BY KAREN RAY AND JUAN ACEVEDO
SANTA ROSA, California - With music, food, and high
spirits, farm workers and their families gathered here at the
United Farm Workers (UFW) offices October 4 to celebrate
winning their first union contract a week earlier at Balletto
Farms.
Salvador Mendoza, a UFW organizer in Sonoma County, said there are about 8,000 farm workers in the vineyards and fields of Sonoma at the height of the season, about 3,500 of whom work year round. Sonoma County, the site of many wineries, is located just north of San Francisco.
Balletto Farm is the largest vegetable farm on the northern coast of California, employing 30 farm workers year-round and about 100 at harvest time.
Agricultural workers at Balletto conducted a one-day strike July 24 demanding better wages, benefits, and union recognition. Mendoza reported that between 30 and 40 workers from Balletto's packing operation, which is located on the farm, joined the strikers on the picket line.
Just days later, on July 28, the union election was held and the UFW voted in. Mendoza stated that the company settled rapidly "because they were losing $200,000 a day."
Workers had been meeting over the course of the year to organize the union. Martín León, a 14-year veteran farm worker at Balletto, said, "We planned this for a long time - since 1997. But the harvest was almost over so we decided to wait until the following year."
León added, "This is a victory for all farm workers who work for Balletto, by obtaining a good salary, benefits, and vacations. Not only have we gained the representation of the United Farm Workers but it is also a victory because it is the first contract in Sonoma County. We organized ourselves and that's why we won." León said that wages range from $5.75 to $8.35 an hour.
Mendoza explained that under the terms of the 28-page contract the farm workers will receive:
a 50-cent hourly raise in each of the first two years of the contract and then 25 cents an hour for each of the following three years;
Medical care with 60 percent coverage;
a pension plan;
and seven paid holidays a year by the end of the contract.
In another development in Mendocino County, grape workers struck twice in the month of September at Anderson Vineyards, which owns the Roederer Estate Winery. Their fight began in mid- September when the bosses told the farm workers that they would be paid less than before, and that they would have to split their wages with the tractor drivers and the sugar tester, who had always been paid by the company before.
Hearing this news, the farm workers at the company's Boonville vineyard walked off the job on September 10 and struck for three days. While on strike, the workers decided to call the UFW and organize themselves into the union.
By September 18, the company had agreed not to cut the workers' wages. According to UFW organizer Mendoza, the company conceded to pay the salaries of the tractor drivers and increase the pay rate per ton of grapes by $5. On September 21 the state's Agricultural Labor Relations Board called for a vote and the UFW won, 27 to 18.
The Anderson Valley Advertiser reported that on September 28, Anderson Vineyards announced that they were challenging the union election to the Agricultural Labor Relations Board. The company hired the San Francisco antilabor law firm of Littler, Mendelson, Fastiff, Tichy, and Mathiason, to aid the company in decertifying the union.
The paper also reported that farm workers at the Anderson Farms vineyard in Navarro, when hearing of the election challenge to the union walked off the job on September 29. On September 30, the company bussed contract workers onto the farm through the picket lines to replace the strikers. But these workers walked out after only 15 minutes and joined the picketline. Mendoza reported the union is trying to negotiate with the company. If the union vote is upheld, Anderson Vineyards would be the first agricultural operation in Mendocino to be represented by the UFW.