United Farm Workers

[Guest guest]

Hi Everyone - The attached file is a story about the United Farm Workers

membership numbers that ran in last Wednesday's Wall Street

Journal (California edition). It is a text file that can be

opened in any standard text reader or work processing software.

Warm regards,

Don Villarejo

The Wall Street Journal

September 20, 2000

The Wall Street Journal/California

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UFW Numbers

Are Overstated,

Critics Say

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By Marc Lifsher

FRESNO -- After years of frustration in the fields and at the Statehouse, the

United Farm Workers Union finally is on a roll, capped by a new law making the

birthday of the union's founder, the late Cesar Chavez, an official state

holiday.

But the UFW's recent successes belie an argument being made by a chorus of

academics, labor lawyers and growers: The union, they say, hasn't been able to

organize nearly as many members as it says it has.

At the UFW's convention Labor Day weekend here in California's agricultural

heartland, President Arturo pegged rank-and-file membership nationwide

at 27,000, up from 20,000 at the start of an organizing drive that began in

1994. The UFW's 1997 and 1998 annual reports submitted to the U.S. Department of

Labor, the most recent, say that the union had 26,000 members in each of those

two years.

Those numbers are questioned by Phil , an agricultural economist at the

University of California-, who put together his own membership estimates

based on his research and on surveys of known UFW contracts with growers

conducted by lawyers who represent grower associations.

According to a list drawn up by attorneys Roy of Oxnard and Bogart

of Salinas, the UFW had 32 current contracts covering about 7,000 jobs in

California at the end of 1998. And both growers and UFW officials agree that the

union had only 650 workers under contract outside the state in 1998: about 200

workers in Washington state and 450 in Florida.

The numbers mean the UFW has about 7,000 workers organized nationwide, Mr.

estimates. Mr. Bogart says the union's figures, as reported to the

federal government, " just don't add up. "

The low estimates of membership are likely to add fuel to the debate over

whether the union has been more successful as a social and political movement

than as a more traditional labor organization.

Though by anyone's count its numbers are minute -- dwarfed, for instance by the

Teamsters Union with 250,000 members in California alone -- the UFW casts a

giant shadow over politics in the state. Under Mr. Chavez in the late 1960s and

early 1970s, it grabbed national attention through sometimes violent struggles

with growers that lead to a series of largely successful boycotts of table

grapes, the signing of a number of labor contracts and the passage of a landmark

state law to protect agricultural workers.

Teamsters Union with 250,000 members in California alone -- the UFW casts a

giant shadow over politics in the state. Under Mr. Chavez in the late 1960s and

early 1970s, it grabbed national attention through sometimes violent struggles

with growers that lead to a series of largely successful boycotts of table

grapes, the signing of a number of labor contracts and the passage of a landmark

state law to protect agricultural workers.

" Is it a labor union or a social movement? " Mr. asks. Over the years, he

adds, it has had difficulty striking a " balance between things like negotiating

contracts, operating a pension and health-care plan and being sort of a symbol

of achievement for Latinos in California. "

To bolster his argument that the union is overstating its membership, Mr.

notes that the union reported to the Labor Department that it collected $1.5

million in dues in 1997 and $1.6 million in 1998. (Those dues were dwarfed by

citizen donations, which totaled $4.3 million in 1998.) Workers under UFW

contracts pay 2% of their gross pay to the union as dues; if the union had

26,000 dues-paying members, members would earn only an average of $3,000 a year.

That's low, Mr. says, even for farm work. According to the U.S. Bureau of

Labor Statistics, the average farm worker, working full-time for half of a year,

earned $7,500 in 1999. Many of the UFW's most stable contract jobs -- at

mushroom farms and nurseries that provide nearly year-round employment -- yield

annual pay of $15,000 to $20,000.

Even those who think the UFW has made substantial gains in recent years believe

the UFW numbers are overstated. Don Villarejo, a -based labor and

agricultural consultant and former director of the California Institute for

Rural Studies, a nonprofit that studies rural issues, pegs the union's strength

at no more than 12,500 members, based on several recent organizing and contract

victories. He says the union told him in 1996 that it provided health-care

coverage to approximately 5,000 dues-paying members, a figure he says is

" roughly consistent " with figures provided by Mr. .

Marc Grossman, a spokesman for the union says it stands by its numbers and that

Mr. 's estimates are wrong and that his methodology is flawed. The 7,000

figure is " way low, " he says. While most of its members are covered by the

union's health-care plan, the 1996 figure is also incorrect, he says. " They just

don't know " the correct figures, says Mr. Grossman, referring to Mr. and

other critics.

While declining to be more precise, Mr. Grossman says many of the UFW contract

jobs are held by more than one worker, a result of the " seasonality and

transiency " of the farm-labor work force. So critics, who he says have a reason

to try to downplay the union's membership, " could be counting jobs, not people, "

he says.

Messrs. Villarejo and Bogart agree that their job count might underestimate the

number of workers represented by the union, but not enough to account for the

difference between their count and the union's.

" When you look at the bulk of the membership under contracts, most of the folks

work year-round in mushrooms and in nurseries, " Mr. Villarejo says.

The U.S. Department of Labor, for its part, says it's not troubled by the

inconsistencies, even though the filing of a false report carries a possible

$100,000 fine and up to a one-year prison sentence. " These are the numbers we

have, the numbers we work with, " says spokesman Danny Sepulveda. " There's not an

extreme degree of concern. "

The debate over numbers, says Mr. Grossman, misses the point that the UFW has

made some important strides recently. Late last month, it signed a contract

covering 300 workers with Gallo of Sonoma, a unit of giant Modesto-based Gallo

Vineyards Inc.

The union had won the right to represent Gallo workers six years ago, but it

took the intervening time to negotiate a contract. Thanks to a favorable ruling

from the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board, the union is poised to pick

up another 700 jobs next January at a strawberry grower in Ventura County. Over

the past six years, the union has reaped " 20 election victories and 25 new -- or

first-time -- contracts, " boasted Mr. , the UFW president, at the Labor

Day convention. (According to the UFW, it also lost about 200 union jobs in one

of two decertification elections around the state during the last year.)

The UFW this year also achieved some important legislative victories.

In addition to persuading lawmakers to name March 31, Mr. Chavez's birthday, a

state holiday, the union won passage of a labor bill that sharply increases

penalties against employers who willfully and repeatedly cheat workers out of

pay. The bill, which has the support of the California Farm Bureau Federation,

is on the governor's desk.

Democratic Gov. Gray won't say whether he'll sign the bill, but he has

made it clear that the UFW has a new friend at the Capitol after 16 years of

decidedly cool relations with his Republican predecessors. Mr. 's speech at

the union's Sept. 2 convention was the first by a California governor since

1978.

The speech, crowed the UFW's Mr. , marks " a tremendous change. "

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Don Villarejo, PhD

P.O. Box 381

, CA 95617

(530)756-6545 voice & facsimile