Gallo Workers Seek to Cut Ties to UFW

In what could be a symbolic blow to the United Farm Workers of America, field hands at Gallo of Sonoma have petitioned to sever ties with the UFW, less than three years after the union secured a historic and hard-won labor contract there.

Employees of the winery, a unit of E. & J. Gallo Winery, are scheduled to vote on the matter Thursday. UFW officials have charged that Gallo representatives illegally pressured workers to sign the petition that will bring union decertification to a vote. The UFW has also alleged that family scion Matthew Gallo promised workers raises if they managed to oust the union.

The union has forwarded the charges to the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board. The agency is investigating.

“It’s a totally company- orchestrated attempt to get rid of the UFW, and that is patently illegal,” UFW spokesman Marc Grossman said.

Officials at E. & J. Gallo, the world’s largest vintner, deny the charges. “We have always recognized our employees’ right to union representation,” the company said in a statement Monday. “It is apparent that many of the employees have problems or concerns with the United Farm Workers union. This is an issue between the members and their union.”

The Gallo contract, signed in September 2000 after eight years of talks, marked a milestone for a union that made its name by boycotting grapes under the charismatic leadership of Cesar Chavez. Union pioneer Dolores Huerta spearheaded negotiating efforts. The union has repeatedly pointed to the contract with Gallo, with which it battled bitterly beginning in the 1970s, as one of its most important victories in recent years.

Whatever the outcome of Thursday’s vote, the dispute underscores some key challenges for the union, which has struggled to regain the power and prestige that it enjoyed in Chavez’s time.

Industry leaders say the union never made significant inroads with wine-grape growers. Efforts to organize farmworkers overall have been complicated by the growing use of third-party labor contractors, many of whom employ an increasingly undocumented workforce that is more vulnerable to abuse.

Some farm labor experts believe the Gallo vote could be the first in a wave of attempts by growers in coming months to jettison unions as agribusiness reacts to a law signed by Gov. Gray Davis last fall.

The law greatly strengthens unions’ leverage in contract talks because it gives them the right to demand binding arbitration with farmers in 75 cases over the next five years. The UFW said it would use the legislation to force growers to the table in the dozens of situations in which the union has won representation elections but failed to forge a contract with growers.

“I think this is the first shot at response to that new law,” said Don Villarejo, an agricultural labor consultant and retired founder of the California Institute for Rural Studies.

Workers faithful to the UFW said the campaign to decertify the union at Gallo began in earnest late last month. On March 5 -- the day the petition was filed -- some workers allege, Matthew Gallo held a meeting to assure them that their benefits and pay would not be slashed if they voted to decertify the union. At the meeting, one worker said, Gallo offered them raises, and a human resources official told the men “that we should think about it carefully” because if the vote went for the union, “many families would regret it.” The worker asked that his name not be used, saying he feared retaliation from company executives.

But one field hand supporting the decertification insisted that company officials have made no efforts to sway workers.

“They aren’t interested in us getting rid of the union or keeping the union. They just want us to do our jobs,” said Hermogenes Dominguez, who worked for the Louis M. Martini Winery for 15 years -- with no union -- before it was acquired by Gallo last year. Dominguez said he made more than $11 an hour before the Gallo takeover and now makes $8.43. The $36 he spends a month in union dues brings no benefit, he said.

“Being part of the union just doesn’t work for us,” he said. “I don’t want it and neither do my companeros.”

At Gallo, the UFW represents only 329 laborers, all of them in Sonoma County. E. & J. Gallo employs more than 4,600 people overall.

Eighty percent of the workers under the UFW contract are employed by labor contractors -- not directly by Gallo. Under the contract, all workers secured bargaining and seniority rights and wage increases: 60 cents an hour for entry-level workers and as much as $1.40 hourly for a small group of skilled laborers.

But those hired through labor contractors did not get the generous vacation and family medical benefits that the direct Gallo employees received. Still, after fighting for years, the union felt that “it was better to get a contract that gave people some protections,” Grossman said.

The petition to kick the UFW out of the vintner’s fields comes at a time when the union’s influence is being hotly debated.

The UFW recently won a vote to represent strawberry growers at Coastal Berry in Watsonville, Calif. -- one of eight organizing victories over the last year.

“I don’t view this as a big black mark that’s going to stop this union’s momentum,” said Peter Olney, associate director of the University of California’s Institute for Labor and Employment.

However, farm industry critics allege that the union has overstated its membership for years and that it is a shadow of its former self. Last year, in response to a Department of Labor inquiry, UFW officials amended membership figures to 5,945 -- from 27,000, well below its peak of 80,000 in 1973. The union says the smaller number is misleading because it represents only workers under contract at the end of 2001 -- the low ebb of the California growing season.

Rob Roy, general counsel for the Ventura County Agricultural Assn. and a vocal union critic, said the Gallo decertification effort is telling and comes on the heels of a steady trickle of other decertification efforts. (Grossman disagreed, calling such petitions rare.)

“The UFW has a lot of political clout with legislators, but I think they lack a real nexus with the farmworkers,” Roy said. “It’s not going to be a major setback for the UFW, but certainly it will be a symbolic loss for them because they made such a big issue out of going after Gallo.”