Farmer Fears for Industry’s Image

Moorpark farmer Harry Muranaka was furious last month when he heard about a $2.7-million contract his chief competitor had been awarded by the state to train farm workers to pick crops.

“It’s a handout. It hurts us as competitors,” Muranaka said. “It makes all of us look bad . . . I can see where the average guy looks at this, and it just reinforces his thinking that farmers are crooks.”

The 1989 contract awarded to Camarillo-based Boskovich Farms and a new $2-million agreement with the Ventura County Agricultural Assn. were approved by the state Employment Training Panel as a way to train farm workers to pick more than one crop so they can work for the same company year-round.

Muranaka said he already has achieved that goal without government assistance, employing his 150 workers all year and keeping them at his farm by paying good wages. His vegetable crops are varied and harvests are staggered to avoid layoffs, he said.

“Our whole program is geared to year-round operations,” said Muranaka, whose family-owned company farms 450 acres in Ventura County. “It’s better for our customers. It’s better for our laborers.”

The irony of the state contracts, Muranaka said, is that agribusiness giant Boskovich, with whom he directly competes for sales to supermarkets, had more year-round workers a few years ago but switched to seasonal labor because it is cheaper.

George Boskovich, vice president of Boskovich Farms, declined comment on Muranaka’s statements except to ask if Muranaka pays health benefits to his employees. Muranaka said he does not, and Boskovich would not discuss what benefits he offers.

Muranaka’s comments are part of a debate that has emerged after news reports last month about the two training contracts for farm workers. Both provide for 59 hours of field labor to learn to pick each crop.

Some farmers and farm-worker advocates have described the agreements as little more than farmer subsidies that pay the salaries of ranch supervisors, the trainers in the programs, and for the use of farm equipment during the 18-month and two-year training periods.

But representatives of the Ventura agricultural association and the Ventura County Farm Bureau have defended the contracts.

“Nobody’s getting any freebies,” said Robert Roy, president of the agricultural association, whose 110 members have about 10,000 employees.

Critics are emerging not because the contracts are weak but because they involve agriculture, Roy said. No one complained for seven years as the state Employment Training Panel, created in 1983, handed out hundreds of millions of dollars to other types of businesses to train or retrain workers, he said.

Roy said Muranaka is complaining about Boskovich’s contract because Muranaka’s farm is unionized and must pay higher salaries than his non-union competitors. “They probably feel they’re in a very bad competitive position.”

Rex Laird, executive director of the 1,000-member Ventura County Farm Bureau, said he also thinks it’s strange that the two farm-worker contracts have come under such scrutiny.

“It just seems like, that oftentimes, agriculture is fun to kick around,” Laird said. “But the real key here is that if it’s a subsidy for farmers, then it’s a subsidy for all employers. The pitfalls, the shortcomings, the negative points--none of them are unique to agriculture.”

But not all farm organizations have responded favorably to the contracts.

David L. Moore, president of the 2,700-member Western Growers Assn., said that if the training is as reported, with an emphasis on dozens of hours of field work per crop, “then it’s a sham. It’s the type of thing that tends to hurt good programs.”

Moore said his association, which represents the fresh-produce industry in California and Arizona, also applied for a state employment panel contract to train farm employees about the same time as the Ventura farmers, in early March. The application is pending.

However, the Western Growers Assn. intends to train workers for non-field jobs, such as data processing and labor relations, Moore said. “We would train for upgrade positions . . . where people who work on the farm now would have an opportunity to move to a higher position.”

Under the two Ventura farm-worker contracts, no wage increases are promised, though backers say laborers, who often work at a piece rate, will be able to boost their incomes through increased productivity.

Such assertions have been attacked by farm-worker advocates.

Karl Lawson, the United Farm Workers union representative in Ventura County for a decade ending in 1989, said, “The key question to ask these growers is that after a person goes through training, are they going to pay him more? If not, the question is whether this is just a donation of money to growers.”