership that it earned in the early 1970s.

Union President Arturo Rodriguez said that 2000 has seen “a lot of good things happening” for the union and laborers. “It speaks to the stability of the organization and the fact the leadership is continuing to carry on the legacy of Cesar Chavez to improve the quality of life for farm workers in this country.”

Gallo workers voted in 1994 to be represented by the UFW, but negotiations dragged on.

The three-year pact affects only about 450 employees at Gallo’s vineyards in Sonoma County. Entry-level employees’ pay will increase 60 cents, to $8 an hour, with skilled workers to get as much as $1.40 more an hour, union officials said.

All the affected workers were also promised greater job security, and those hired directly by the company--rather than by middlemen--will have their holiday, vacation and medical benefits guaranteed.

Those gains are modest for workers who had once asked for starting pay of as much as $9.50 an hour and much more for experienced equipment operators. Many of the more than 80 employees who first voted for union representation six years ago have left the company. Hundreds of other Gallo employees at other locations are not covered by the contract.

Rodriguez said the contract is significant, nonetheless, because “workers now have a voice on the job and chance to be part of the decision-making process.”

He hopes the pact will inspire other agricultural workers to unionize.

At least one expert said it will be difficult for the union to spread the Gallo contract to other vintners and industries.

“I don’t want to say this is an insignificant agreement. But it took a long time,” said Phil Martin, a labor economist at UC Davis. “The fact it took six years to get the contract means it’s going to be hard to say to other workers, ‘Join the UFW and we will get you a wage increase right away.’ ”

The contract with Gallo was announced in a modest, five-paragraph joint news release that belied the long and bitter struggle between the union and the vintner.

The UFW clashed violently with replacement workers from the Teamsters after Gallo signed a contract in 1973 with the truckers union. The firm said it had merely recognized the older union, while UFW officials claimed they had been cheated out of the right to continue representing Gallo workers, which they had done since 1967. The winemaker protested the ensuing boycott as “cruel, economic blackmail.”

Rodriguez and third-generation Gallo winemaker Matthew Gallo suggested in the news release that the two sides will put the bitterness of the past behind them. The union leader called for a “new relationship, based on mutual respect.”

Gallo representatives declined comment beyond the statement.

The farm workers union can lay claim to several other advances this year, beginning with a decision by state labor officials in May that the union can negotiate on behalf of 700 pickers for Coastal Berry Co. in Ventura County.

The union had been struggling for years to win the right to represent strawberry pickers. But the UFW suffered many setbacks, including a 1999 statewide election loss to an upstart union.

The UFW finally secured its victory this spring, however, when the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board said the union had won a majority of votes among Coastal Berry’s employees in Ventura County. Negotiations on behalf of those workers are continuing.

Last month, the Legislature and Davis again put the union in the news, with the approval of a paid holiday for 210,000 state workers on Chavez’s birthday. School will remain in session March 31, but students will spend the day learning about the farm labor leader.

The holiday also helped spur a huge increase in funding for farm labor housing, as lawmakers and the governor sought to prove that the legislation would help more than just state employees.

The Legislature increased funding for the principal farm worker housing program to $45 million this year, from the level of $3 million or lower at which it had hovered for more than a decade.

Earlier in the legislative session, farm workers lost a battle when the Assembly failed to approve a law that would have made growers fully liable if middlemen mistreated or underpaid field hands.

But a compromise version of a bill by Assemblywoman Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) passed last month. It would require greater efforts by farmers to ensure that labor contractors are licensed. It also would increase penalties for unlicensed contractors and support for district attorneys to enforce the new rules.

The Legislature also approved a measure requiring farm labor contractors to post a bond of up to $75,000 to guarantee the wages of their employees. Previously, a bond of only $10,000 was required.

Davis has not said whether he will sign those bills, which still have detractors in the farming community.

However, today the governor is expected to sign a bill by Assemblyman Dean Florez (D-Bakersfield) that will outlaw the sort of wood benches in farm vans that experts have said increase the risk of injury to workers as they are transported to and from the fields. Thirteen workers riding on such benches died last year in one crash.

Labor economist Martin said that none of the advances this year has been revolutionary, but that each is helpful for farm workers. The union has succeeded, at least, in keeping public focus on the issues, he said.

“The UFW is trying a lot of new things,” Martin said. “I think, from the union’s point of view, they will be more successful. But, like many things in agriculture, it is two steps forward and then one step back.”

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Times staff writer Miguel Bustillo in Sacramento contributed to this story.