Tag: Pictsweet

Published in the Ventura County Star

The goal is not to bring your enemies to their knees but to their senses. — Mahatma Gandhi

Jim Lawson, the man who spent two years at Gandhi’s ashram studying nonviolent movements and who was responsible for desegregating the Nashville lunch counters through sit-ins and boycotts, says that violence has a simple dynamic: “I make you suffer until you say ‘uncle.’ ”

Such are the tactics of Pictsweet toward its pro-union workers.

The management at Pictsweet — led by General Manager Ruben Franco, Human Resources Manager Gilbert Olmos and the minion managers who oversee the various departments — are trying to bring the workers who want United Farm Workers representation and a contract with Pictsweet to their knees and strong-arm them into submission, to break their spirit and determination.

On June 4, the Agricultural Labor Relations Board corroborated the anti-union practices at Pictsweet in a ruling that crescendos a similar ruling from Jan. 10. Both in January and this month, the ALRB upheld section 1152 of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which states that workers have the right to self-organization and forming, joining and assisting labor organizations. The ALRB found that Pictsweet is in violation of section 1153 (a) and (c) by way of interfering with the aforementioned rights as well as discriminating against workers who engage in pro-union activities.

Enter Fidel Andrade. He was fired on May 31 as a result of engaging in protected activities a few days earlier — standing up for a co-worker, union movement leader Jesus Torres.

In defending Andrade’s actions, the ALRB cited the provocation doctrine, which “prohibits an employer from provoking an employee to the point where he commits an indiscretion or insubordinate act and then relying on that indiscretion to discipline him.”

In its ruling, the ALRB also pointed out that “it is apparent that management seized the May 27 incident as an opportunity to rid itself of an employee that union leader Torres characterized as his ‘right-hand.’ ”

Last week, the ALRB ruled that not only was the termination of Andrade’s employment excessive punishment, but that Pictsweet routinely practices singling out union supporters. Pictsweet management already had its eye on Andrade, as he gave an interview to The Star after the compost fire last year, commenting that the fire aggravated his asthma and that he wished the company would give workers time off with pay while the fire was extinguished.

Discrimination of this magnitude is commonplace at Pictsweet, which is owned by United Foods, Inc., a corporation based in Bells, Tenn., with policies rooted in plantation governance. The treatment of Pictsweet workers in Ventura shows an atavistic Civil War-era mentality where working conditions are treacherous and the work force disposable.

Workers at Pictsweet are struggling for a contract that will provide for a means of arbitration in the case of disputes like the one on May 27. They want the law to work for them in protecting their rights and their jobs. They want a better salary, more than the 48 cents per basket they currently make; they want better health benefits so that they do not have to pay $150 per family member per year before insurance covers their medical costs. They want a pension plan so that, upon retirement, they have something to show for their commitment to Pictsweet and their hard work. Most of all, however, they want respect and a voice at work.

The management at Pictsweet claims that the workers themselves are trying to bring the company to its knees rather than its senses.

They claim that the boycott, which was called in September 2000, intends to hurt the company. So far, it has hurt Pictsweet: The company has lost millions in contracts with businesses like Ralph’s, Vons and Costco, and it continues to throw away tens of thousands of pounds of mushrooms every week rather than negotiate fairly for a contract with its workers.

Gandhi taught that boycotts are a means of nonviolent persuasion that oppressed people can use to bring people to their senses. While successful, the Pictsweet boycott still needs support from the public, especially against mushrooms at Pizza Hut, to win a contract.
*Leah C. Wells serves as peace education coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. The United Farm Workers may be reached at 486-9674.

Originally Published in Common Dreams

As many people in our nation today are obsessing over Enron stock, as Northrop Grumman bids $10.8 billion to purchase TRW to make the largest defense contracting agency whose annual revenues would top $26 billion, and as the latest Arnold Schwartzenegger film “Collateral Damage” continues to gross more than $30 million dollars, the workers at the Pictsweet mushroom farm in Ventura, CA are haggling with their recalcitrant management over pennies.

In the 1990’s, mushroom workers at Pictsweet in Ventura received a small raise every two years; in 2000 after an escalation in tension between management and labor due to stalling contract negotiations and workplace discrimination, no raise was issued. The workers, who make an average annual salary of $25,000, have relied on this raise to keep up with the rising cost of living in the United States, even though in prior years the raise was also accompanied by an increased workload meaning that the raise was really not a raise, merely a compensation for the extra work.

But would a contract truly remedy the financial crunch that workers presently feel? The uncontracted workers at Pictsweet obviously get short shrift as compared to the contracted workers at the Monterey Mushroom farm in Watsonville, CA whose working conditions and wages are significantly more competitive and egalitarian under contract with their employer.

