Drivers OK Contract With Tortilla Maker

Delivery truck drivers for Southern California’s largest tortilla maker approved a new contract late Wednesday, ending a six-week strike against the Guerrero tortilla brand.

The strike was not large, involving only about 160 drivers, but it grabbed headlines and the attention of politicians, and was touted as a symbol of a resurgent labor movement.

Under the new contract agreement, which was ratified by an 85-2 vote, the drivers, members of Teamsters Local 63, will receive a boost in pay and commissions, said Peter Olney, an organizer with Los Angeles Manufacturing Action Project, a nonprofit group of labor and community activists that is organizing immigrant workers.

The drivers for the Guerrero-label products, made by Los Angeles-based Gruma USA, earn a base salary of $250 a week for six days of work. That base will increase to $320 a week by the end of the five-year contract, Olney said.

In addition, the commission that drivers earn on top of the base salary will rise by one percentage point, to 6%, he said.

The union has said that the average driver makes about $500 a week, while Gruma has contended that average pay is $785 per week.

Gruma is the U.S. arm of the controversial Grupo Industrial Maseca, which holds a virtual monopoly on the corn flour and tortilla business in Mexico. It makes tortillas and other products primarily under the Guerrero and Mission labels. The 160 striking drivers represent nearly half of the Gruma drivers in Southern California.

The contract also increases job security of the drivers by modifying a provision that gave Gruma the right to contract out work to nonunion drivers, Olney said.

“It’s very exciting in terms of the gains they’ve made,” Olney said. “Strikes these days are usually a losing proposition and this one was a winner.”

Gruma Human Resources Vice President Roberto Velazquez called the new contract “a win-win for both sides.”

Olney said the tentative agreement was reached Wednesday morning during negotiations under the watch of federal mediators.

The strike, which began Aug. 4, was played out in visible fashion with a boycott, protests and rallies--one involving the breaking of a pinata of a chupacabra (a vampire-like predator whose legend has spread rapidly among Latinos), which was meant to represent Gruma’s parent company. The union claims Guerrero sales slowed because of the strike, but Gruma officials said the strike had little impact on sales.

The labor dispute turned unusually rancorous on Aug. 28 when something happened--the details are in dispute--on the 605 and San Bernardino freeways involving pepper spray and dueling caravans of striking truck drivers and private security guards hired by Gruma.

The California Highway Patrol initially arrested six striking Guerrero drivers but soon released them and then issued a statement saying they had arrested the wrong people.

Political figures were drawn to the strike, including U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros, Teamsters President Ron Carey, California Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters and state Sen. Tom Hayden--all of whom pledged to boycott Gruma products.