17-Year Labor Dispute at Ventura Farm Ends
After 17 years of working without a union contract, employees at Southern California’s largest mushroom farm have won a three-year pact, the landmark result of a new state law aimed at resolving long-running labor disputes.
The new contract at the Pictsweet Mushroom Farm in Ventura will bring higher wages, increased job security and a company-paid medical plan to the plant’s 300 employees.
The agreement ends a bitter fight between the mushroom grower and the United Farm Workers union, a struggle punctuated in recent years by protest marches and a nationwide boycott of Pictsweet products.
It also marks the first time a collective bargaining contract has been put into place under the state’s new mandatory mediation law. The law was adopted by the Legislature last year to allow agricultural workers or employers to seek mediation after farm labor negotiations reach an impasse.
“This is historic,” said UFW President Arturo Rodriguez, who officially called off the Pictsweet boycott after the contract was finalized last week.
Seizing on the new law, the union submitted the dispute to mediation in July and the process began in the fall. The mediator issued a proposed labor agreement Jan. 30 and the contract went into effect Feb. 13 after neither party challenged it. Terms of the contract are retroactive to Jan. 1. Those terms include a 2.5% salary increase per year for workers and company-financed medical coverage for workers and their families.
A statement released Tuesday by Pictsweet blasted the mediation law, calling it “seriously flawed” legislation that “deprives workers of a voice in collective bargaining.” The company said it decided not to challenge the mediator’s report in an effort to protect customers from the UFW boycott and preserve jobs at the plant.
The UFW first won a contract at the mushroom farm in 1975 in one of the first elections held under the Agricultural Labor Relations Act. The union maintained contracts with a series of owners at the plant over the years, but that ended when Tennessee-based United Foods Inc. bought it in 1987.
