Raleigh News-Observer September 16, 2004 Mt. Olive pickle boycott ends Engineered by the Ohio-based Farm Labor Organizing Committee, the agreement will produce the largest unionization in North Carolina history, state AFL-CIO officials said. The agreement, to be signed this morning, has two parts: * Mt. Olive will raise the price it pays farmers for cucumbers by about 10 percent over three years. Part of that increase will be passed to workers who pick cucumbers. The company also will encourage farms that grow cucumbers for Mt. Olive to allow workers to have "visitors," including union organizers, without interference. "We consider it an investment," company spokeswoman Lynn Williams said. "We're very relieved to have this over." * The N.C. Growers Association, which uses a federal program to supply foreign labor to about 1,000 farms, will recognize a union run by the organizing committee. Many of those farms grow cucumbers for Mt. Olive. It is this piece of the deal that union officials say will bring the most change. "Workers have never been able to speak for themselves, and the union agreement gives them an opportunity to do that without fear of retaliation," said Baldemar Velasquez, president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee. The union has been recruiting members on farms for years. Union officials say that about 2,500 of the Growers Association's 8,500 workers already have signed union cards. They couldn't become an official union until today's agreement, which authorizes employers to deduct union dues from paychecks. Responsibility cited The organizing committee launched a boycott of Mt. Olive Pickle Co. in 1999, saying the Wayne County company had a responsibility to improve working conditions on farms that grow its pickle cucumbers. The company refused to budge, saying labor issues should be handled by farmers. No North Carolina groceries ever pulled Mt. Olive pickles from shelves. But several major groups joined the boycott, most recently the National Council of Churches and the United Methodist Church. The union staged several protests a year outside groceries and company headquarters. "We've continued to see good growth in our sales," said Williams, the company spokeswoman. "But it's certainly been a frustrating thing to deal with, and it's time and attention taken away from growing our business." As part of the agreement, the company will raise the price it pays for cucumbers 2.5 percent each year for three years. It is a privately held company, and Williams wouldn't say what it paid this year. The company also will pay a 3 percent bonus to farmers who offer their employees workers' compensation. Williams said the agreement will allow the company to avoid bargaining directly with the union, but benefit workers. "We both won," Williams said. Worker protection Many legal farm workers will see the most significant impact from the deal with the Growers Association. Those who signed union cards will pay 2 1/2 percent of their salaries in dues. In return, they will get a process to handle grievances and protection from arbitrary firing. The union also will help workers establish medical clinics and other programs. Under the agreement, workers do not have the right to strike. They also won't automatically get higher pay -- unless they pick cucumbers for Mt. Olive. Velasquez said the union will pressure other major companies that buy North Carolina crops to increase their prices as well. The Growers Association, based in the Moore County town of Vass, is the biggest source of legal farmworkers in the state, and Director Stan Eury says it supplies about 60 percent of North Carolina's cucumber pickers. The association's workers are only a fraction of North Carolina's migrant farmworkers, many of whom are here illegally. Eury said he agreed to the deal to bring greater credibility to his group, which he said has been under attack. He said the grievance procedure will reduce lawsuits. Legal Services of North Carolina, a federally funded agency that represents the poor, sued the association and its members more than a dozen times, claiming that workers are exploited. The most recent suit, filed in April, alleges that the association is a criminal organization that intimidates workers, bilks them of their wages and blacklists them if they exercise their rights. "We're tired of reading all the negative things in the papers," Eury said. "We already had the most progressive program in the nation, but this kicks it up a notch." Growers wary The deal has caused rumblings in farm country. "I don't think any of the growers, and I've talked to a lot of them, really like unions," said Len Wester, a Louisburg cucumber farmer who gets workers through the Growers Association. "But if we don't do something to take some pressure off with Legal Services, they'll eventually just sue us completely out of business." The union will cost farmers nothing. But the N.C. Farm Bureau says it is opposed to unionization and is working to provide farmers with new sources of seasonal labor. Regina Luginbuhl, head of the state's Agricultural Health and Safety Bureau, said the deal doesn't address the worst problems on North Carolina farms. The deal targets legal workers -- who are guaranteed legal housing, $8 an hour and workers' compensation -- rather than illegal workers. "The undocumented workers in unregistered camps, those are the worst," Luginbuhl said.
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