BY OSBORNE HART
LIVINGSTON, California - Workers at the Foster Farms chicken slaughtering plant struck the country's largest poultry operation here October 6 after rejecting the company's offer.

Members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1288 - 2,300 strong -set up a 24-hour picket line at the sprawling plant, 113 miles from San Francisco in Merced County, in the agriculture producing Central Valley.

The workforce of chicken pluckers, cutters, and packers is about 50 percent Mexican, 25 percent are Punjabi, and a smaller percentage of workers are Blacks or Asian, including Hmong and Vietnamese.

Sukh Purewal, who is Punjabi, has worked at the plant for 15 years. In that time "my pay has gone from $6.70 an hour to $8.08," he said. "Near Christmas time, when they are running turkeys instead of chickens, we may only get 22 to 30 hours work a week. It's the same thing again in the spring."

Seventy-seven percent of the ranks rejected Foster Farms' "final offer," against the union's bargaining committee's recommendation. The 150 mechanics, who earn more than $4 an hour more than production workers, are standing firm with the strike, despite company pressure to divide them from their fellow strikers.

"They want us to work like slaves," José Castro explained. "This is the '90s. It was the 1800s when people had to work like slaves for free."

The company's five-year offer includes a 1.5 percent yearly raise - 65 cents for the life of the contract - with lump sum bonuses totaling $1,500. At the same time, the company is demanding increases in medical co-payments and monthly insurance premiums. They are asking workers to pay $600 a year more than the $230 that they pay under the expired contract.

"I have been working here for 22 years," Ross Parcel said. "At the end of the contract the company is offering it will be $8.95. That's ridiculous after 22 years. They run the newer lines at 160 birds a minute."

At full speed, the plant processes nearly 480,000 chickens in 24 hours. Foster Farms claims the plant is now running at 50 percent capacity - 250,000 a-day. Strikers say otherwise. After an hour on picket line, five trucks - two in, 3 out - pass through the gate. One mexicano striker, a 10-year veteran, who requested anonymity, said, "They are running one of the five lines" and that can be no more than "100,000 chickens."

Joe Del Toro, a "chicken hanger" for 13 years, described to the San Francisco Chronicle his job. He works in a room dimly lit with red light to "keep the birds calm," grabbing 24 live birds a minute and hanging them by their feet on a conveyor belt. "This job I have, it's really something" -11,000 chickens a day. "Your hands get big, just from grabbing so many chickens."

Along the picket line several women workers wear medical braces - a sign of carpal tunnel syndrome and other repetitive motion arm injuries.

With chants in Spanish, Punjab, and English resonating in the background, several strikers expressed their appreciation of the support they've received from other unionists. Earlier in the week, one worker reported, a United Parcel Service driver stopped his truck to give strikers two cases of sodas. Another said that United Farm Workers and Teamsters members from Watsonville strawberry fields joined the line.

The police are ever-present. A command post occupies a side street across from the picket line. Police barricades run parallel to several sections of the fence around the plant. Two sheriff's deputies ride horses back and forth along the line. The California Highway Patrol stands watch over the main intersection where trucks turn onto the street leading to the plant.

Osborne Hart is a member of International Association of Machinists (IAM) Lodge 1584. Norton Sandler, a member of IAM Lodge 1781, contributed to this article.  
 
 
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