Basic Strike a Triumph for Teamsters Union Labor Day Celebration in King City by Paul Johnston On this Labor Day, 700 union families are celebrating an end to a grueling two-year strike against Basic Vegetable Products and the ConAgra corporation in King City, California. The strike was an epic battle with the right-wing family owners of the Salinas Valley company, followed by a successful challenge to one of the biggest food industry corporations in the world. This is a story of sacrifice, solidarity, creative and flexible union tactics, and the rehabilitation of a Teamsters union which had been discredited decades earlier for "sweetheart" contracts in Salinas Valley agriculture. And it is a story of the startling strength of the labor movement among Mexican immigrant workers in California. The strike began in July 1999, when members of Teamsters Local 890 walked out in response to the company's insistence on sharply lower wages and benefits and weaker employee rights at the big garlic and onion dehydration plant in King City. A month later the strike changed from a test of wills to a desperate struggle, when the company "permanently replaced" all the strikers. Only then did the strikers and their union learn that the Hume family owners of Basic were no ordinary adversaries. For two generations, the Humes have been central members of a network of wealthy right-wing activists with a history ranging from support for the "freedom fighters" of the Iran-Contra era to a recent spate of anti-union and anti-affirmative action initiatives in California. The Humes gave a whopping $200,000 to the campaign for Proposition 226 in 1998, for example, which sought to effectively ban union political action. But the Humes themselves would soon learn that these were no ordinary strikers. Over the past thirty years the close-knit, mostly Mexican immigrant workforce has been at the fore of a long process of reform and revitalization in Local 890, the largest union in Central California. In the 1980s a coalition of shop stewards led by Basic employee Franklin Gallegos won union elections, and in the 1990s the same circle of unionists helped to lead the citizenship movement that swept the region after the passage of Proposition 187. Mostly former farm workers, the strikers had spent years struggling to secure a decent standard of living for their families, and they weren't going to lose their "good jobs" at Basic without a fight. The battle that followed included thousands of hours of picketing, the importation of strikebreakers from other regions, massive marches through the King City community, successful King City and Greenfield city council election campaigns by family members of strikers, unflinching support from Teamsters international president Jim Hoffa, and agile maneuvers by the union to spike company efforts to decertify the union by preventing strikers from voting. Starting in 2000, the Basic boycott sent strikers into communities throughout California and neighboring states, where they succeeded in closing off around 20% of the big institutional markets (hospitals, schools, etc.) to the food processing company. Then in December 2000, after two money-losing seasons, facing a vigorous and growing boycott, outmaneuvered in their efforts to decertify the union, millions of dollars in the red and yet still stubbornly unwilling to compromise with their employees, the Humes sold the company to the mammoth ConAgra Corporation. One of the biggest food companies in the world, ConAgra was a far more powerful adversary than the Humes, easily able to take millions of dollars in losses without turning a hair. The company already owned Gilroy Foods, the region's other big dehydration plant, where the workers are also members of Local 890. Before the purchase, ConAgra's Gilroy managers had urged the union to hold the line, because the Hume's cuts would undermine their own competitive position. But now, instead of facing a lower-cost competitor, ConAgra saw the chance to capitalize on the Hume's cuts in King City. And the new regime at the Basic would also provide leverage to lower the boom on the workers at Gilroy Foods when their contract expires in 2002. So ConAgra adopted the Hume's agenda. They implemented the two-tier wage structure, eliminated sick leave, reduced vacations, reduced health insurance and added a co-payment, eliminated rules on overtime, abolished most seniority rights for job bidding and withdrew from the pension plan, replacing it with a ConAgra plan with a fraction of the benefits. Most telling of all, ConAgra refused to return any strikers to work in a manner that would displace a single strikebreaker. And so this spring, the Basic strikers tackled the food industry giant. Teamsters president Hoffa convened a new ConAgra Council of over 100 Teamster and other locals representing ConAgra workers across the U.S. A stockholder resolution appeared on the agenda of the upcoming corporate meeting. Workers from ConAgra's Gilroy Foods plant joined the bargaining team, and the local began to prepare to spread the strike to that town when the contract expires in 2002. And Basic strikers hit the road again, visiting ConAgra plants to build support across the country. The message to ConAgra's management team was clear: the impact of the strike would spread throughout the company unless and until they came to terms with the strikers. So in August, ConAgra changed course. The company returned to the table to negotiate a settlement that restored the strikers' rights, pension, health care and former rates of pay, and scheduled 8% in wage increases over the next two years. Most important of all, all strikers were returned to work with full seniority. The permanent replacements were permanently replaced. __________________________________________________ Paul Johnston is a sociologist and executive director of the Citizenship Project in Salinas. 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