Workers have garnered widespread support from individuals and organizations including a public endorsement from Ralph's, the largest supermarket chain in California. The success of the campaign, UFW organizers say, will ultimately turn on the workers' ability to win union recognition from the big cooler corporations such as Wellpict, Driscoll and Gargiulo Farms, a subsidiary of the chemical giant Monsanto Corporation. The UFW is focusing on these companies, which receive berries from the field and immediately refrigerate them, rather than on the growers who directly employ the pickers, because the cooler corporations are the true industry titans. They set prices, market and distribute the fruit and loan money to growers. The strawberry industry has been quite profitable in recent years, but the industry has resisted demands to share this prosperity with its workers.
Organizers also allege more direct acts of intimidation and retribution.
Before the election, company agents threatened strawberry workers with loss of their jobs if the union won. After the voting, Oceanview shut down its strawberry operations. In August 1995, more than 400 strawberry workers at VCNM Farms in Salinas struck over low pay, abusive treatment, sexual harassment, dirty drinking water and toilets and failure to provide medical treatment for a suspected pesticide poisoning. The workers voted 332 to 50 in favor of UFW representation. In response, VCNM began plowing under fields.