The Strawberry March was one of a series of actions in the labor-led national fight for improved conditions for strawberry workers. BMWE President Mac Fleming, in a letter to subordinate lodge presidents and secretary-treasurers in California, Oregon and Nevada, encouraged participation not only because "it’s the right thing to do" but because it was an opportunity for members to take an active part in the labor movement, making better trade unionists and the BMWE an ever stronger union.

Strawberry workers are struggling for basic improvements. They report poverty wages of about $8,500 a season, dirty drinking water and bathrooms, sexual harassment and arbitrary firings. Despite injuries related to 10- to 12-hour days stooped over in fields treated with toxic pesticides, few of the workers have health insurance.

While the industry has flourished, the amount of each retail dollar spent on strawberries that goes to the worker has decreased from 17 cents in 1985 to 9 cents in 1995.

To improve their condition, workers are organizing with the United Farm Workers.

For just 5 cents more per pint of berries, California’s $650 million-a-year strawberry industry could boost workers’ piece rate pay by at least 50 percent, according to the independent Institute for Rural Studies in Davis, California.

To support the campaign, individuals and leaders from more than 40 organizations--including the NAACP, the National Organization for Women and the Sierra Club--have formed the National Strawberry Commission for Workers’ Rights. Celebrities have signed on too, including Danny Glover, Edward James Olmos, Carlos Santana and Linda Ronstadt.

"We have an urgent need to stand together," said NOW President Patricia Ireland.

"The strawberry workers’ fight is the Sierra Club’s fight," Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope said.

UFW President Arturo Rodriguez, who succeeded the late Cesar Chavez, said that strawberry workers have tried to organize before. Workers voted overwhelmingly for the UFW. But in each case the industry has crushed the efforts, plowing under crops and abandoning workers.

"Clearly, only public support will pressure the industry to bargain in good faith so workers can win union contracts after they vote for the UFW," Rodriguez said.

AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney has pledged unprecedented resources for a massive joint campaign with the UFW.

"Even though strawberry workers are in California, this fight will be everywhere," Sweeney said. "It will be at thousands of supermarkets where the AFL-CIO’s more than 600 central labor councils will seek support for basic rights for strawberry workers. It will be in the streets when necessary. It will be in the corporate offices as well, where the strawberry barons operate."

The campaign needs people willing to visit supermarkets and ask managers to support basic rights for strawberry workers, as well as people willing to distribute and sign pledges supporting the workers.

For example, Saturday afternoon before the March, approximately 150 labor activists walked to a Lucky’s supermarket in San Jose to urge management to sign the Strawberry Workers’ Rights pledge. Although unsuccessful this time, members of the group said, "We’ll be back." Ralph’s, the largest supermarket chain in California and the sixth-largest chain in the nation, signed the pledge in December. Other signers include two New York supermarket chains and one in Cleveland.

For more information on the continuing campaign, you can call the campaign office at 1-888-AFL-CIOO or 202-637-5280.