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Losing Ground
Workers at E&J Gallo in Healdsburg take a lunch break Monday after voting to oust the UFW from Gallo vineyards, reversing the historic 1994 vote that brought the UFW into Sonoma County's wine industry. Sharing family-style meals is one way labor contractors strengthen ties with their workers.
JOHN BURGESS / The Press DemocratPublished: Sunday, July 1, 2007 at 3:41 a.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, June 30, 2007 at 9:00 p.m.
In September 2005, leaders of the United Farm Workers stood on the steps of San Francisco City Hall and declared victory in their struggle to improve working conditions for Sonoma County vineyard workers at the nation's largest winery, E&J Gallo.
The union founded by Caesar Chavez had again succeeded in combining legal maneuvering and public pressure tactics to secure a contract, reasserting its influence on the North Coast's premium wine industry.
The new 2½-year contract covering 308 Gallo workers was just the beginning, union leaders said, of a major push they hoped would swell their ranks from 600 farm workers on the North Coast to more than 1,000 by the end of 2006.
Those aspirations suffered a significant setback last week when Gallo workers voted to oust the UFW. Citing poor communication, high dues and few additional benefits, workers said they failed to see the union's relevance to their lives.
If the vote to decertify the union is upheld -- a process that could take weeks -- the UFW would see its membership on the North Coast plummet, its revenues sink and its power curtailed.
"For the UFW, it's been two steps forward and one step back, and lately things have been pretty tough for them," said Philip Martin, a professor at UC Davis and expert in agriculture labor issues.
In addition to the Gallo contract, the UFW has struggled to retain control over the vineyard work at Charles Krug Winery in Napa. The winery laid off 24 union workers last year and turned farming operations on its 500-acre vineyard over to a vineyard management company. The union is appealing the move.
If the UFW is not able to reverse these two setbacks, its contracts in Sonoma and Napa counties will drop from six to four and its membership will tumble 75 percent. Instead of the 1,000 members it predicted it would have, active union membership on the North Coast today is probably closer to 410, and without Gallo that number would drop to around 100, according to Press Democrat estimates.
The defeats would leave the UFW with less than 1 percent of the estimated 13,000 farm workers in Sonoma and Napa counties.
Many in the local wine industry have taken the developments at Charles Krug and Gallo as further evidence the union is faltering. They say North Coast growers have long treated their workers well and offered them better wages and benefits than growers in other parts of the state, making unions unnecessary.
"It definitely seems like they are losing ground," said Saralee Kunde, whose 34 vineyard workers voted for UFW representation in 2002 and got their first three-year contract in 2005. "In this day and age, employer-employee relations are better than they've ever been."
Kunde, who farms 500 acres of prized Russian River vineyards with her husband, Richard, said the number of regulations about workers rights and workplace safety has increased dramatically in the years since Chavez began organizing.
"It's a whole different world," she said.
Kunde thinks her workers initially supported the union because they were swept up in the organizing efforts at neighboring Sonoma-Cutrer Vineyards in 2002.
Workers there ousted the union after just one year and before a contract was ever struck. The reversal came after workers learned the union's proposed contract contained no wage increase in the first year and 1 percent in the second, recalled Keith LaVine, managing director.
With 2 percent of their salaries going to dues, workers realized they would lose money under a UFW contract, and voted overwhelmingly to decertify the union, LaVine said.
"It was pure propaganda. It came down to over-promising and under-delivering," LaVine said.
But following its loss at Sonoma-Curter, the UFW battled back, successfully fighting off the first decertification vote at Gallo in 2003. The UFW embarrassed Gallo by winning a ruling that the company had illegally influenced the vote by allowing its labor contractors to aid in the petition drive that triggered the vote.
The union followed that up with a boycott of Gallo wines. The Modesto-based wine giant said the boycott had no effect on sales, but the union said it clearly spurred the negotiations that resulted in the new contract.
Behind these outward displays of strength, however, there were changes afoot at Gallo that were making it more and more difficult for UFW organizers to maintain the support of the workers.
Since 1994, when the UFW was first voted in, Gallo has reduced the number of farm workers it directly employs while increasing the number of workers it hires through labor contractors.
In 1994, the company directly employed about 114 vineyard workers, and contracted out for about 160 extra workers to handle peak periods like harvest. Today, however, the number of full-time vineyard workers Gallo employs directly has fallen to around 80, a 30 percent drop, while the number of contract laborers has increased to 220, a 38 percent increase.
Gallo was able to save money by changing the makeup of its labor force, because contract workers are cheaper, UFW vice president Efren Barajas said. But Gallo may also have had a secondary goal of weakening support for the union, he said.
Contract workers generally have a higher turnover than full-time company workers, and that makes it harder for the union to communicate with them, Barajas said.
Because they also don't work exclusively for Gallo, the contractors have significant control over the workers' fortunes.
"It's difficult to involve that type of workforce in the whole (union) process," Barajas said.
In addition, Gallo has recently increased the number of labor contractors it uses, dividing up the work among four contractors instead of two. That made it difficult for the UFW -- which has a limited number of organizers -- to connect with new workers.
"Those are the crews that we had a more difficult time with because they are new," Barajas said.
One such crew is run by the Viramontes Vineyard Management, owned by former Gallo vineyard manager Arturo Viramontes and his wife, Fidelina.
Arturo Viramontes said he thinks their workers often don't see the need for a union because they are more educated about their rights and are treated well.
"We respect these people because when they come to work for us they are like part of our family," Viramontes said. "When we work the ranch, we work together and we eat together."
Unlike days when vineyard workers may have felt isolated and powerless to speak up for themselves, today many workers have cell phones and don't hesitate to raise concerns.
"If there are any issues, within a few minutes, everyone will be aware of it," Viramontes said.
Martin, the UC Davis professor, said it is common for unions to struggle to win over the hearts and minds of younger workers who may not have suffered or even have heard of the indignities of the past.
"It's always difficult for unions when one group of workers vote in the union and another group actually works under the contract," Martin said.
That challenge is even more acute when those new workers are transient and from countries like Mexico where unions don't have the best reputations.
"It's a perfect recipe for a dissatisfied worker to launch a decertification campaign," he said.
While many such workers may not feel much allegiance to the union, they ignore the union's successes at their own peril, Barajas said.
Many such workers are undocumented and without a labor contract they can be fired for any reason. The 3 percent raises in the current Gallo contract -- boosting their hourly wages to nearly $10 next year -- will also be a thing of past as soon as the contract disappears, Barajas said.
"They're not only running the risk of not getting the increases, they run the risk of getting a lot less," Barajas said.
Other wineries and vineyards tend to keep their wages on a par with the UFW contracts because they want to avoid an organizing effort, Barajas said.
But if the contracts go away, the support they offer other wages tends to erode, as well, he said.
"This will not only affect that group of workers. This will affect the whole of Sonoma County," Barajas said.
You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@pressdemocrat.com.
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