Watsonville cannery workers approve contract, end strike
1987Hector Tobar 1987-04Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 13 →
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A long and militant strike at California's largest frozen-food company in Watson -ville, Calif., is over-19 months after it began.
Members of Teamster Union Local 912 voted 543 to 21 on March 11 to approve a three-year contract with the former Watsonville Canning and Frozen Food Co., now known as Norcal Frozen Foods.
The contract provides for wages of $5.80 an hour, almost $1 an hour less than the workers received before the strike began. Among the workers the mood is one of relief that the long struggle is over, tempered by the fact that the new contract still contains a wage cut.
"Everyone looks happy inside there," one worker told The San Francisco Chronicle on her first day back on the job. "But we are a little worried about the money," she added. "During the strike my teenage sons got jobs and my mother helped us. That was the only way we could survive. We have still got a long way to go-and life will never be the same again.
About 1000 workers at the Watsonville plant went on strike in September 1985 when cannery owners proposed a 29-percent wage cut and the elimination of most health benefits.
The workers, about 80 percent of them Latina women, voted 545 to 6 to strike. The strike started with a' high level of militancy and activity. But this mood was set back when a Watsonville court limited the strikers to four pickets at each plant entrance. Public demonstrations were also prohibited within 100 yards of the plant.
Arrests of strikers for the smallest violations of the injunction became common, and many strikers spent nights in jail. Harassment of the strikers spread to the community, where at least two strikers had their homes firebombed. solidarity with the strikers in October 1985, and other demonstrations followed. Donations of food and money came from throughout Santa Cruz County and the San Francisco area.
The end of the strike came with the demise of Watsonville Canning. Wells Fargo Bank began foreclosure proceedings Socialist Action/ Watsonvi orkers at strike support 1 in October 1985 against the company when it was unable to keep up with payments on $18 million loans.
Norcal Frozen foods, a consortium of area growers owed $7 million by Watsonville Canning, took over the insolvent company and almost immediately reopened negotiations with the union. in question throughout the dispute. Teamster officials only allowed the strike to get under way two months after the initial vote approving the strike.
Strike benefits, including $55 weekly checks and boxes of free food, were cut one week before ratification of the new contract by Teamster officials. They argued that there was no longer a strike because Watsonville Canning no longer existed.
In another unusual move, union officials required a two-thirds vote to reject the proposed contract. Under this arrangement, the contract needed the support of only one-third of the workers.