Celebrities, UFW co-founder and berry worker supporters will visit up-scale Valley Restaurants during march down Ventura Blvd.

5 p.m. Thursday, July 2

Celebrities, UFW co-founder and berry worker supporters will visit up-scale Valley restaurants during march down Ventura Blvd.

In advance of one of the busiest sales weekends of the year for strawberries, entertainment industry figures will join 200 farm worker supporters in a march Thursday down a two-mile stretch of Ventura Blvd. in Encino to inform restaurant and hotel managers about some of the abuses committed by growers who contract with the Driscoll corporation, America’s largest shipper of fresh strawberries. Driscoll berries are served in many of the restaurants.

The colorful line of marchers sporting red United Farm Workers flags and "human billboards" scoring practices by some Driscoll growers will be led by actors Jackie Guerra and Enrique Castillo, Assemblyman Scott Wildman and UFW Co-founder Dolores Huerta. As they pass hotels and trendy eateries on Ventura Blvd., starting with the Raddison Hotel, small delegations will enter the restaurants to plead their case.

Throughout the industry in general, berry workers face low pay, pesticide-treated fields and threats of firing if they organize with the UFW. Last year, strawberry workers filed federal class action lawsuits charging some Driscoll growers with forcing pickers to work without pay, failing to provide proper overtime and engaging in alleged widespread sex discrimination against women workers. The overtime and sex bias suits were settled.

The last five times strawberry pickers voted for the UFW in state-supervised union elections growers retaliated against them by shutting down operations and laying off the workers. Two of these growers were affiliated with Driscoll. In the last case, VCNM farms also plowed under part of its berry crop as a lesson to workers who exercise their right to organize.

WHO: Celebrities Jackie Guerra, and Enrique Castillo, Assemblyman Scott Wildman, UFW co-founder and 200 strawberry worker supporters.

WHAT: Visiting hotels and restaurants during a march down Ventura Blvd. in Encino to discuss abuses of berry workers by Driscoll growers

WHEN: 5 p.m., Thursday, July 2, 1998.

WHERE: Start at 15433 Ventura Blvd., across from the Raddison Hotel, and march two miles west along Ventura Blvd. to Encino Park (corner of Genesta, and Ventura, just west of Balboa).