Monterey Mushroom workers receive $9.18 per hour for picking Brown mushrooms, and $11.90 per hour for maintenance work. They have no annual deductible for their medical plan and pay no premiums, and they receive 80% coverage for both vision and dental expenses. The lighting in the one-story rooms with mushroom beds have overhead lighting, the air conditioning hoses are plastic and provide proper circulation, and there are two emergency exits per room.

In contrast, workers at Pictsweet Mushroom farm are paid $7.25 per hour for picking Brown mushrooms, and $7.65 per hour for maintenance work. Their medical deductible is $150 per family member per year, and they pay a monthly premium of $58.04, and they have no vision or dental coverage. The only light in rooms with mushroom beds comes from the inadequate bulbs on their helmets, the metal air conditioning tubes condense water which leaks and contributes to slippery work conditions, and there is only one emergency exit on the first floor of two-story rooms. In a September visit to the Pictsweet plant at the invitation of the management, I verified firsthand these working conditions in an extensive tour of the facility.

The demands of the workers at Pictsweet are not extravagant: they want a contract, they want a means of fair arbitration for legitimate complaints, they want better health benefits and they want respect on the job.

On Thursday, February 14, an Agricultural Labor Relations Board hearing commenced in Oxnard, CA to investigate charges filed by lawyers for the United Farm Workers on behalf of the Pictsweet workers. The United Farm Workers maintain that the management at Pictsweet has engaged in unfair labor practices as defined by the Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, such as laying off and reducing work hours for workers without notifying United Farm Workers, their bargaining representative. In the latest hearings, UFW lawyers questioned plant manager from the Ventura Pictsweet farm, Ruben Franco, who admitted under oath that area supervisors of the farm keep separate lists whose existence had been previously denied which list the classification and superiority of workers. These classification and seniority lists are essential to the UFW’s case in proving that new workers were hired instead of reinstating workers who had been laid off.

Pictsweet lawyer Barbara Krieg, whose law firm Bryan Cave LLP earned $11 million in representing the Government of Kuwait in 1993 and 1994 in prosecuting the $59 billion claims for Gulf War reparations against Iraq, later questioned mushroom picker Jesus Torres. Referring to the aforementioned biennial raises, Krieg asked Torres if he believes that “if a worker thinks he deserves a raise, should the worker necessarily receive that raise?” An objection to this question by UFW lawyers was sustained by Judge Nancy C. Smith. In essence, however, Krieg’s question translates as “be quiet, be grateful for the pittance you have, and hope that we don’t take more from you in the end.” This question Krieg posed reflects the classist mentality that worker exploitation is an acceptable and necessary workplace evil in the capitalist dog-eat-dog world.

Because the corporation which owns Pictsweet, United Foods, Inc., went private in 1999, their annual gross revenue for 2001 is unavailable. However, in fiscal year 2000 they earned $163 million and experienced a 21.2% sales growth, according to The Industry Standard. Their annual revenue per employee was $77,619.05 – more than three times what an average Pictsweet employee makes in a year!

In September 2000, the United Farm Workers initiated a boycott of Pictsweet mushrooms which has steadily amassed a following from such retail chains as Vons, Safeway and Ralph’s. The current target of the boycott is Pizza Hut which continues to purchase Pictsweet mushrooms.

The workers will win a contract with Pictsweet, but it will take community support for this boycott and campaign for respect. You can help support them by writing to your local Pizza Hut manager, by refusing to support Pictsweet’s exploitative business practices by not ordering Pizza Hut pizzas, and by coming out to support the workers in their struggle at the upcoming march for economic justice in honor of the labor hero Cesar Chavez in Oxnard on April 28.
*Leah C. Wells is the Peace Education Coordinator for Nuclear Age peace Foundation. This article can also be found at: http://www.change-links.org/leahwells.htm

A simple issue of justice

The workers at the Pictsweet mushroom farm want justice in their workplace. They want decent wages and health benefits, retirement plans, and, most of all, respect. And through the tireless efforts of individual workers, through their personal sacrifice and through the unobtrusive facilitation by the skilled UFW organizers, the mushroom workers and surrounding community are using their collective strength to win a contract.

The concept of a union for farm workers centers on grassroots organizing and the power of communities to create positive social change. Thanks to the tireless work of the nonviolent leader Cesar Chavez, California farm workers’ rights to organize are legally protected through the Agriculture Labor Relations Act. The traditional hierarchical system of the “powerful few” over the “powerless many” relies on the assumption that the many workers will not organize, link arms and work together to exercise their rights. However, the workers have continued to speak truthfully about their hardships at the hands of Pictsweet management. Nonviolence requires that its practitioners understand the transformative power of human suffering. In this respect, the workers are well versed.

