This week marked 42 years since the “battle at the Lindemann packing shed,” as The New York Times called it. The confrontation resulted in 21 injuries and 19 arrests.
Starting at 7:39 a.m. in Firebaugh, union workers and their sympathizers overran the Levy & Zentner cantaloupe packing shed. A crowd of roughly 400 strong tore through the fences and damaged machinery.
The events of Aug. 5, 1983, had just begun. Within half an hour, the crowd was on its way to Los Banos to target the Lindemann packing shed.
Firebaugh was able to warn the Lindemann shed, allowing 10 Los Banos police officers to defend it from 400 rioters, who were in transit. Non-union workers hired in recent weeks took up clubs, pipes and shovels to defend themselves and formed a line behind the police.
Lindemann was located at the southwest corner of G Street and Mercey Springs Road, just east of the Merced County Courthouse.
At the time, the Lindemanns also owned 12,000 acres of land surrounding Los Banos. Just inside the fence, unused packing crates surrounded the shed.
At 9 a.m., the rioters reached the Lindemann shed and began amassing a crowd. Then, former Los Banos Police Chief Charles Martin instructed his men not to take action. He later told The Enterprise that he ordered them to “keep it from erupting.”
Starting what became a 45-minute battle, the crowd began throwing rocks and bottles at the police. One struck Martin in the head, knocking him to the floor. Former Merced County Sheriff Lt. Larry Torongo carried Martin to safety. “It felt like a crucifixion,” Torongo said.
Police didn’t even begin to take action until Martin came to his senses and ordered them to disperse the crowd. Around this time, the call for mutual aid went out, and over 100 officers from various agencies responded to the call.
Police officers took out their batons and tried to push the crowd back, firing two tear gas canisters.
Instead, the violence escalated as the crowd got closer and tried to tear down the fences. Some of the rioters got into the parking lot and started smashing windows and jumping on cars.
“Not all of our officers have been in riot situations, but the senior officers kept their cool, and that’s what kept the whole thing from getting out of hand….We had officers on the ground and others being charged at.
“They would, in my opinion, have been justified in using their guns. Those strikers are just lucky the police restrained themselves,” Martin said to The Enterprise.
There is only a single surviving police report—that of Ralph Salazar from Brawley, CA, who was arrested by Officer Dan Fitchie.
Positioned in front of the garage at 714 Mercey Springs Road, Salazar threw rocks that hit Fitchie. He was later arrested due to his recognizable reddish-pink shirt, bandage under his right eye and blue jeans.
There are very few pictures of the riot as it happened because photojournalists Pat McNally (Merced Sun-Star) and John Spevak (Los Banos Enterprise) had their cameras taken from them by rioters.
The rioters removed the film and returned the cameras, ordering McNally and Spevak not to take any more photos.
The rioters eventually tired themselves out, unable to damage the Lindemann shed. Battered, they began to disperse. Police officers swung into sections of the crowd to make arrests.
Of the 21 injured, eight were officers. Officer Jerry Birdsell’s ribs were bruised after he was knocked down and jumped on, and Officer Mike Hughes’s leg was lacerated by a thrown bottle. Officer Brad Frank’s arm was lacerated by a thrown brick. Fitchie’s hand was also lacerated.
Officer Gary Reed’s face was cut, while Officer Mike Harden had some cuts and bruises. Officer Dan Crow from Gustine suffered some hand injuries.
The riot was the culmination of an escalating multi-week labor dispute, protest and “malicious mischief.” Melon workers were some of the highest-paid agricultural workers in the country. Accounting for inflation, they made nearly $100,000 for six months of work in today’s cash.
The sheds worked by sorting and packing melons at a central shed. However, a new packing method—using mobile in-field packing machines—was taking the industry by storm. Melons could be packed with field labor being paid a fraction of the shed worker.
The shed worker union, Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Workers Union, Local 78-B, didn’t believe field packing was viable and would hurt the melons. They also believed consumers would pay more for properly packed melons. Market forces were not on its side.
“This year, over a third of the cantaloupes grown will be field packed, as compared to virtually none last summer, and some field packing operations are producing quality melons,” George Lindemann, co-owner of the Lindemann packing shed, told The Enterprise.
To compete, Levy & Zentner and Lindemann chose to keep their workers but give them pay cuts.
Negotiations were complicated. Essentially, the original offer was a 40 percent cut, but that was later negotiated to a 10 percent pay cut with a two-year wage freeze.
The union, unconvinced of field packing viability, wanted only a wage freeze for 1983, with a 12 percent increase by 1985.
Following the breakdown in negotiations, a strike started on July 20. The strike was immediately mired in tire slashing, rock throwing, insults and nail “stars” being thrown on roads around Los Banos to pop tires.
Hired non-union “scabs” had rocks thrown at them while they worked. Some threw rocks at the strikers.
Truckers bringing melons into the shed had their trucks damaged, and some truckers even got out to confront the strikers. One trucker had a bat with nails embedded and swung it at them.
Combined with the riot, roughly 49 people were arrested. With much of its leverage gone, the union returned to the table following the riot.
Today, field packing is the norm, and the Lindemann shed is but a depression in a gravel plot. The foundation was torn up over a decade ago.
This article, less than 1,000 words, is a summary of a 4,300-word write-up made with 32 articles from the Los Banos Enterprise Microfilm Collection at the Merced County Library and the California Digital Newspaper Collection.
It also includes one police report, three sets of city council minutes and brief oral interviews. Anyone who’d like to share memories of this event can email what they remember to gerickofredricko@gmail.com or text 209-808-3597.
