Organic farmer Scott Frost says if he can't make a union farm work, no one can.For someone who two months ago was held up as the poster boy for farmer-farmworker solidarity, Scott Frost is sounding surprisingly confrontational these days. When Frost, an organic-berry grower, signed the state's first farmworker union contract in March, he was counting on Nature's Fresh Northwest to carry his blueberries with the union label. But last week Nature's, Frost's biggest customer last year, rejected his first batch of berries. Frost, general manager of Nature's Fountain Farm in Albany, blames his problems partly on his contract with PCUN, the farmworkers union. "We're already seeing a problem," he says. "My price has gone up with the contract." Frost can't lower his prices, he says, because now he's locked into paying 50 cents over the minimum wage. He says he can't even afford to buy the union labels to put on his boxes. Frost also says that the union organizer was defensive and accusatory when Frost turned to him for help. "We went out on a limb here to give them a system that nobody else is doing, and I need them to meet me halfway at least," he says. "Otherwise it won't work." Frost, who concedes he's a bit of a hot-head, may be overreacting. In fact, his labor costs will decrease next week, as more berries ripen and workers pick more fruit per hour. But his frustration with PCUN and Nature's illustrates the problems facing growers who want to treat workers well while meeting consumer demands for cheap produce. Yvonne Frost, Scott Frost's mother and owner of the farm, is less critical of PCUN. "We haven't really started to pick yet," she says. "It's way too early to do anything about the union." The 67-year-old matriarch dismisses the idea that union organizer Erik Nicholson wasn't working with her son. "I think two men about the same age got into a pissing match," she says. "There was a misunderstanding between Erik and my son over the amount they would have to pick, but I've straightened it out." She says she's taken over union negotiations for the farm and hammered out a 150-pound minimum daily quota. The contract with the Frost farm is historic in more ways than one. It is the union's first contract, but it's also a test of whether PCUN can get the public support it needs for success. Previous efforts, such as the confusing boycott of Gardenburger, seem to have fallen flat. Consumers have a difficult time understanding how refusing to buy a popular vegetable patty helps workers in the field. Union-labeled blueberries, by contrast, come direct from the workers' hands to the buyers' mouths and are a more palatable way for politically aware urbanites to ease their consciences. As long as the berries don't cost any more, that is. Jeff Fairchild, produce manager for the six Portland-area Nature's stores, says a union label is not a license for high prices. Most consumers, he says, aren't thinking about whether their arugula is picked by an oppressed or unionized worker. "You're really asking people to track a whole other level of activity," he says, conjuring images of produce signs touting union-picked, organic, pesticide-free fruits and vegetables. "It's too much to track." Fairchild says that when Frost came to Nature's last week, he implied he was selling all he could at $24 a box at local farmers markets. Since Nature's found a less expensive non-union supplier, the store told him to come back when he had more yield and a more competitive price. "I fully expect we'll be selling his fruit," Fairchild says. PCUN leaders are disappointed about Nature's turning down Frost's first pick, but not surprised. Nicholson, the union organizer assigned to the farm, says the biggest obstacle to raising the standard of living for farmworkers is American consumers' insistence on unrealistically cheap food. "The reason that prices are so low is that farmworkers are living in substandard housing, making substandard wages," he says. "We ask for Nature's' active support in advertising this--educate consumers that the higher price goes not only to their bottom line but to the farmworkers and to Frost." As for his relationship with Frost, he says it's the best illustration of why a contract is necessary and how one works. On any other farm, he says, workers would be at risk of being fired when a farmer sees his labor costs rising. Now, at least, they have protection. Since its inception in 1985, PCUN has become the state's leading organization for farmworkers and, to a certain extent, the Latino community as a whole. Connections to farm labor run deep in the Willamette Valley's Latino population, given that four generations have worked in the fields. By PCUN's estimates, 90 percent of the valley's Mexican residents have picked berries at some point in their lives. While most of Oregon enjoys an economic boom, real wages for farmworkers have declined. Housing shortages force some migrant workers to sleep in their cars. Although state law requires farmworkers to be paid minimum wage, reports of underpayment are widespread, and even if workers are paid their due, federal law excludes them from overtime pay. Maximilian, a farmworker who lives in a labor camp in Hillsboro, is luckier than most. He has been coming back to the same farm for nine years, and he trusts that he'll have work there. Still, over the season (from April to December) he earns only $5,000, which is average for migrant workers. He sends most of it home to Mexico to his wife and four children. For PCUN, the contract with Frost is an expansion of the battle for farmworkers into fresh market growers. Their biggest battle has been with the mega-farmers who grow crops for processing. The union's six-year boycott of Norpac Foods started because of complaints about Kraemer Farms, one of the largest growers in the valley. In 1991, workers claimed that Kraemer was underpaying cucumber pickers. Thanks to a PCUN-organized strike, wages were increased. The next year, however, strike leaders were not rehired, and Kraemer refused PCUN's efforts to negotiate. PCUN shifted attention to Norpac Foods, a farmers cooperative to which Kraemer belongs, calling for a boycott of Norpac products--FLAV-R-PAC frozen foods, among other things. In 1996, Gardenburger was added to the boycott because it is distributed by Norpac Food Sales. The boycott doesn't seem to be even a gnat bite on the ankle of the veggie patty. It was never mentioned in the buzz around Gardenburger's highly publicized commercials during the Seinfeld finale. Retail response to the boycott has been limited to 105 natural-food stores in 29 states around the country. (Nature's Fresh Northwest is not participating.) And in a blow for solidarity, union leaders for the Teamsters Local 670, which works in the Norpac plant, have refused to support the boycott, stating that if business goes down, their workers will be hurt. But PCUN should not be dismissed, says Robert Dash. The Willamette University political science professor has spent hours analyzing PCUN, particularly the strawberry campaign the union organized in 1995: Workers held two major strikes and at least a dozen work stoppages, demanding an increase in wages, which had remained stagnant for a decade. The targeted growers agreed to raise wages, and the price per pound increased throughout the valley. Growers say wages went up due to market forces, but Dash credits PCUN. "There is no doubt it was a major success," he says. "Those successes reinfused the ranks of PCUN and the membership. It shows what sacrifice can yield. That's really the long-term effect of the campaign: Sooner or later it can turn around." PCUN leaders say that despite Gardenburger's growing popularity, the Norpac boycott is having an effect. Students are protesting on campuses where Gardenburgers are sold, and the more than two dozen churches in Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon have joined the boycott. And two years ago Norpac hired a public relations company, which is now trying to spread the word about the good the company does for the Willamette Valley. Even more striking, this year the Oregon Farm Bureau is instituting a "Service to Ag Workers" program to give workers a place to take complaints or questions about their working conditions; the program is funded by growers. Leone José Bicchieri, PCUN's Norpac boycott coordinator, says agribusinesses are running scared. "They're worried a farmer signed a contract," he says. "That trips them out. And the boycott is having an effect." Despite the rough start with Frost's blueberry farm, PCUN hopes to sign other contracts in the coming months. As part of that commitment, Nicholson says, the union is seeking alternative markets for the produce. Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, for example, has committed to joining a subscription service in which its members will order a certain amount of union-picked berries every week. Nicholson also says the United Food and Commercial Workers union has passed a resolution that its employers choose union berries first when stocking their stores, once the supply develops. Although there is no way to predict whether Fred Meyer and Safeway will honor such a request, Nicholson says that if consumers demand union-picked produce, the stores will offer it. And, he says, if PCUN gets the word out, people will do the right thing, even if it costs more. "We can purchase sweatshop berries, or those from where rights are respected," he says. "I think that's a moral decision that more and more people are seeing is right." |
