The 130 members of Local 2739 of the Western Council of Industrial Workers have been on strike against the modular home builder since August 1999. The strikers have kept up daily pickets and also regularly leafleted at retail outlets where the company's homes are sold.

In April, after 10 months of being unable to break the resolve of the mostly Mexican strikers, the bosses at Valley Manufactured Housing decided to try a new tack. They organized to have a replacement worker petition the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for a union decertification election. The NLRB, a government agency that claims neutrality in labor disputes, moved quickly to support this strikebreaking maneuver when it approved the election only three weeks later.

However, the company and their government backers got a surprise on the day of the decertification vote. They had backed the election in the expectation that the replacement workers, who outnumbered the strikers by about 200 to 130, would support the company against the union.

Balloting in the morning was held on company property, guaranteeing that almost all the replacement workers would vote. The afternoon balloting was held outside the plant. Since many of the strikers have had to find other work, including some picking fruit and vegetables in the fields, a number were not able to turn out for the vote. According to the Yakima Herald-Republic 176 replacement workers and 85 strikers voted.

Strike leader Rogelio Montes said the company tried to bolster the antiunion vote by challenging the votes of 43 strikers. "They said these workers couldn't cast a ballot because their green cards had expired. They claimed that others had taken other jobs, so they had left the strike and couldn't vote," said Montes. Even with these 43 votes left uncounted, the union still won the election by a more than 2-to-1 margin.

The day before the vote, the strikers were joined on their picket line by two locked-out Kaiser workers. They had decided to help the strikers at Valley Manufactured Housing after learning more about the decertification vote a day earlier at the 3,000-strong farm workers march in Pasco. A few other unionists joined the picket as well.

As is their daily routine, the strikers set up two rows of dozens of strike signs facing the two directions where workers would be driving into the plant. The pickets themselves set up their line at the one large gate that is the only entrance. Among the regular picket signs were ones in Spanish and English reading: "Vote Yes, Vote Union."  
 
Campaign to win replacements to union
After that the picket line took on a different look than the many lines this reporter and the other supporting unionists had been on. As the replacement workers drove in to chants, mostly in Spanish, of, "Vote yes, vote for the union," "vote for yourself not the company!" many of them were greeted by name by the strikers.

For their part, dozens of replacement workers waved to the strikers, a few gave the thumbs up, and some said they were voting with the strikers. One worker stopped his car, got a union T-shirt from one of the strikers, put it on, and then drove into work.

Antonio Larios was one of the strikers on the picket line. A lead man in the ceiling department for two and a half years, he explained that after the announcement of the decertification election the strikers had organized house meetings and discussions at the union hall with many of the replacement workers. "Some of the strikers have friends from high school and neighbors who are inside," he said. "We talked to them. The company told them the union was against them but we told them if it wasn't for the union the wages would be even lower."

Rogelio Montes explained that along with the campaign to talk to the replacement workers outside the plant they had also sent a small handful of strikers back into the plant to talk to people on the inside.

Montes said: "At first people were mad at us because the company was telling them that the only thing the union wanted was for them to lose their jobs. We talked to them about the need to be united against the company. We were scared at first, when the election was announced, but not after talking to the workers," he explained.

In fact, this confidence was reflected in the strikers on the picket line. When asked what they thought would be the outcome of the vote, they said in a matter of fact way, "We're going to win."

Later in the day at the lunch break, when many workers drove out of the plant and others sat in the parking lot eating, the strikers pulled out a megaphone and spoke to the workers. They explained how the company treated people when there was no union and that the strikers were fighting for better pay and working conditions, in the long run, for all the workers.

One of the main demands of the strike is a wage raise. Workers start at $6.65 an hour and after five years may reach top pay of $8.50. The strikers are also demanding an end to forced overtime and no increase in medical payments.

The plan by the company to use the decertification election to break the strike has had the effect instead of strengthening it. Strikers got more involved in defending the union and won a big victory.

"The strikers are happy," said Montes. "They see that the people inside want representation. The people inside are unhappy with the way they are treated. Just before the election they were treated better inside, but we used the megaphone and house calls to explain that was only temporary. They agreed with us."

The strikers are now planning to have more meetings with the workers inside. A celebration with food is planned on the picket line for June 16. As well, the strikers are now in a stronger position to garner more solidarity from the labor movement. Only the week before the vote they received a warm reception when they spoke to more than 200 Boeing workers in Seattle attending the union meeting of International Association of Machinists Local 751A.

In a message of thanks to the unionists who had supported the fight to stop the decertification of the union, Montes said the unionists sent one more message to Valley Manufactured Housing. "We want them to negotiate a fair contract now and [we told them] that every single worker forms part of the union and no matter what they do we are always going to [be] together."

Macario Ramos, a worker for eight years at Valley Manufactured Housing, was part of the first strike there in 1995 when they won the union. "The fight has never stopped," he said, indicating that he has every intention of continuing to struggle.  
 
 
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