VICTORY ON CANNERY ROW
Erlich, Reese
VICTORY ON CANNERY ROW BY REESE ERLICH Socorro Murillo, a single mother with six children, lived for eighteen monthson$55a week. She and 1,100 other workers were on strike against Watson ville...
...The union remains the bargaining agent and strikers came back with full seniority rights...
...But the eighteen-month Watsonville strike changed a lot of people...
...She and the other strikers also learned some things about the Teamsters union...
...But the strikers needed the Teamster International's $55-a-week strike benefits—and its national labor connections...
...But I think the struggle belongs to everyone, men and women, because there are more women than men in the company, so women have to have more participation...
...the workers voted 542-to-21 to end the strike...
...The workers look ahead to February 1988, when contracts at Watsonville and several other packers call for a wage re-opener, and the current industry standard of $5.85 an hour will be up for negotiation...
...We've turned things around in this small strike," says Gloria Betancourt...
...Hearing rumors that her husband was living with another woman in California, Murillo came north in 1977 to see for herself...
...At a critical point in the strike last year, Teamster leaders persuaded a Mexican vegetable-freezing firm to back out of a marketing agreement with Watsonville Canning...
...Back in Watsonville, even though new people control NorCal Frozen Foods at the top, many of the same managers run the plant's day-to-day operations...
...every few minutes workers and supporters came up to congratulate her or just to say hello...
...When the strikers took their complaints about police abuses to city hall, they found an all-white government—even though more than half of Watsonville's people are Latinos...
...I learned a lot during the strike," Murillo says...
...We knew that we had to be more organized, more united, and have a lot of allies in order to force the Teamsters to be accountable to us," Betancourt says...
...They come from small towns and for them the woman belongs in the home...
...chicanos from all over the state supported us...
...For many women, their lives are here...
...Neither expected to be raising a large family alone in a hostile environment...
...But they, and the labor movement nationwide, still call it a victory...
...Though she never went to high school, she did go to night school for several years and taught herself English by studying the newspaper...
...Obviously, the Watsonville strikers had agreed to cuts, not only in benefits but also the eighty-one cents an hour in wages...
...Certainly neither expected to become a respected leader and strike activist...
...They didn't expect Mexicans and chi-canas to do this...
...She threw them both out and went on to raise her six children on her own...
...The company also cut wages of skilled laborers, some by as much as 40 per cent...
...The International paid out $6.3 million in strike pay and launched a $1.5 million economic-boycott campaign...
...Not a single striker crossed the line...
...Many people hated them for being so disrespectful of the members and never fighting for us...
...Now I can read anything," she says...
...Gloria Betancourt, a single mother of five, walked the picket line too, living on the $55-a-week strike pay and food provided by union sympathizers...
...Conditions began to change in 1982, when management forced through a contract that cut wages from $7.06 an hour to $6.66...
...Hundreds of pickets massed in front of the gates...
...And Murillo was out there with them, shouting at the replacement workers...
...Each came to California expecting stability and a decent life...
...We made it clear that we were and still are prepared to fight with them if we have to...
...The rumors were true, and an attempt at reconciliation failed...
...Political support was new to the workers...
...Plant owner Mort Console lost his company and his family's fortune...
...These women in Watsonville have set a precedent...
...The company wanted to get rid of our union altogether," Murillo explains...
...The strike has helped raise people's understanding of the need for more chi-cano political power," says Murillo...
...They'd look at your shoes, your hairnet, your clothing...
...She remarried, but that didn't work out either...
...They have no other place to go...
...Teamster leaders, all the way up to International president Jackie Presser, found themselves in the unaccustomed position of supporting a long strike by a local made up mostly of Latina women...
...The workers walked out...
...In the end, they won...
...The pressure worked...
...Preserving both the union and the strikers' seniority rights is significant in the face of unsuccessful strikes at TWA and Continental air lines, Phelps Dodge, and Hormel...
...Remember, they went for thirty years without striking in that industry...
...Fights broke out between police and strikers...
...At age forty-three, Socorro Murillo fixes what is probably the best beef-liver taco in northern California...
...In addition, it upped the number of hours employees would have to work to qualify for benefits, thus elimReeseErlich is an Oakland-basedfree-lance journalist who covered the Watsonville strike for the Christian Science Monitor and is now writing a book about it...
...We found out we're not alone...
...Friction has already appeared as former strikers confront their old supervisors...
...We made it clear that the Teamsters' reputation was at stake...
...I was just a farming girl," says Murillo, who was born in the state of Jalisco, never attended school, and can read neither Spanish nor English...