In a presentation to a high school in Ventura County, Jose Patiña outlined the wishes of the workers and the tactics they are using to persuade the management at Pictsweet to negotiate with them. Delegations of workers routinely visit the offices of supermarkets and restaurants that still purchase Pictsweet mushrooms. Their main purposes are to personalize the issue – showing the management of those establishments the mistreatment of the workers and of the unjust practices – and to convince them to boycott the Pictsweet mushrooms until the company agrees to negotiate for a fair contract and fair working conditions. The organizers have enlisted the help of college MEChA groups statewide in their latest lobbying efforts as well, encouraging them to distribute flyers at restaurants in California still buying Pictsweet mushrooms.

The workers not only attempt to educate the buyers, but to raise the consciousness of the public as well. Labor Day weekend saw community-wide support for the mushroom workers in a three-mile march through downtown Ventura to the Pictsweet plant. A few months prior, workers stood in front of the government center with signs and puppets at rush hour to publicize the fact that Pizza Hut still purchases Pictsweet mushrooms. And even progressives in Hollywood have taken up their cause as activists Martin Sheen and Mike Farrell have endorsed the workers’ struggle.

¿Que queremos?

The workers want a contract and a raise. All of the nearly 250 workers at the Ventura mushroom farm have been working without a contract for nearly fourteen years. This means that they cannot leverage collective bargaining power to gain the desired improvements in wages and working conditions. While the struggle for a contract has financially impacted the workers and their families, the workers realize that the long-term goal is a raise – more than the last 3-cent raise they received from Pictsweet after an increase of workload. Jose Luis Luna says, “We have not had a significant wage increase in years. The cost of living has gone up several times and we are still making the same money. I support two minor children and myself on my salary.”

The workers want a pension plan. There are no 401K plans for Pictsweet workers. There are no retirement benefits for dedicated employees who have spent more than twenty years working for this company and, regrettably, the workers have nothing to show for their labor when they retire. The director of human resources reports that he encourages workers to invest a portion of their money in savings accounts for their own retirement, but there is no guarantee that any or all of the workers in fact do this. Moreover, because of increased economic hardships as a result of inflation and no adjusted salary increases, the workers often find themselves in already financially precarious situations before having to set aside some money for retirement.

The workers want a decent medical plan. The working conditions at Pictsweet are often precarious: working in pitch black darkness; climbing slippery fifteen-foot tall mushroom beds; and, during the rainy season in California, sometimes working barefoot in water up to their knees in a room with exposed electrical outlets. In violation of fire codes, the buildings where the mushrooms grow have only one fire exit from the second floor. The hats that the workers wear in the dark sheds where the mushrooms grow have inadequate light bulbs, causing severe eyestrain, yet there is no vision plan in their medical benefits.

Workers’ complaints about on-the-job injuries often fall on deaf ears at Pictsweet, where the management challenges their claims, asserting that their injuries happened elsewhere and thus are not covered by workers’ compensation. In addition, the existing medical plan is outrageously expensive for the farm workers’ families. Workers pay on average $13 per week for medical coverage for themselves, their spouses and their children – and yet the individual annual deductible for office visits, not including prescriptions, is a staggering $150 for each member of the family!

In March of this year, a compost fire began as a result of the buildup of discarded compost and hay. The fire’s origins? Rather than reduce productivity to accommodate the decline in business as a result of the boycott, Pictsweet maintained the same level of production and opted to throw out their packaged, unused mushrooms. When the fire started and thick pungent smoke contaminated the air, the community throughout Ventura County was immediately informed of the health risks posed by the toxins released in the air. However, the local Pictsweet management did not address the health risks with their employees until nearly a week later after UFW organizer Jessica Arciniega met with plant manager Ruben Franco. Only then did Pictsweet hand out facemasks for their workers.

The press release by the Ventura County Public Health Department on March 15, 2001 read as follows: “County health officials recommend that healthy adults and children in areas affected by smoke avoid strenuous outdoor activity and remain indoors as much as possible…levels of the particulates in the smoke may be high enough that the potential exists for even healthy people to be affected. [Smoke] may pose a special risk to adults and children with asthma, emphysema, chronic bronchitis, or other respiratory diseases and heart disease.”

Yet the workers were forced to continue working in enclosed buildings where huge fans pumped in thick smoke – unaware of the health risks posed. They were not told by management until the sixth day that their health was jeopardized by working as the fire continued to burn. Moreover, they were not allowed medical leave with pay for illness sustained during this time! Because the Pictsweet workers have no contract, they are at the mercy of their supervisors. Any complaint could be construed as insubordination.

