Marking the one-year anniversary of their strike against Valley Manufactured Housing (VMH), union members organized an expanded picket line August 25, as well as a barbecue across the street at their picket shack. The 130 strikers have kept up daily picket lines for the past year at the front entrance to the plant.

The union distributed anniversary T-shirts reading "One day more" to the strikers and their supporters, including dozens who are now working inside the plant where they make modular homes. In June, a company-backed decertification election was defeated when the union won most of the workers inside the plant to vote for the Western Council of Industrial Workers, which is affiliated with the Carpenters union. Leading up to the vote, strikers organized house meetings with the replacement workers and won most of them to back their fight. Dozens of replacement workers have since joined the union. Instead of pushing back the union fight, the outcome of the decertification election ended up strengthening the struggle.

As the lunch break came to an end at least 20 people left the barbecue to return to work in the plant. Almost all of them wore the strike T-shirt. They joined others who had been eating their lunch in the parking lot, some sporting the T-shirt.

Macario Ramos worked as an exterior painter at Valley Manufactured Housing. Before going on strike he was at the top pay of $8.50 an hour. "After one year we're still strong," he said. "Very few of us have gone back to work."

Ramos said the company refuses to negotiate with the union and has stuck by its unchanged offer that freezes wages and increases the out-of-pocket medical expenses to about $150 per month. Valley Manufactured has also challenged the results of the decertification election, which was won by the union 192 to 69. The company organized two replacement workers to say that strikers offered them large sums of money if they voted for the union. The National Labor Relations Board has heard the complaint and is expected to rule on the validity of the election in the next few weeks.

Ramos explained that the strikers didn't have to offer money to the replacements. Far from having to bribe workers, unionists found them receptive to the need for organization. "I was in about 15 house meetings and of all the meetings we had only two of them were unfriendly."

The bosses' frustrations with the continuing strength of the strike and the expanded picketing on the one-year anniversary showed itself as one of the bosses drove his truck dangerously close to the strikers, scraping against Rogelio Montes, pushing him to the side.

The strikers yelled at the boss but did not respond to his provocation. Montes, a central leader of the strike, said that many strikers had no confidence the police would do anything about this. "We complained to the police when this happened once before," he said, "but we were told it was the strikers' fault because we were responsible to get out of the way."

Montes referred to the two locked-out Kaiser workers who had joined their expanded picket line, "If different fights come together it'll be easier to beat the bosses."

At the end of the workday several workers came out of the plant to talk to the strikers. Estanislao Figueroa explained that the broad support inside the plant for the determined strikers was shown by the fact that bosses said hardly a word to those wearing the strike shirts. Others said that the newest workers who wore the shirts were harassed somewhat.

Mario Herrera, a worker in the plant, said one of the bosses came by to talk to him. "He told me the union is demanding too much and that these workers are a bunch of asparagus pickers." Of the people inside who had worn the T-shirts he said, "You could feel that people were proud and that others would have liked to join in."

On the picket line, Ramos said the strikers will "continue the fight until we win a decent contract for all the workers."  
 
 
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