For Release: Aug. 31, 2005

Long-standing grievances, low pay and the recent spate of heat-related deaths among Central Valley field laborers have sparked the largest farm worker organizing campaign since the 1970s, with a state-conducted secret ballot union election set Thursday at Giumarra Vineyards Corp., the world's largest table grape grower with 4,000 peak season employees.

What began last year as a UFW drive to increase wages for grape pickers was transformed by the heat-related deaths of four valley farm workers in July. Two fatalities occurred over a one-year period at Giumarra. The organizing grew out of grievances voiced by Giumarra workers, including:

• Workers packing grapes into lugs, or boxes, being forced to labor eight hours a day on their knees with no umbrellas to keep out the sun. Nearly all other table grape growers supply tables and umbrellas so packers can work standing up in the shade.
  
  
• Grape pickers made to carry 23-pound lugs of grapes from the vines to where the packers work. Most growers supply wheel barrels.
  
  
• Illegally requiring that newly-hired pickers labor without pay for several days, a week or sometimes as long as a month during a "probationary period."
  
  
• Workers disciplined by being made to "take a seat" or endure a "time out" for hours or even a day because supervisors are displeased with how they pack or pick grapes. It is frequently used to threaten workers who fear losing work hours.
  
  
• Strict enforcement of quotas-picking a minimum number of boxes per hour or day regardless of the crop quality. Workers say carrillas, or speedups, constantly make them work faster and harder, even in extreme heat. Many don't take legally guaranteed work or lunch breaks?or even time to drink water?out of fear they will be given time outs, suspended or fired for not making quotas.
  
  
• Low pay. Workers now earn $7 an hour, up 25¡Ë in July because of UFW pressure. Except for increases in the state minimum wage, the last wage hike was in 1992, the result of an industry-wide pay raise won by Cesar Chavez and Arturo Rodriguez.br



• Workers complain about missing credit in their paychecks for boxes picked and being illegally required to provide their own work tools. During winter pruning, piece rates are set so low that workers sometimes don't make the minimum wage.
  
  
• Some workers say they must pay bribes to supervisors to keep jobs or work overtime.
  
  
• Workers continue to depict callousness and violations by Giumarra of the just-instituted state heat illness emergency regulation.

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