Dried Garlic And A Busted Union

Basic Vegetable spokesperson Jay Jory, of the Fresno-based law firm Jory, Peterson, Watkins and Smith disagreed with Conle, saying that the plant had not been doing very well financially. Jory cited a study by the Bain Group that, according to the company, "revealed...that BVP’s major competitor was gaining market share and enjoyed a significant advantage in labor costs." The plant was facing a potential shut down, said Jory, and there needed to be "a belt tightening throughout the company...[to make the plant] more productive and more efficient."

Once workers rejected the concessions and struck the plant on July 7, company demands escalated. Basic Vegetable proposed eliminating the union pension plan completely, replacing it with a 30¢/hour contribution to a 401k savings account. It proposed keeping the wages of newly hired workers $3/hour below those already in the workforce, and charging them $180/month for healthcare. The company wanted vastly increased subcontracting rights and the ability to grant promotions to whoever they wanted, rather than going by seniority. The final straw for the workers was when company negotiators proposed that strikers pay an additional $20/month for their medical care until the company’s strike- related costs had been repaid.

When the union filed unfair bargaining charges with the National Labor Relations Board, the last demand was withdrawn, but the rest still stand.

At the beginning of the strike the company immediately began hiring strikebreakers, stashing them at motels in King City and nearby Soledad, and even brought in busloads from other rural towns. Strikers claim that local jails have also been a source of recruits. At the end of September, Basic Vegetable announced it had permanently replaced its striking workers. They could return to work, the company said, but only to about 100 temporary seasonal jobs. The rest, and best, of the jobs would now belong to replacement workers.

On August 18, a car full of strikers followed a bus carrying strikebreakers back to the small town of Avenal on the Westside of the Central Valley, over the mountains from King City. As strikers, leaflets in hand, sought to talk to workers getting off the bus to go home, they were confronted and beaten. One striker ran down the street, pursued by his adversaries. A local woman, taking her children home, passed by in her car and opened the door, urging him to take refuge inside. Her car windows were broken out as her children and grandchildren watched in terror.

"This attack was orchestrated by Pedro [Ayala], a labor contractor for Basic who, upon getting off the bus yelled that the company had given them the ‘green light’ to physically injure the strikers," said a statement issued by Local 890. Jory denies this version of events and claims that "Basic had nothing to do with this incident," and that it was union supporters who initiated the violence.

What Basic Vegetable is doing in King City is hauntingly familiar to many other Teamster Union locals in rural California. In 1983, Watsonville Canning and Frozen Foods forced Local 912 into a 19-month strike over similar concessions, which the union finally won. But subsequent strikes were lost at the United Foods and Ganges Brothers processing plants in the late 1980s, and local Teamster unions broken. In 1994, Local 601 struck over concessions demanded by Diamond Walnut at its huge plant in Stockton. The strike continues today, making it one of the longest in U.S. labor history.

Jerry Hume is following in his father’s political footsteps. In 1933, Jaquelin Hume and his brother Bill established the Basic Companies, which became the world’s largest processor of dehydrated onions and garlic. Jack Hume was part of a small coterie of conservative California businessmen who were long-time friends and financial backers of Ronald Reagan—hiring his political consultants, and bankrolling his 1966 gubernatorial campaign. He joined Justin Dart, the drugstore tycoon; Holmes Tuttle, the automobile dealer; Earle Jorgen- sen, the steel distributor and others in Reagan’s unofficial "Kitchen Cabinet."

When Reagan backers needed an organization to lobby for their domestic and foreign policy agenda, they turned to Jack Hume, who founded Citizens for America (CFA) with Reagan’s blessing in 1983. The story of Citizens for America is a fascinating study of how, over the past two decades, the conservative movement has been able to build strong well-funded institutions in a relatively short time, deploy them strategically, and jettison them when they no longer were useful.

Hume had a vision: ensuring that the Reagan ideology would be sustained well beyond the Reagan presidency. He hired Lew Lehrman as chair, a young retired entrepreneur, who made his fortune building the Rite-Aid drugstore empire and then spent part of it on a failed bid to unseat New York’s Governor Mario Cuomo.

