Group Protests Firing of Two Field Laborers : Westlake Village: Demonstrators say Dole wants to block the United Farm Workers from organizing. The firm denies the charge.

A group of about 35 labor organizers and fieldworkers protested Tuesday outside the Dole Food Co. headquarters in Westlake Village over the dismissal of two Oxnard celery pickers who said they were fired because they were campaigning to start a chapter of the United Farm Workers Union.

Saying that an employee of Ocean View Produce, a Dole subsidiary in Oxnard, had tried to intimidate union organizers and made racial insults to fieldworkers, David Martinez, the UFW’s secretary-treasurer, called for a boycott of Dole products by the Latino community if the workers are not rehired.

“If the Dole company thinks Mexicans are ignorant fools and animals, then the Dole company doesn’t deserve a single cent from Mexicans for their bananas and pineapples,” Martinez said.

Dole officials denied the charges of racism and intimidation and said they supported the workers’ right to hold a union election. Last week, the UFW gathered enough signatures--more than half of the 600 fieldworkers at Ocean View--to hold an election, scheduled for Friday.

The two workers were let go because they violated company rules, and would not be rehired, company officials said, refusing to elaborate on what rules had been broken.

Jorge Estrada Ramos, a full-time volunteer with UFW, accused Dole labor consultant Steven Highfield of making racist remarks to him and to fieldworkers, including calling workers “pigs” and “ignorant fools.”

Dole spokesman Tom Pernice said Highfield was hired to advise the company on employment law and benefits planning and denied that he made racial comments to Ramos or any other workers.