Grower Is at Root of New Era in Labor Relations

OXNARD — Striding between the rows of strawberries he has nurtured since the fall, grower David Murray said he wants to make it clear that no one here is trying to chart a new course in farm labor relations.

Sure, the firm he works for, Watsonville-based Coastal Berry Co., is at the center of a historic United Farm Workers campaign to organize berry pickers, a crucial first step in a larger drive to unionize the state’s 20,000 strawberry workers.

And it’s true that Coastal Berry has made unprecedented concessions to the UFW--including a pledge to remain neutral during the organizing drive--that have angered many within the industry and raised questions about the company’s relationship with the union.

But for Murray, who at age 27 is in charge of Coastal’s Oxnard operation, the focus remains on getting the fruit to market.

“It’s not really important to us how it all comes out,” said Murray, who like other company managers has stayed out of the union fray that has gripped the nation’s largest strawberry grower for the past three years.

“What’s most important is that we take care of business,” he said. “And the business at hand is growing strawberries, putting them in a box and selling them to customers.”

In an industry historically hostile to organized labor and notorious for its low pay and stoop labor, Coastal Berry is at the forefront of change, whether it wants to be or not.

The company’s wages are the highest of any strawberry grower in the state, according to the California Institute for Rural Studies in Davis.

Weekly wages average about $400 at Coastal Berry, compared with $240 elsewhere throughout California. Coastal Berry also provides company-paid medical and dental benefits and a small life insurance plan.

Several times a year, the company raffles off big-screen televisions, VCRs and a couple of pickup trucks to the 2,000 pickers and packers who work at peak season in Oxnard, Watsonville and Salinas.

“This is a good company; they treat the workers well,” said Oxnard resident Felipe Carranza, a 31-year-old strawberry picker who is in his first year with the company. “They have respect for their employees.”

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Change can also be seen in the company’s dealings with the UFW. Unlike the old days, when growers mounted vigorous anti-UFW campaigns, Coastal Berry made peace with the union founded by Cesar Chavez.

In addition to its neutral stance during the organizing drive, the company allowed organizers unfettered access to workers during the early days of the campaign.

Earlier this month, Coastal officials took the extraordinary step of pulling foremen out of the fields during a two-day representation election--between the UFW and the rival Coastal Berry of California Farmworkers Committee. That move was meant to eliminate any hint of intimidation by the company or its personnel. The election is still unresolved, due to disputed ballots.

At the heart of the company’s actions, Coastal Berry President Ernie Farley said, is a belief that workers should be treated with respect and paid a fair wage for such hard labor. And, when it comes to union representation, he said the company has repeatedly told workers they are free to make up their own minds.

“Our philosophy has been that the most important person at the company is the person who picks the strawberry,” said Farley, noting that 85% of employees return to the company each season. “We’re all a bunch of produce guys, not labor relations experts. But I believe we have a history of taking care of our workers, and I think we’ve done a good job creating an atmosphere where they know they can make their own decisions.”

Despite its progressive philosophy, Coastal Berry has taken plenty of fire from all sides.

Although UFW officials acknowledge that the company is considered a good employer by some measures, many workers still have expressed concerns.

“Some had problems with lack of pay, lack of benefits, lack of job security,” union spokesman Marc Grossman said. “Others just wanted a voice on the job. [Coastal Berry] may have been a little bit better than some of the other companies, but I can guarantee there was still a need for the union.”

The company also lost support within the industry. Growers have criticized Coastal Berry for breaking ranks and adopting what is generally perceived to be a pro-union stance.

Some landowners refused to lease property to Coastal, wanting nothing to do with the UFW’s organizing campaign.

And last year, the Western Growers Assn., a large and powerful confederation of farm owners in the Western states, took the unusual step of filing suit against the company and the UFW. The lawsuit, the first ever against one of its own members, alleged that Coastal Berry colluded with the union to allow it to control the company.

The suit, filed in Santa Cruz County, was dismissed, but deep resentment lingers among some in the industry.

“I think the industry is repulsed by Coastal Berry; they are just disgusted and repulsed,” said Salinas attorney Jim Gumberg, who represents the UFW’s rival, the Coastal Berry committee, which is not affiliated with the company. “And quite frankly, I think there was a backlash [to the company’s actions], and that’s a good part of the reason we are at the place we are today.”

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For Coastal Berry, it has taken 17 years to get to this place.

The company started as Garguilo Inc., with about 300 workers farming about 200 acres in Watsonville. The operation expanded over the years to its current 1,600 acres in Monterey, Santa Cruz and Ventura counties.