Finally, the workers want respect and a voice at work. There is no partnership at Pictsweet between management and labor. Supervisors routinely condescend to the pro-UFW workers. The supervisors give preferential treatment to the anti-union workers who have family members in management and encourage the contras, those workers who oppose UFW representation, by offering promotions and financial rewards for their complicity in maintaining the status quo at the farm. The pro-UFW workers want a system of arbitration so that they have a safe and reasonable forum to address their grievances with the company.

“It has been hard working for this company, but what can we do, we need to work. It hurts to know that we don’t matter. We give our lives to the company only to learn that they don’t think very much of us. We’re people who feel and think and have families who need us and love us,” explains Baudelio Aguayo. “We’re not animals that nobody wants. All we ask for is a little human compassion and respect.”

These disciplined workers are not only working for their benefit, but for the good of all the workers there. Both pro- and anti-UFW workers alike work in the same conditions. The pro-union faction, a decisive majority of the workers, struggle to create a sustainably just environment for the entire laboring workforce.

Firsthand visit

The management at Pictsweet in Ventura is not wholly to blame – they are merely mid-level executors of policies set by those in the corporate office who value profits over people. When I toured the Pictsweet farm at the behest of management there, I had the opportunity to talk with grower Greg Tuttle, intimately inspect working conditions at the farm, and inquire about the status of negotiations with the workers.

During my visit I saw the close proximity of the fire to the buildings where the workers were forced to endure stifling poor air quality while the fire burned. I saw how the boycott has impacted the productivity: what used to be a room filled floor-to-ceiling with packages of mushrooms had been reduced to one stack of mushrooms less than four feet tall. And I saw no more than ten anti-union workers in white “No UFW” t-shirts at the farm, corroborating the fact that two-thirds of the workers support UFW representation.

In a meeting with Mr. Olmos, head of human resources at the Ventura Pictsweet plant, I learned that the company feels it has been involved in negotiations with the workers for nearly two years, in spite of claims by the workers and UFW organizers that the company has maintained stoic unresponsiveness to workers’ pleas for mediated talks. However, these alleged “negotiations” have not produced better working conditions for any of the workers, and have not provided for a significant wage increase nor recognition of Union representation – charges which the company cannot deny.

In fact, the office atmosphere where I spoke with Mr. Olmos was palpably uncomfortable, him shifting in his chair and clearing his throat as if to indicate the legitimacy of the questions I was raising about resolving the discrepancies between the workers and management. Those in power at the Ventura Pictsweet branch, and those in located at the parent company United Foods, Inc. headquarters in Bells, TN, seem undaunted by the unmistakably devastating economic impact the consumer boycott is having on their business, already having closed one plant in Oregon and drastically scaled back production at the Ventura plant. They seem unmoved by the stamina and vigor exhibited by the workers who, in the words of Gandhi, are seeking through their nonviolent campaign not “to bring their opponents to their knees, but to their senses.”

In a recent major legal victory in mid-January, an administrative judge with the Agricultural Labor Relations Board found Pictsweet guilty of illegally firing mushroom worker Fidel Andrade. Judge Douglas Gallop outlined Pictsweet’s continued mistreatment of its workers who support UFW representation in a 31-page decision, highlighting the animosity shown toward pro-union workers and demanding that Mr. Andrade be given back his job with seniority and pay all lost wages and other benefits. Additionally, Pictsweet must post notices about workers’ rights and allow the workers access to ALRB representatives who can answer the workers’ questions without Pictsweet officials present.

UFW organizer Jessica Arciniega believes that “the judge’s ruling has benefited the workers more than anything in once again validating and reaffirming what workers have known and been experiencing throughout this campaign – that Pictsweet is very anti-union and has been violating workers’ rights. This translates into everyday by workers knowing that if they stand up for their rights, and provide the evidence that is necessary, the law can work in their favor.” One legal victory does not win the battle, however, as Ms. Arciniega points out: “The success of this campaign is dependent on so much more – boycott and solidarity within our communities.” To those who impede the negotiations process, these words, written in 1969 by Cesar Chavez to the President of California Grape and Tree Fruit League, Mr. E.L. Barr, provide a compelling admonition:

“You must understand – I must make you understand – that our membership and the hopes and aspirations of the hundreds of thousands of the poor and dispossessed that have been raised on our account are, above all, human beings, no better and no worse than any other cross-section of human society; we are not saints because we are poor, but by the same measure neither are we immoral. We are men and women who have suffered and endured much, and not only because of our abject poverty but because we have been kept poor. The colors of our skins, the languages of our cultural and native origins, the lack of formal education, the exclusion from the democratic process, the numbers of our men slain in recent wars – all these burdens generation after generation have sought to demoralize us, to break our human spirit. But God knows that we are not beasts of burden, agricultural implements or rented slaves; we are men.”
*Leah C. Wells serves as the Peace Education Coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and teaches nonviolence in two high schools.