Catherwood LibraryILR School

In a little-publicized November 13, 2002 victory, the United Farm Workers won a rematch of a 1999 election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to determine the official bargaining representative for 900 strawberry pickers at the Watsonville, CA fields of the largest strawberry grower in the U.S. In the earlier election, the UFW was firmly defeated at the Watsonville, CA fields of the Coastal Berry Co. by the Coastal Berry of California Farm Workers Committee, but engaged in a heated legal battle to win representation of workers at the company's Oxnard fields. The UFW's 2002 victory in its six-year struggle to organize the almost entirely non-union strawberry industry was not without controversy either, however, as the union was only able to win representation rights after securing a questionable after-the-fact waiver of a requirement that fifty percent of the workforce be available for a vote to be considered valid.