In 1985, while Congress was debating aid to the Nicaraguan contras, CFA, with Reagan’s blessing, convened a conference in Angola of counter-revolutionary terrorists from four countries, brought together to form the "Democratic International." Attendees included Jonas Savimbi, head of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (then supported by the CIA and South Africa’s apartheid government); Adolfo Calero, leader of the 15,000-man Nicaraguan Democratic Force; Ghulam Wardak of the Islamic Unity of Afghanistan Mujahedeen; and Pa Kao Her of the Ethnics Liberation Organization of Laos.

At the time of the conference, the CIA had already given the Afghan rebels $250 million, and had funneled another $80 million to the Calero’s Nicaraguan contras.

Continuing his father’s conservative advocacy, William Hume has championed school vouchers and other privatization efforts. He was appointed to the California State Board of Education by Governor Pete Wilson. During his Senate confirmation hearings he was criticized for passing out copies of Charles Murray’s book, The Bell Curve, which tries to put a scientific spin on racist eugenics and argues that whites have higher IQs than African Americans. He is currently chair of the board of the Center for Education Reform, which pushes school vouchers and charter schools. Since 1993 Hume has served as a trustee of the conservative Heritage Foundation.

One of Hume’s pet projects is the Foundation for Teaching Economics (FTE), founded by his father in 1975 "in response to his concern that many young people were not being taught the basic concepts of market economics." FTE promotes free-market principles by "helping economics teachers become more effective educators," and by "introduc[ing] young individuals, selected for their leadership potential, to an economic way of thinking about national and international issues."

However, funding right-wing causes is where Hume really shines. According to the Citizenship Project, a community-based organization founded by Mexican immigrants and unionists in Salinas, and DataCenter’s ImpactResearch Team, Hume and his family have contributed heavily to dozens of right-wing causes and candidates, including:

• 1995—$100,000 to the California Republican Party
• April 1995—$25,000 from William’s wife Patricia to Proposition 209, California’s anti-affirmation action initiative
• 1996—$150,000 to the California Republican Party; $100,000 to the Governor Pete Wilson Committee
• April 1998 and May 1998—two $100,000 contributions to Californian for Paycheck Protection (Proposition 226), the anti-union ballot initiative
• 1998—$50,000 to the campaign for Proposition 227, the Ron Unz-sponsored initiative which banned bilingual education in California
• 1996-98—$105,000 to school voucher initiatives in Oregon, Colorado and Wisconsin, and $20,000 to Gloria Matta Tuchman, anti-bilingual education and pro-school vou- cher spokesperson, and candidate for California State Superintendent of Schools. Hume gave an additional $100,000 to Tuchman one week before the November 1988 election

In addition to these contributions, Hume gave the RNC/Republican National State Elections Committee over $165,000 in 1999, and donated $1,000 or more to the campaigns of George W. Bush, Sen. Gordon Smith (R-WA), and Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX). This year Hume also gave at least $1,000 to Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR). Smith is co-sponsor of two Senate bills which would allow growers to bring workers into the country, and make their legal immigration status dependent on their jobs. This would be a big step towards reestablishing the old "bracero" contract labor program, which held immigrant farmworkers as virtual indentured servants through the 1940s and 1950s. A renewed "bracero" program would reduce farmworker wages drastically, providing an enormous financial reward for the growers who supply the Basic Vegetable plant with its garlic and onions.

While Hume continues his political fundraising for Republicans, the union in King City is escalating its campaign. Basic Vegetable counts among its clients a number of corporations with high-profile consumer food products—Kraft, Lipton, McDonalds, Church’s Chicken, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Cisco, Maizena, and Nestle. The union intends to focus attention on their use of products from the struck plant.

It appears the strike may last at least until next year’s season begins in May. Thus far, only 25 of the 750 strikers have returned to work. "If we lose the strike, and the union too, the only other work here in King City is in the fields," explains striker Lupe Vasquez, who has worked at Basic Vegetable for 31 years. "That’s where many of us started years ago, and we don’t want to go back. With a secure, union job at Basic Vegetable, we’ve been able to settle down, buy homes, send our kids to college, and have a much better life. That’s why we’re fighting so hard—we won’t give that up."   Z

David Bacon, photographer and associate editor for Pacific News Service, is a regular Z contributor. Bill Berkowitz, edits CultureWatch, a newsletter tracking the conservative movement, published by Oakland’s DataCenter (culturewatch@datacenter. org).