Growers Group Signs First Union Contract for Guest Workers

[Michael Hoover <hooverm@xxxxxxxxxx>]

NYTimes.com Article

Growers' Group Signs the First Union Contract for Guest Workers
September 17, 2004
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

The North Carolina Growers Association, which represents
1,000 farmers, signed a union contract yesterday covering
8,500 guest workers from Mexico - a move that the
association and union said was the first union contract in
the nation for guest workers.

At the signing ceremony at a church in Raleigh, the Mount
Olive Pickle Company, the nation's second largest pickle
company, announced that it had signed a separate contract
with the union, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, ending
a five-and-a-half-year boycott campaign against the
company.

The two contracts end a long, bitter dispute in which the
Farm Labor Organizing Committee accused Mount Olive of
using cucumber growers who mistreated their workers. In
organizing a boycott that was backed by the National
Council of Churches, the union said that workers employed
by Mount Olive's growers often lived in squalid housing and
that one worker had died of heat prostration and another of
heat prostration or exposure to pesticides.

"The company is tremendously relieved to have the boycott
ended,'' said Baldemar Velasquez, president of the Farm
Labor Organizing Committee, which is based in Toledo, Ohio.
"They were getting tired of all the negative publicity."

Bill Bryan, Mount Olive's president, said the boycott
hardly hurt the company's sales, except in pockets of the
Midwest. But he acknowledged it was time-consuming and
annoying to have to respond to questions about why his
company was being boycotted.

"We have always said we would be interested in settling the
boycott if we could do so with reasonable terms that we
felt were appropriate for our company," said Mr . Bryan, who
asserted that the boycott was based partly on inaccurate
information and unfair accusations.

The agreement with the North Carolina growers is unusual
because it is the first union contract ever signed by
farmers in the state, which has a history of hostility to
unions, and because the contract provides for a union
hiring hall in Mexico to help supply guest workers.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Velasquez hailed the
agreement with the growers' association because it gives
unionized farm workers a foothold in the South and because
it should encourage workers to speak up without fear of
retaliation. He also praised the agreement because it
provides grievance procedures and a seniority system, which
he said would effectively eliminate a blacklist that
prevented guest workers who complained from being rehired.
Spokesmen for the growers denied that any blacklist
existed.

Mr. Bryan said the agreement Mount Oli ve signed would help
workers by raising their wages by a total of 10 percent
over three years. Under federal regulations, agricultural
guest workers in North Carolina under the H-2A temporary
visa program are to be paid at least $8.06 an hour, with a
piece rate equal to 44 percent of the value of what they
pick.

Mr. Bryan said his company would raise the price it pays
its 60 growers, a move that would help raise piece rates so
workers could earn $10 to $12 an hour. Mount Olive also
agreed to pay a 3 percent price bonus to growers who agreed
to provide workers compensation coverage.

In Mount Olive's agreement with the union, the company
promised to participate in various committees organized by
the growers' association to study how to improve housing
and health care for the farm workers. In addition, the
union and growers' association said they would jointly
contact the Mexican government to discuss graft, bribery
a nd blackmail carried out by recruiters of migrant workers,
especially illegal immigrants.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Please Note:
Due to Florida's very broad public records law, most written communications to or from College employees regarding College business are public records, available to the public and media upon request. Therefore, this e-mail communication may be subject to public disclosure.