Vineyard’s Workers Appear to Reject Joining UFW

Farmworkers at Giumarra Vineyards appear to have turned down the United Farm Workers union on Thursday, delivering a sharp rebuke to a union that had been expecting a comeback victory.

The vote was not officially certified because the number of challenged ballots, 170, was larger than the margin of the union’s loss. But the union would have to win the overwhelming majority of those challenges to overturn the result.

The union had hoped to capitalize on unhappiness about working conditions, minimum-wage earnings and farmworker deaths from heatstroke this summer.

But in recent days, Giumarra officials had told workers that conditions would improve more quickly without a union. The company also distributed literature reminding workers that the UFW would deduct 2% of their wages for dues and suggesting that the money would be used to further the union’s liberal political agenda on issues such as gay marriage.

“The employees have done exactly what they did in 1977,” when they voted out the UFW, said John Giumarra Jr., the company’s vice president. “Once again, when given the opportunity to vote and express themselves, the voters have said: ‘No union.’

“We’ve been in the business for over three-quarters of a century, and we have an amazing relationship with our workers,” Giumarra said, adding that he and other company managers had heard worker grievances about conditions in the fields and would try to address them.

UFW President Arturo Rodriguez told organizers who rallied here after the votes were counted that “we will not stop until there are changes.”

“We have shown the biggest grape grower in the world that we are ready to fight. We will not stop until victory.”

Before the vote, however, union organizers were taking bets over their margin of victory, with estimates as high as 75%. In the end, they received 47%, with 1,121 workers voting for the UFW and 1,246 against.

State officials began the count in the courtyard of a state office building here. As they did, the mood of a crowd made up largely of union supporters and organizers quickly changed from jubilation to despondence.

For days, union officials had said the decision was up to the workers, but they also had said they saw strong support in the fields. They looked shocked as the ballots were opened and counted.

As the votes mounted against them, union organizers said workers were dependent on the company not only for their jobs but for housing, food and transportation. In fliers passed out to workers during the campaign, the company had cited a furniture store in Bakersfield that went out of business after workers voted to join the UFW.

“You’ve got to be a real strong worker to put up with this stuff,” said Tanis Ybarra, the union’s second-ranking official, who ran the campaign at Giumarra. “They tell you, ‘You vote for the union, you don’t have a job.’ These people don’t make that much money.”

The campaign began this summer when workers at Giumarra approached the UFW, saying that they were unhappy with how the company treated them in terms of physical conditions and respect.

Giumarra is the only company that makes workers pack grapes on their knees, rather than standing at and working on tables; workers complain about being forced to work too fast to make quotas and say they are disciplined by losing several hours’ wages if a bad grape is packed by mistake.

“They yell at us really bad,” said Juana Carbajal, a grape picker who has worked for Giumarra off and on since 1989 and who had become a union representative for her crew and helped organize for the union in recent weeks. Carbajal said she recently was punished for picking an unripe grape by having to stop work for two hours, costing her pay. “People are just tired of being treated like dogs,” she said.

Like most grape pickers in the Central Valley, Giumarra workers earn only slightly more than minimum wage, depending on how fast they pick.

The timing of the campaign made the defeat particularly bitter for Rodriguez. It comes just before celebrations to mark the 40th anniversary of the 1965 grape strike that began in Delano, Calif., just north of Giumarra’s vineyards.

The UFW’s foray into organizing also came as unions were jockeying for position amid a major split in the national labor movement.

Several unions had broken away from the AFL-CIO, condemning it for not directing enough money toward organizing. The UFW has joined the new coalition, and Rodriguez had hoped to use a victory over Giumarra to demonstrate a renewed commitment to organizing.

The last contract the UFW had with Giumarra was in 1970-73. It was one of the many grape contracts that growers signed to end the strikes and national boycotts that began 40 years ago this summer.

California has the only law in the country that governs union activity on farms and sets rules for elections. The federal law that guarantees union rights to workers does not apply to farmworkers.

Under the state law, the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board will have to review the 170 challenged ballots.

In some cases, voters were challenged by board staff members because they lacked identification.

Others were challenged by the union on the grounds that they were supervisors ineligible to participate.

The election was a logistical challenge for the labor board. The agency’s staff has dwindled to fewer than 50 with a decline in organizing activity in recent years. The last large election, several years ago, involved a company with fewer voters than Giumarra.

Lawrence Alderete, regional director of the labor board, had to borrow dozens of workers from other agencies, including the federal government’s National Labor Relations Board, to supervise the Giumarra vote.

Five teams of election officials began at 5 a.m. Thursday and moved throughout the day to locations across Kern and Tulare counties, where the 40 Giumarra crews were working.