State Board Says Pictsweet Broke Bargaining Rules

California’s farm labor board has found operators of a Ventura mushroom farm guilty of violating collective-bargaining laws during contract talks with the United Farm Workers union, a ruling that a company attorney has promised to appeal.

In a 75-page decision issued last month, the Agricultural Labor Relations Board concluded that officials at Pictsweet Mushroom Farm had bargained in bad faith and illegally supported efforts to oust the UFW as the workers’ representative.

The labor board found in one instance that the company offered to promote a worker if he agreed to sign a petition aimed at getting rid of the union, a violation of California law.

Union officials cheered the ruling and said they hoped it would help spur settlement of the contract talks, which have been punctuated over the last three years by protests, layoffs and calls for a nationwide boycott of Pictsweet products.

“I think it validates what we’ve been saying all along, that we’ve been trying to negotiate but we’ve been meeting with a brick wall involving some unlawful conduct,” said Barbara Macri-Ortiz, an Oxnard attorney representing the UFW. “The workers are ready, willing and able to sit down and work out a deal, but we need good faith on both sides in order for that to happen.”

The labor board also found Pictsweet guilty of laying off employees without consulting the union and failing to provide information to the UFW that it needed to conduct negotiations.

It ordered the company to repay wages and other economic losses suffered by workers who were wrongfully laid off and to reimburse another group of workers who failed to receive a customary pay increase in 2000.

Harry Stang, an attorney for Pictsweet’s parent company, Tennessee-based United Foods Inc., vowed to fight the board’s order before an appellate court.

“Given the highly politicized nature of the ALRB, we have no choice but to seek judicial review,” Stang said.

The UFW initially won a contract at the Ventura mushroom farm in 1975 in one of the first elections held under the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, union officials said. The agreement paved the way for the union to negotiate contracts with half a dozen other mushroom growers in California and Florida.

The union maintained contracts with a series of owners at the Ventura plant over the years, but that ended when United Foods bought it in 1987.

Since then, UFW officials say they have tried a number of times to forge a new contract, kicking the effort into high gear three years ago. But they say they have made little headway in their demands for higher wages, dental and vision coverage for workers, less-costly medical insurance and a pension plan.

In an effort to break the stalemate, the UFW invoked California’s landmark farm labor mediation law signed in September by Gov. Gray Davis.

The law permits state agriculture officials to impose mandatory mediation in cases where negotiations reach an impasse. The union in January sent a letter to the company, starting a 90-day negotiation period.

If an agreement cannot be reached, a mediator can be called in to try to resolve the differences. The mediator will have the power to impose a binding contract if the two sides can’t reach agreement after 30 days of mediation.

The 90-day period expires in mid-April, setting up Pictsweet workers to possibly be the first in the state to test the full application of the new law.

Farm industry groups filed suit in February to overturn the law, arguing that it denies the constitutional rights of growers and workers to bargain for contracts.

The suit, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court on behalf of some of the state’s most influential farm groups, contends that state government has no business butting into contract talks between private parties and seeks to have the new law wiped off the books.

“This is the only law that I know of anywhere in the country where the state has imposed nonvoluntary, binding arbitration in the private sector,” Stang said. “Our interest is much more involved in trying to negotiate a collective-bargaining agreement rather than having a third party impose something on both parties.”