<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML> These are the opening paragraphs in a story published in today's LA Times about a strike provoked by a Salinas Valley food-processing company's decision to lower new hires' wages by three dollars. Full Text: <A HREF="http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/FRONT/t000085341.html">'Network' hiring among Latino immigrants is beginning to shape labor relations in California. (LA Times / 9.23.99)</A> ====================================================== <BLOCKQUOTE>At 64 years old and close to retirement, Socorro Venegas has no trouble imagining who will succeed her at the onion factory in tiny King City--where good jobs are kept in the family.   Venegas followed her husband to this Central Valley town from Mexico City 13 years ago. Three sons in turn followed them to the assembly line at the factory, Basic Vegetable Products. "Los nietos tambien," Venegas said, as if her six grandchildren already worked at the plant and weren't mere elementary school pupils. "Of course they will work there," she explained. "All the families, we are all like this."   At Basic, as in countless factories and warehouses throughout California, it's the rare worker who doesn't have a brother or a cousin on the floor. Sisters, nephews and in-laws stand side-by-side before giant belts that carry onions and garlic to be dehydrated. They carpool, share lunches and become godparents to one another's children.   As with the tangled roots of an old tree, the extended families at Basic have grown into something approaching a solid mass--and one that includes future workers as well. And so when managers in early summer proposed a two-tier pay scale in which new hires' wages would be cut by $3 an hour, Venegas and nearly every other production worker took it personally.   What is normally a routinely applied cost-cutting strategy of imposing reductions on anonymous future workers became a rallying cry for a labor dispute that turned into a strike. More than 750 workers walked out on July 7, and, remarkably, they have not had a single defection in more than two months.</BLOCKQUOTE> </HTML>