Opinion ID: 1281454
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Background Summer Strike

Text: The unfair labor practices under review in the instant case, and in a contemporaneous separate but similar case, arose against the background of a strike against the grower's Kern County operation near Bakersfield mounted by the union in the summer of 1981. Contract negotiations broke down as the summer melon harvest began. The union therefore mounted a strike among the grower's tractor drivers and irrigators. The union decided not to call out the melon pickers (harvest workers), although some harvest workers did participate in the strike. Apparently, both the union and the grower engaged in abusive conduct at the grower's Kern County fields during the strike. The grower denied access by union representatives to workers in the fields. The union engaged in massive, sometimes destructive and violent, picketing. There were at times as many as 350 pickets at the grower's fields. Picketing at the fields continued on an almost daily basis from the beginning of the strike in July 1981 through January 1982. The field pickets destroyed several thousand feet of irrigation pipe, damaged tractors and buses, and slashed tires and broke car windows of cars belonging to nonstriking workers. Pickets were also stationed at the grower's Lakeview labor camp nearly every day from July 9, 1981, through the end of November. The Lakeview labor camp primarily housed harvest workers, who were by and large not participating in the strike, although some of the nonstriking tractor drivers and irrigators also moved to the Lakeview camp compound. There was no damage to property at the camp, but nonstriking harvest workers as well as camp security personnel were sometimes pelted with rocks, dirt and eggs as they went in and out of the camp compound, or attempted to prevent picketers from climbing the fences. In August 1981, picketers at the Lakeview labor camp began night picketing in a manner calculated to harass camp residents. The strikers would use bullhorns, bang on trash can lids, yell at the workers and shine spotlights into the barracks area to prevent the workers from sleeping. [1] In early August 1981 the union obtained a temporary injunction ordering the grower to allow union representatives access to workers in the Kern County fields. After the union obtained the injunction, the nighttime harassment at the Lakeview camp subsided, and picketing continued without further disruptive incidents. Although there was evidence indicating the Kern County strike continued through January 1982, at the time of the conduct at issue in this case the melon harvest was essentially over. The nonstriking tractor drivers and irrigators were no longer residing at the Lakeview camp and by November 1981 the Lakeview camp was occupied by lettuce harvest workers.