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Posted by Maggie (Guest) - Wednesday, August 31 2005, 20:19:34 (CEST)
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UFW Thinks Climate Is Right to Grow Its Ranks
By Mark Arax, Times Staff Writer

DELANO, Calif. — The workers were eating pigskin soup under the vines when Lupe Martinez came calling at noon sharp, a bullhorn in one hand and a stack of union cards in the other.

"Come. Come, fellow farmworkers," his voice shot out. "We need to have unity. We need to fight."

The migrants, knees caked in dirt and grape juice, might have laughed at the union man coming to challenge their boss, the self-proclaimed "Grape King."

With his cowboy boots, Martinez stood 5 feet tall and weighed 200 pounds. He didn't walk so much as he rolled straight at them. And what he was here to pitch was a movement whose glory days were far behind it, a United Farm Workers union that hadn't delivered a major victory in these grape fields for 35 years.

Every morning for the last month, union organizers from Los Angeles, Watsonville and small valley towns have headed to the fields of the southern San Joaquin Valley. They have gotten more than 2,000 workers at Giumarra Vineyards to sign union cards.

It's enough to qualify for an election Thursday to decide whether the union, after a three-decade absence, will once again represent workers at Giumarra — one of the giants of California agriculture.

On the far east side of Bakersfield, 30 miles away, John Giumarra Jr. brushed off the UFW as a paper tiger. He said his company didn't need the union to meddle in its business. "Where have they been for 35 years?" he asked derisively. "Farmworkers don't buy into their promises anymore."

But Martinez, a lead organizer for the UFW and onetime tractor driver who likes to recall how he was plucked out of the fields in 1982 by Cesar Chavez, believes this summer is different.

As he made his way past the crew boss — a lady dressed head to toe in purple — he said he could smell the anger in the air. He raised the bullhorn to his lips.

"Are you ready? Are you ready to organize against Giumarra?"

Union leaders say a number of factors have come together to make this an election they can win. The pickers and packers — men, women and children — are working under a San Joaquin Valley sun that has killed five of their fellow campesinos over the last year. Two of those heatstroke deaths have taken place in Kern County fields belonging to Giumarra.

The deaths have turned resentment into anger for many workers. Meanwhile, a labor shortage in the fields has made them less fearful of being fired for union activity.

Maybe it's not the same union that in the summer of 1970 made the late John Giumarra Sr. raise his hands in mock surrender as he signed the UFW contract, ending the five-year grape strike in Delano. That contract expired just three years later.

This is a UFW with four bullhorns, a copy machine that keeps going on the fritz and a staff of 16 full-time organizers, half of them young and green. They are taking on no mere farmer but one of the biggest table grape growers and packers in the world.

How to persuade 3,000 workers to risk embracing a union whose myth overshadows its reality?

One by one, as the union bullhorn crackled, workers put down half-eaten lunches and surrounded Martinez on the rutted road that divided the vineyard in half.

"If you don't sign these cards, we cannot represent you," Martinez implored. "Do you want better wages? Do you want us to tell Giumarra to stop making you pack on your knees?"

Many nodded their heads yes.

Even some longtime UFW supporters wonder whether the whole thing is a publicity stunt. They find the timing a bit too symbolic. This summer is the 40th anniversary of the grape strike, and the union is planning a big reunion in Delano with many of the old-timers. At a time when the national labor movement is divided, UFW President Arturo Rodriguez would love nothing more than a victory to prove his union's grit.

The UFW, for all its iconic value, represents a tiny fraction of the migrants who land in this valley each June to begin a three-month harvest in triple-digit heat. Since its heyday in the early 1970s, the union has won many elections that never led to contracts.

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