Pictsweet Farm Goes Up for Sale

Seven months after signing a contract that ended a bitter labor dispute, owners of Southern California’s largest mushroom farm announced plans to shut down operations and sell the Ventura facility because of “adverse economic conditions.”

The impending closure of Pictsweet Mushroom Farm throws a cloud over the new three-year labor pact the firm reached with workers under a landmark state mediation law adopted in 2002 to resolve deadlocked farm labor negotiations.

Under the labor agreement, which raised salaries and improved medical benefits, Pictsweet is required to encourage a buyer to assume the contract. If the new owner rejects the existing contract, it would still be legally required to negotiate with the union for a new labor pact, labor attorneys on both sides said.

The agreement ended a long-running fight between the mushroom grower and the United Farm Workers union, a struggle punctuated over the years by protest marches and a nationwide boycott of Pictsweet products.

United Farm Workers union President Arturo Rodriguez said he was confident a buyer would be found because the farm is in a good location to sell to the Southern California market. He also said it would be easier for a new company to adopt the existing contract rather than negotiate a new one.

“I hear there’s a lot of interest in purchasing the company,” Rodriguez said. “We’re confident whoever takes over will be committed to making this a viable operation. That’s certainly good for farmworkers, their families and the community as a whole.”

The prospect of new ownership brightened Friday when the company postponed a scheduled first round of layoffs, citing efforts underway to sell the plant.

There are more than 300 workers at the farm, most of whom toil as harvesters. The farm is actually clusters of cinderblock buildings that contain damp, manure-filled planters where mushrooms grow in near darkness.

In announcing the closure this week, company officials said they have been struggling for years to continue operations and preserve jobs through tough economic times that included rising costs for workers’ compensation insurance and mounting expenditures for electricity and fuel.

Farm manager Ruben Franco said he believed the protracted labor struggle and accompanying boycott, which slowed production and drove away some of the company’s most valuable customers, also took a toll.

“I think when you put it all together, that’s probably part of this,” Franco said of the company’s decision to close.

UFW officials dispute that claim.

In a prepared statement, the company said the decision to shut down was the result of “adverse economic conditions,” and that operations could resume if there was a change in market conditions or if a buyer was found to take over the 45-year-old facility.

They did not disclose the monetary value of the farm in their statement and would not comment further.

Longtime workers say they have been down this road before.

In 25 years of picking mushrooms, Manuel Salomon said he has weathered four ownership changes, a messy bankruptcy proceeding and the protracted labor struggle that carved deep divisions within the largely immigrant workforce.

When the new labor contract was signed, the 61-year-old Oxnard resident figured his toughest days were behind him. Then came word that Pictsweet planned to close and lay off its entire workforce by year’s end.

Like others, Salomon hopes a new owner will save jobs.

“I don’t think it will close. I believe there is a buyer out there who will seize this opportunity,” said Salomon, a leader in the UFW campaign for a new labor contract. “We’ve worked too hard for this plant to close.”

The UFW’s Rodriguez said that if no buyer stepped forward, the union would explore ways to help the workers buy it themselves.

“There is a very talented, very committed workforce that knows every bit of that business,” he said. “They are willing to do whatever is necessary to maintain their jobs.”