About 270 members of Western Council of Industrial Workers (WCIW) Local 3023 went out on strike September 23 after rejecting several contract offers from Snokist, a fruit canning and distributing company owned by growers. The WCIW is the industrial section of the Carpenters and Joiners Union.

The striking workers joined the WCIW in 2002 after the company terminated all employees’ medical and dental benefits and fired 400 workers. The bosses then rehired 200 of the fired workers at $2-$3 an hour less. Others were forced to remain employees of a temporary agency, at minimum wage. The company employs about 80 workers year-round in the cannery warehouse. The other employees work during the different fruit seasons, packing cherries, pears, or apples.

The company’s “offers” do not include restoration of any health-care benefits or wage levels for employees—many with decades of work at Snokist. This year’s apple crop set a sales record of $1.16 billion.

Snokist workers have now been on strike for more than five weeks. They maintain picket lines around the clock, seven days a week. The morning picket lines are large. “Usually 200 to 250 strikers and supporters from other workplaces come out every morning to show the company and replacement workers we are determined and have support,” said Rogelio Montes, a WCIW organizer.

Strikers are maintaining round-the-clock picket lines at the Terrace Heights plant and are beginning to reach out for solidarity.

Several strikers attended a rally in Seattle October 16 for Group Health Workers, members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), who are facing cuts in their health insurance benefits. The SEIU local president thanked the delegation from the platform, along with a group of farm workers who came from Florida, where they are protesting low wages for tomato harvesting.

At the end of October, strikers held an information candlelight vigil at the house of Valerie Woerner, Snokist’s chief executive officer, to protest the bosses’ refusal to negotiate an acceptable contract. Another vigil was planned at the house of the chairman of the growers’ board. The largest growers in the area maintain seats on the 12-member growers’ cooperative board that runs the company.

The strikers received a boost from the news that on October 21 employees of Grandview Foods won union representation with Teamsters Local 760. Grandview Foods is a frozen-fruit processing plant in the area. Production and maintenance workers voted 97-4 to join the Teamsters after the National Labor Relations Board ruled they were joint employees of the company and of Barret Business Services, a temporary agency.

Barret Business Services is supplying Snokist with replacement workers during the strike in Yakima.  
 
 
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