For Release: December 20, 1996
Largest Calif. Retailer Endorses Drive
to Aide Strawberry Workers;
Big Victory for National Campaign
by UFW and AFL-CIO
In a major victory for a new nationwide organizing drive by the AFL-CIO and the United Farm Workers, the largest food retailer in California on Friday will endorse the campaign to improve conditions for state strawberry workers.
Ralphs, with 408 Southland stores, is the sixth largest supermarket in the nation. Friday’s announcement will cite similar actions taken by two East Coast retailers: Gristedes and Sloans supermarkets with 62 stores in Manhattan, and Key Food with 130 outlets in New York City.
WHO: UFW President Arturo Rodriguez, Ralphs Vice President for External Affairs Darius Anderson, United Food and Commercial Workers Regional Director Sean Harrigan, strawberry workers from Watsonville.
WHAT: Signing huge blown-up pledge endorsing the campaign for strawberry workers’ rights
WHEN: 12 noon, Friday, Dec. 20, 1996
WHERE: Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, 2130 West Ninth St. (east of Hoover) in Los Angeles
Also participating will be actor Ed Begley Jr., L.A. County AFL-CIO leader Miguel Contreras and dozens of representatives from many of the 40 groups that are rallying support for strawberry workers around the country. They have formed the National Strawberry Commission on Workers Rights.
Among the rights strawberry workers seek are a liveable wage, health care, clean drinking water and toilets, and protections from abuses such as sexual harassment and arbitrary firings. Supporters across the nation are asking supermarkets to endorse these basic rights. Ralphs is the first very large retailer to do so.
The UFW’s Rodriguez says the industry has crushed workers’ organizing efforts. After workers voted for the UFW in recent secret ballot elections at three large strawberry ranches, growers plowed under crops and fired workers.
"Clearly only public support will pressure the industry to recognize workers’ rights to support the union free of intimidation and coercion, and to bargain in good faith after they vote for the UFW," Rodriguez says.
When they were elected more than a year ago, the leaders of the AFL-CIO vowed to organize new workers on an unprecedented scale. With roughly 20,000 California strawberry workers, the current UFW/AFL-CIO organizing drive is among the largest in the U.S.