Farm Workers Urge Davis to Sign Binding Arbitration Legislation

When a young mushroom picker named Jose Garcia defied his employer and voted to join the United Farm Workers 27 years ago, he figured he’d done the hard part. The wage hikes, health benefits and job security promised by labor hero Cesar Chavez in a bruising campaign were sure to be just around the corner.

But Garcia, now 46, said he earns less in inflation-adjusted dollars than he did as a teenager. His medical care is limited to what he can get at the local emergency room. And the security he longed for is still elusive.

Like thousands of other agricultural workers in California, Garcia is in labor limbo: technically represented by a union but not covered by a contract. “We try to bargain,” said Garcia, a member of the union negotiating team at the Pictsweet Mushroom Farm in Oxnard. “They take our proposals and laugh.”

A bill on Gov. Gray Davis’ desk would put the impasse at Pictsweet and several others like it in the hands of an arbitrator, who could force the parties into a contract and dictate its terms. The measure would be the first of its kind in the nation.

Tennessee-based United Farms Inc., which owns Pictsweet, did not return repeated phone calls last week. The firm has declined to publicly comment on the arbitration bill or the company’s labor issues in the past months. About a year ago, officials said that their workers receive wages and benefits comparable to those paid at other mushroom farms.

Growers adamantly oppose the bill, saying arbitration for an initial contract is unconstitutional, unfair and economically dangerous. “We have 80,000 farms in the state,” said Thomas Nassif, president of the Western Growers Assn. “Are we going to change our laws because the union can’t get a contract with a couple of employers?”

Davis, who is running for reelection, has not indicated whether he will sign the bill into law. He must act within 12 days.

The UFW plans to maintain a vigil outside the state Capitol until Davis acts, and union co-founder Dolores Huerta has vowed to start a public fast if the governor vetoes the bill.

First contracts are notoriously tough for any union to negotiate, but the UFW says it is at a particular disadvantage because so much farm work is seasonal and transient.

Union spokesman Marc Grossman said the numbers speak for themselves: Of the 428 elections won by the union since the state’s Agricultural Labor Relations Act became law in 1975, only 158--37%--resulted in contracts.

Grower organizations say those numbers are deceptive, because some businesses went bankrupt before a contract could be reached, and workers at others voted to decertify the union.

They also note that state law already provides a “make whole” remedy, which forces growers to compensate workers if contracts are not negotiated in good faith.

Since 1975, the Agricultural Labor Relations Board has ordered 58 employers to pay about $34 million under that provision. Only $4.4 million has been paid, according to a recent report from board Chairwoman Genevieve A. Shiroma.

In her report to state Sen. Mike Machado (D-Linden), Shiroma said the language of the original law makes enforcement difficult and susceptible to years of litigation.

In agriculture, long-term employment is rare. But mushroom farms provide year-round work and an opportunity to set down roots. That was a draw for Garcia, who took the job at Pictsweet 30 years ago as 17-year-old immigrant from Mexico.

He married, bought a small two-bedroom house, started a family. He showed younger workers how to pick through the dark mushroom beds stacked to the ceiling, lights strapped to their foreheads, suspended on safety lines “like monkeys.”

Along with a majority of the farm’s 150 workers, he voted for the union in 1975, three months after the state agricultural labor law was adopted in a wave of elections that followed a 1,000-mile march through the state by Chavez.

Several months later, the company and workers signed a contract providing paid family medical insurance and incremental raises. “The 12 years we had with them were very good,” he recalled.

But after a series of ownership changes, the company was bought out of bankruptcy in 1987 by Tennessee-based United Foods Inc. Workers agreed to temporarily suspend the union contract and take a pay cut to help the business survive.

Since then, Garcia said, sporadic attempts to revive the contract have ended in frustration. “If it weren’t for my wife’s job, forget it, I wouldn’t be able to survive,” said Garcia, who earns about $350 in an average week. “We have no savings, nothing. We have enough to eat, but we’re always just getting by.”

In his view, company attorneys have merely gone through the motions of negotiating while holding down wages to 1987 levels. He said they had no intention of making a deal.

Union officials said that relatively few employers practice insincere “surface bargaining” but that those who do drain resources. Until a contract is signed, workers pay no union dues.

“At Pictsweet, we have to spend half a million a year to fight this guy,” said UFW President Arturo Rodriguez. “If you do this with every single employer, you’re going to run out of money fast.”

The difficulty of obtaining contracts, and with them gains in wages and benefits, also dampens enthusiasm for organizing, Rodriguez said. A binding arbitration law “at least gives us an opportunity to get out there and get started,” he said.

Once more than 100,000 strong, UFW membership now hovers at about 27,000.

Growers Feel Threatened

While the UFW views arbitration as a boon, farm groups say it could bankrupt already-struggling growers.

“If approved, this legislation would apply even in cases where farmers make a good-faith effort to create a contract with union negotiators. It would throw the issue to a state arbitrator who is unfamiliar with the complexities of agricultural production and the economic realities that farm employers face when producing highly perishable products,” said California Farm Bureau Federation President Bill Pauli.

“It is not out of the realm of possibility that some family farmers, already squeezed by high production costs and poor prices, would be forced out of business by such an unfair process,” he said.

The law would come into play if a union and employer failed to reach a contract within 90 days of a union election. A mediator would then have 30 days to fashion a compromise. If no deal resulted, either party could petition the state labor board to submit the matter to binding arbitration.

Growers say the potential for arbitration could encourage union negotiators to make unreasonable demands in the hope that an arbitrator would meet them halfway. Union officials say the threat of arbitration would force both sides to be sober and practical.

“We’re not asking for something out of this world,” said Garcia. “All we want is a neutral person to say if we are right or the company is right.”