Laborers Rally Outside Pizza Hut

Dozens of mushroom pickers rallied 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.

Despite a steady drizzle, workers waved red-and-black UFW flags in front of the Gonzales Road pizzeria and paraded placards reading “Help Us in Our Struggle” and “Justice for Pickers.”

“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.

Union leaders tried unsuccessfully a number of times to hammer out a new contract, before deciding earlier this year to kick the campaign into high gear, culminating in Monday’s Pizza Hut rally.

Rivera said the union has used this tactic before, putting 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. And the pizza giant does not intend to take sides in the current dispute.

“Pizza Hut does not involve itself in labor union issues,” Sullivan said. “It’s between the UFW and Pictsweet.”

For the UFW, the negotiations at Pictsweet are part of a larger campaign, launched after the 1993 death of union founder Cesar Chavez, to reverse more than a decade of declining membership and dwindling influence.

Ventura County has been key to those efforts. Once a stronghold of UFW support with 4,000 union members, membership locally has dropped to just a few hundred workers.

In addition to a 5% wage increase for hourly employees, the union wants complete medical coverage for workers and their families plus dental and vision benefits. The company currently requires workers to pay for health coverage for family members but offers them no dental or vision plan, UFW officials said.

Wages currently range between $5.75 and $8.50 an hour.

Company spokesman Donald Dresser in Tennessee refused to discuss the state of contract talks or whether the union’s Pizza Hut appeal would have any effect on sales.

Workers outside Pizza Hut on Monday said they’ve been getting the same response from management during their current drive to win a contract. Oxnard resident Francisco Guerrero, 44, a longtime mushroom picker for Pictsweet, said the company has been unwilling to budge on any of the workers’ demands.

“All we’re asking for are improvements that will benefit our families, but they don’t offer anything,” said Guerrero, who was around when the UFW won its contract in 1975.

“Conditions have gone down,” he said. “Now it’s time to bring things back up.”