Farm Group Asks for Cuts in Contract

The Ventura County Agricultural Assn. has asked the state to cut a $2-million contract to train farm workers to pick crops to about $900,000 after two more farmers dropped out of the program this week, an official said Wednesday.

With the defections of Bob Jones Ranch and Do Right’s Plant Growers, five of seven farmers who had agreed to train nearly 700 of the 800 laborers in the controversial program have dropped out.

Bob Jones and Do Right’s left the program because of adverse publicity concerning the contract, Robert Roy, president of the 110-member group, said Wednesday. Another farmer, Egg City, is also considering withdrawal, he said.

“The guys said, ‘I don’t need this’ ” bad publicity, Roy said.

The Ventura association’s proposal to cross-train workers to pick more than one crop and to handle farm equipment was given fast-track treatment by the state Employment Training Panel after former panelist Robert Munoz of Oxnard persuaded his colleagues to make farm projects a top priority.

And when approved in August, the contract was described by a state Employment Development Department official as “farmer welfare.”

Then Tuesday, the Ventura County district attorney’s office began an investigation of whether Munoz had violated state conflict-of-interest laws in August when he voted for the contract. The prosecutor is attempting to determine whether Munoz was the landlord of a subcontractor in the project and would benefit financially from it.

Roy said he met with employment panel lawyers Tuesday to ask that the agricultural association’s contract be amended to delete the five original participants and to include two other farm groups that want to participate.

The new participants in the 18-month contract are the Fillmore-Piru Citrus Assn., which hopes to train 160 workers to pack fruit, and Skyline Flower Growers and Shippers of Oxnard, which expects to train 77 workers to plant and pick flowers.

The training program is intended to give workers a variety of farm skills so they can secure stable, year-round employment in Ventura County. The contract also provides for 80 hours of English-language training for each worker.

But critics have said it is a wage subsidy that helps farmers and contract consultants more than workers.

Roy and contract consultant Steven D. Myers said the withdrawal of the five original participants might not hurt in the long run because it has allowed the association to replace growers who mostly raise winter crops with employers who offer a better chance of stable income for workers.

For example, Skyline Flower Growers will accept some of the trainees who would have gone to the vegetable and strawberry farmers who have dropped out, Roy said. Nurseries and packing sheds don’t have the high turnover rate of “row crop operations” and the chance of workers finishing the months-long training program is greater, he said.

“We wanted to put in people who were going to complete the program given the past publicity,” consultant Myers said. “Our intent is to perform and maybe go for subsequent state agreements.”

Joseph Goldberg, president of Skyline Flower Growers, said the contract will help him keep workers on the job.

“This way I can take a guy from the baby’s breath field where it’s slow and move him to the greenhouse to work on the carnations and dragons,” he said.

The Ventura contract, though approved by the state employment panel two months ago, has not yet been cleared by the panel’s attorney and signed by the board’s chairman. But state officials said they expect the contract to be finalized after it is amended.

Training is already going on at Underwood Ranches in Somis, where 45 laborers are expected to participate over the next 18 months, Roy said.

The three farmers who dropped out earlier, Rio Farms, San Miguel Produce and Deardorff-Jackson Co., represented about three-fourths of the 800 laborers to be trained.

In leaving the program earlier this month, officials at San Miguel Produce and Deardorff-Jackson said they were not critical of it in concept. But they said they could train only a fraction of the workers promised in the contract.

Rio Farms also told state inspectors recently that it did not have enough workers to train so it could not meet contract requirements, state officials said.

Bob Brooks of San Miguel Produce said he had trouble finding workers who wanted to participate in the training. Most workers are paid at a so-called piece rate, where their income increases with productivity. During training, they would make far less money because they would be harvesting a new crop and working more slowly than usual, he said.