UFW Seeks Pizza Hut’s Help in Labor Battle

Dozens of mushroom pickers protested outside an Oxnard Pizza Hut on Monday, urging the restaurant chain to push Ventura County’s largest mushroom grower to sign a contract with the United Farm Workers union.

The UFW in recent months has stepped up a campaign to win a contract at the Ventura-based Pictsweet Mushroom Farm, whose 300 workers have been without union representation for more than a decade.

Dissatisfied with the pace of negotiations, workers set out Monday to gain a powerful ally, appealing to Pizza Hut--one of the nation’s largest purchasers of Pictsweet mushrooms--to contact the grower and encourage talks with the union.

“We don’t want to boycott Pizza Hut; we just want them to help us,” said UFW organizer Jorge Rivera, lead negotiator in the ongoing talks. “We want them to pick up the phone and tell Pictsweet to get serious about negotiations.”

Rivera said the UFW first won a contract at Pictsweet in 1975, but lost it in 1987 when the company was sold to Tennessee-based United Foods Inc.

He said the union put pressure on Pizza Hut last year during similar negotiations with a Florida mushroom grower. Those negotiations resulted in a union contract, which UFW leaders attribute in part to Pizza Hut’s willingness to intervene.

But Pizza Hut spokeswoman Patty Sullivan said there’s no indication that the company intervened last year. She said the pizza giant does not intend to take sides in the current dispute.