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January 6, 2017 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
LABOR HISTORY
“Just because you’re
Catholic doesn’t mean
you can’t throw rocks at
scabs.”
Song of the Stubborn One Thousand
By Don McIntosh
It’s said that those who go
through a strike never forget it.
Peter Shapiro took part in a mid-
’80s cannery strike as a commu-
nity supporter, and never forgot
it. Thirty years later, retired from
a career in the U.S. Postal Serv-
ice, he wrote a book about that
remarkable strike — a rare union
victory during an era of union-
busting.
Song of the Stubborn One
Thousand: The Watsonville Can-
ning Strike, 1985-87 tells the
story of an 18-month struggle by
1,000 frozen food workers in
Watsonville, California during
which not a single striker
crossed the picket line. Instead,
a union workforce composed
mostly of Mexican immigrant
women forced the company
owner into bankruptcy, and
waged a five-day wildcat strike
against the new plant owner to
keep their health benefits intact.
Shapiro
studied labor
history at
University of
California
Berkeley, but
in 1975, de-
cided he’d
rather try to
make labor Peter Shapiro
history as a
union activist than study it in a
university setting. He later be-
came a union officer in Portland-
based National Association Let-
ter Carriers Branch 82. But in the
mid-’80s, he was working at the
Oakland post office, and serving
as the labor editor of Unity, a
left-wing newspaper. When the
strike in Watsonville began, he
attended support rallies, helped
co-workers collect canned goods
for the strikers, and spread word
about the strike in his newspaper.
In the 1980s, Watsonville, 30
miles south of San Jose, was the
frozen food capital of the world,
with eight frozen food plants and
5,000 workers. Watsonville Can-
ning, with 1,000 employees, was
the largest.
Teamsters Local 912 had ne-
gotiated industry-leading multi-
employer contracts for 30 years.
That meant frozen food compa-
nies had the same pay and bene-
fits, so they didn’t need to com-
pete by keeping wages low.
What set the Watsonville
struggle in motion was a disas-
trous deal that local union presi-
dent Richard King made with
Watsonville Canning owner
— Gloria Betancourt
To dramatize their plight and appeal to God for help, striking cannery work-
ers marched on their knees from the plant gates to a Catholic church.
Mort Console in 1982. Console
claimed he needed a temporary
pay cut in order for the company
to stay profitable, and King
agreed to reduce wages from
$7.06 to $6.66 an hour.
King, union president since
1967, had close personal rela-
tionships with the cannery own-
ers, including Console’s father,
the company founder. But the
younger Console had new ideas
about how to run the company.
The ’80s was when business
executives lost any shame about
living large and flaunting excess
while busting unions and de-
manding pay cuts from workers.
Console embodied that lifestyle.
He had expensive cars, two pri-
vate jets, a large house, and
$200,000 worth of furniture.
Console’s sweetheart union
deal angered competitor Shaw
Canning, so in 1985, Shaw with-
drew from the master agreement
and demanded the same favor-
able terms.
Meanwhile, Console, instead
of being grateful for the last pay
cut, now demanded a further cut
to $4.65 an hour — a $2 an hour
cut. Not that he was serious.
Console had hired Littler
Mendelson, one of the earliest
and most significant union-bust-
ing law firms in the country. On
their advice, he was attempting
a strategy then being employed
across America: provoke a strike
with outrageous demands, hire
permanent replacements, oper-
ate with scab labor for 12
months, then legally move to de-
certify the union in a govern-
ment-administered election in
which scabs get to vote. To
weather any business difficul-
ties, Console had secured an $18
million line of credit from Wells
Fargo and built up inventory in
the months before.
Rejecting the demands, work-
ers at both Shaw and Watsonville
Canning went out on strike. Local
912 was totally unprepared. It
had no strike fund. Strikers had to
do everything themselves, organ-
izing the food bank, the hardship
fund, the picket line, security.
King didn’t even speak Spanish,
the language most of the workers
spoke, and after the strike got un-
der way, he soon disappeared and
announced his retirement.
Government repression began
immediately. Just 15 hours after
the first pickets went up, a Cali-
fornia judge issued a restraining
order that effectively outlawed
mass picketing: no more than
four pickets within 20 feet of
each of the plant’s eight gates;
pickets had to be at least 10 feet
from each other; and no one else
was allowed to congregate
within 100 yards of Watsonville
Canning unless they were enter-
ing the premises to go to work.
To enforce the restraining order,
the local police chief immedi-
ately put his entire force on 12-
hour shifts, ensuring that at least
a dozen officers would be on the
scene at all times.
Violence and property de-
struction did play a role in the
strike. Women strikers filled
socks with sand to bust out win-
dows of buses ferrying the scabs,
or followed buses and hid be-
hind bushes while throwing
rocks at them as they passed.
Trucks were sabotaged, and no
one was ever caught. As one of
the strike leaders, Gloria Betan-
court, put it: “Just because
you’re Catholic doesn’t mean
you can’t throw rocks at scabs.”
At length, higher-ups in the
Teamsters Joint Council leader-
ship stepped in and reached a deal
with the canning companies that
weren’t trying to bust the union.
To preserve the master agree-
ment, workers at all the other can-
neries took a wage cut to $5.85 an
hour, with a “me-too” clause so
the union couldn’t let Watsonville
further undercut their rate. That
isolated Watsonville Canning, the
true rogue in the bunch, and
upped the stakes for the strikers.
Shapiro says the turning point
was the defeat of the attempt to
decertify the union. Console’s
union-busting plan required that
scabs outvote strikers so that
legally there’d be no more
union. But he had a hard time
getting enough scabs, and strik-
ers made an incredible effort to
stay together.
In the end, Console lost
everything and declared bank-
ruptcy. Creditors took over the
company and negotiated a union
contract workers could accept.
Was it truly a victory? Workers
were making $6.60 when they
went out, and $5.85 when they
went back in. But as United Farm
Workers leader Cesar Chavez
said at the time, these workers
had had no functioning union af-
ter 30 years without a strike. Now
they had a union, and it would
make a difference going forward.
And it did, for a few years at least.
In the ’90s, Watsonville’s
frozen food industry fell victim to
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