Workers Vote 543-21 to End Bitter 18-Month Strike at Frozen Food Plant

WATSONVILLE, Calif. —  Workers who nearly forced the nation’s largest frozen food plant into a foreclosure with a bitter 18-month strike, cheered and hugged one another Wednesday as they voted to go back to work.

The workers, most of them Latino women, voted 543 to 21 to accept a three-year contract with Norcal Foods, new owner of the former Watsonville Canning & Frozen Food Co.

“Everybody’s ecstatic,” Leon Ellis of Teamsters Union Local 912 said. “We’re going to have a little party tonight. Everyone is hugging and kissing--it looks a lot like a 1960s ‘love-in.’ ”

David Gill, one of the growers who owns Norcal Foods, said the mood at the plant had changed from anger to one of cooperation.

“Everyone’s real excited,” Gill said after the ratification was announced. “We’re glad to see that we’ve come to a settlement.

“There’s a lot of old animosity but we’re letting everyone know that we’re starting from scratch. If we pull together, we can make it work.”

Ellis said the new contract with Norcal Foods will pay an average of $5.85 per hour and will put workers on a par with other labor contracts in the Salinas Valley. Nearly 1,000 union workers struck Watsonville Canning in September, 1985, over a proposed wage cut.

The strike, marked by bitterness and occasional violence, was felt sharply in Watsonville. United Farm Workers President Cesar Chavez and the Rev. Jesse Jackson were among those who made visits to support the workers.

Watsonville Canning, under owner Mort Console, attempted to stay in business but by last month was deep in debt and no longer able or willing to continue functioning with non-union labor.

Gill said the rehiring of workers, based on seniority, will begin immediately and that by Friday, the first post-strike frozen food--broccoli--will be processed at the plant.