Much of the company’s recent growth has been centered in the Oxnard area. Coastal has had a local shipping operation for about seven years but started growing berries locally only three years ago.

Last year, the company purchased the 460-acre McGrath Ranch--a former dairy farm near Gonzales Road and Harbor Boulevard--and expanded its operation from 110 to 330 acres. At the same time, the Oxnard work force jumped from 250 employees at peak season last year to 725 workers this year.

As the company grew, it also captured the attention of a reinvigorated UFW. Looking to rebuild its clout in the farm industry as a whole after more than a decade of declining membership and dwindling influence, the union in 1995 zeroed in on the strawberry industry--specifically workers at Garguilo, the nation’s largest direct employer of berry harvesters.

By that time, the company was owned by St. Louis-based Monsanto Co., which quickly became the target of a nationwide UFW campaign. Union officials even showed up at a Monsanto shareholders meeting to urge them to do the right thing for strawberry workers.

After months of high-profile attacks, Monsanto brokered a deal with the UFW in mid-1997, promising that neither the company nor its successors would oppose the union’s organizingefforts.

Monsanto didn’t stop there. Weeks later, it agreed to sell the berry company to a pair of union-friendly investors, who changed the name to Coastal Berry and made it clear that they would not stand in the UFW’s way. In fact, owner and Chairman David Gladstone sent letters to employees last year saying he supported unionization.

“I believe that we can strengthen [our] special relationship if the workers are represented by a labor union,” wrote Gladstone, who is vice chairman of a buyout and specialty finance firm in Bethesda, Md. “Of course, only you can make that decision.”

Gladstone could not be reached for comment. But his active support for the union, a rare thing in agriculture, immediately drew fire from the industry, leading to the Western Growers filing suit last June.

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Terry O’Connor, chief labor counsel for the association, said the lawsuit was not aimed at the company as a whole, which has a solid reputation within the industry. Rather, it alleged that the owner engaged in unfair competition by supporting the UFW while professing to be neutral.

“The whole Coastal thing is so unprecedented,” O’Connor said. “There’s no question they are a good employer and very well-respected in the industry. That’s why I think the [union’s] message of ‘we will make things better for you’ didn’t resonate very well with workers.”

Indeed, despite the backing of company owners, the UFW in recent weeks has twice failed to win an election to represent berry pickers at Coastal.

In the most recent election, a runoff forced when neither the UFW nor the rival farm worker committee could gain the margin needed for victory, the committee out-polled the union by 90 votes. However, 92 more ballots--enough to potentially change the outcome of the election--are in dispute. The committee needs just three of those votes to win.

State labor officials this week are expected to rule on the challenged ballots, though attorneys for both sides predict a volley of objections from the losing camp, which could delay the outcome for weeks or even months.

UFW officials said they will continue their campaign in the strawberry fields, regardless of the result. But they are also quick to add that it would be wrong to believe that the union had an organizing advantage at Coastal Berry.

The UFW’s Grossman said promises of neutrality from top management never trickled down to mid-level foremen and supervisors.

Many of those managers aggressively lobbied against the union and on behalf of the committee, a group of loosely organized field laborers who banded together to offer an alternative to the UFW, he said.

“There was a huge gap between the owner’s professed neutrality and the day-to-day reality in the fields,” Grossman said. “Out in the fields, there was a virulent anti-union campaign we had to contend with.”

But Ventura County labor lawyer Rob Roy argues there is no merit to that claim. Even though he opposed Gladstone’s pro-union stance, he said the company itself, with its good wages and benefits, was the very thing that beat back the UFW’s organizing drive.

“This was a highly unusual circumstance in that the organization of the company started in the board room of Monsanto, not out in the fields with the workers,” said Roy, president of the pro-grower Ventura County Agricultural Assn.

“Not only did they pick the wrong employer, they picked the wrong unionizing strategy,” he said of the UFW. “They overlooked one big obstacle: You’ve got to win the hearts and minds of the workers, if you want to represent them in contract negotiations.”

At the ranch in Oxnard, where Coastal Berry’s operation is winding down, there appears to be much relief that the union fight has passed, at least for now.

Walking along the rutted rows, where the berries are plump and ready for picking, Murray said he’s proud of the way workers conducted themselves during the campaign, generally respecting each other’s differences and never losing sight of the job at hand.

All of the fruit being picked now is headed for canneries, the fresh-fruit market having shifted north three weeks ago.

“This is my favorite part of the year: Everybody knows what to do; I just have to stay out of their way,” Murray said. “We’ve always treated our workers with respect. If you don’t do that, if you don’t give them good pay and good benefits, they’re not going to stick around. We are just doing what’s right.”