...They yelled at the scabs hired to replace them and sometimes blocked cars...
...I don't even think we expected we could last that long and win such a big victory...
...But we have the people...
...My father used to pick crops in California every year...
...The first one liked to chase women, but didn't drink," she says...
...My parents were eligidos [recipients of government land grants] who owned maybe eight acres...
...The strike began on September 9, 1985, when Watsonville Canning cut line-workers' wages from $6.66 an hour to $4.75 and announced it would start new employees at $4.25...
...We, the strikers, were actually running things, while the old union officials tried to block us...
...She bends down to check on her homemade cheese as she tells how she came to Watsonville...
...inating them for many...
...He told us this was a very nice country and that you could make a lot of money picking tomatoes...
...Today, Betancourt and Murillo are back at work...
...It was a great victory," he says...
...In 1962, she married a man from her village who also came north to pick each year...
...A year later, she was evicted from her home...
...The companies have the money, the police, and the courts...
...We had insurance and they treated you right...
...Just before the strike began, she says, "you couldn't talk on the line or even turn your head...
...Later they switched to seasonal jobs at Watson-ville Canning...
...She also preserves nopales—cactus leaves— in giant mayonnaise jars...
...In the beginning it was pretty decent," she says...
...They don't see women being involved in politics or criticizing scabs or anything like that...
...Murillo started cutting broccoli at Watsonville Canning in 1977...
...She and 1,100 other workers were on strike against Watson ville Canning and Frozen Food, Inc., the nation's largest frozen-food processor...
...Both women held on...
...She went with fellow strikers to San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other places to gather support...
...Finally, Wells Fargo Bank foreclosed on owner Console...
...We won because we stuck together...
...When the strike began," she says, "workers had lost any respect for the union...
...Now they have a strong union and the impact will be felt in the whole industry...
...Not all the men are understanding," she says...
...We got a lot of support from other nationalities too...
...Jesse Jackson spoke to 4,000 people here in Watsonville...
...Her father worked as a ranch foreman in California and sent money home every month...
...We got support from white students and workers...
...can be done...
...Gloria Betancourt sat down with a full plate of food during the Watsonville strikers' victory barbecue, but she barely had a chance to eat...
...When 500 of the workers met to elect their own strike committee, Betancourt got the most votes...
...When the picketing began in September 1985, she had no savings...
...Murillo and Betancourt, like millions of other Mexicans who have come to the United States, first tried farm work...
...United Farm Workers president Cesar Chavez agrees...
...Betancourt says the Left also "played an important part in the strike and in support activities...
...On March 11, 1987, amid cries of "Si se puede...
...Happy in Mexico, Betancourt reluctantly came to California with her family in 1962...
...The old, white officials who had run the union—Teamsters Local 912—for thirty years left office amid angry charges of selling out the workers...
...We used to cut up ten broccolis per minute and eventually they pushed us up to twenty-five...
...And the workers emerged as a confident, organized force...
...The wages were better, they could look forward to medical benefits after three years' employment, and—best of all—they could stop migrating with the crops...
...In the course of the strike, some of the men learned to agree with her...
...In the last months of the strike, management faced losses mounting into the tens of millions of dollars...
...NorCal quickly opened negotiations with Local 912, and both parties agreed on a contract providing $5.85 an hour, with some cuts in medical and pension benefits—though not so drastic as the cuts imposed by Console...
...the line just sped up...
...She got a job at Watsonville Canning when she was fifteen years old—"I had to wear a lot of makeup to pass for eighteen," she laughs...
...Betancourt was born in Guadalajara and went to school in Mexico through the sixth grade...
...I learned that not all whites discriminate against Mexicans...
...Also back are all the strikers who chose to return, along with a few of the scab mechanics, who count as new hires...
...She had never spoken in public before the strike, but she soon caught on...
...For Betancourt, the strike was a feminist awakening...
...They began to get very nitpicky," says Murillo...
...More than the wages is that they broke that long, long period of no strikes and no fight-back...
...The second one liked to chase women and drink...
...No improvements in equipment or procedures, she says...
...She rents a sixty-year-old house a stone's throw from the frozen-food factory...
...To bring them back to work is a victory for the union and for all Mexican people...
...When the members of Local 912 walked out in 1985, it was the first strike in the plant's history—indeed, the first in the industry...
...A group of growers to whom Console owed money took over Watsonville Canning and renamed it NorCal Frozen Foods...
Vol. 51 • July 1987 • No. 7
