Everyone in this country — including people who live in metro areas like Seattle — is affected by injustices faced by those who work on farms, said United Farm Workers President Teresa Romero.
“Farmworkers feed you three times a day,” she said Thursday afternoon at a rally for mushroom workers at Windmill Farms, before speaking to a crowd of employees, advocates, union representatives and others who had gathered to support the farmworkers’ efforts to unionize.
About 300 people lined a Mercer Street sidewalk from Warren Avenue North to Westlake Avenue North in a nearly mile-long chain. The rally comes as advocates continue asking consumers and retailers to stop buying Windmill Farms mushrooms and instead pick up union produce. They aim to ramp up public pressure on Windmill Farms to recognize the United Farm Workers union, after a majority of workers voted to unionize last year.
Windmill Farms has not recognized its employees’ unionization efforts, stating it sees no need and has excellent relationships with workers. Current laws do not force the company to acknowledge a worker-elected union: Unlike virtually every other group of workers across the country, farmworkers are excluded from the National Labor Relations Act, which outlines a framework requiring employers to recognize unions or face legal consequences.
Windmill Farms workers in the Yakima Valley have argued that they need a union to protect them from harassment, discrimination and unjust firings: Supervisors and management who were responsible for discriminatory practices, including some documented in a lawsuit that resulted in a $3.4 million fine from the state, remain employed, they say.
In an email, Windmill Farms CEO Clay Taylor refuted allegations of retaliation and unjust firings. He added that the company has been following laws and is experiencing an increase in demand for produce. Taylor did not respond directly when asked if the company would be willing to recognize the union or negotiate a contract.
At Thursday’s rally, people waving red UFW flags with the black Aztec eagle emblem and holding signs reading “Seattle demands union mushrooms” and “Shame on you Windmill Farms, Recognize the Union,” eventually marched to Counterbalance Park.
Currently, Washington laws protect farmworkers from retaliation for engaging in union activity. But they don’t otherwise add to the federal National Labor Relations Act or require companies to recognize farmworker unions.
State Democratic legislators and members of labor committees are exploring a policy to explicitly give farmworkers the right to unionize and supplement the federal exclusions, said Sen. Rebecca Saldaña, who attended Thursday’s rally wearing a pin reading “Sin Miedo,” or “without fear” in English.
Though it’s in the early stages, Saldaña and other Democratic lawmakers are discussing what a Washington policy could look like. In California, an Agricultural Labor Relations Board was established in 1975 to extend collective bargaining protections to agricultural workers and help oversee related processes. While Saldaña said the Washington lawmakers aren’t necessarily looking to establish a similar system, they are looking at its shortfalls and successes.
“We don’t want to add onto the bureaucracies but break the barriers that exist,” she said.
During Thursday’s rally, Isela Cabrera, a former employee of the mushroom company, said she’s pleaded with her co-workers to not give up the fight to unionize.
“We have to defend ourselves as workers because without us, the rich don’t eat,” she told the crowd.
Jose Martinez, a former Windmill employee recently fired in what he claimed was a retaliatory act, echoed those sentiments, promising that plans to unionize are not coming to an end.
“When I start something, I like to finish it,” said Martinez, who reached out to UFW leaders and spurred the state’s investigation into the company.
Many Seattle residents were in attendance Thursday including Beth DeRooy, 75, a retired nurse who remembers how she fought against a union coming to her workplace in her youth only to find out how beneficial it was when it was approved anyway.
“I grew up in an anti-union home and bought the Kool-Aid,” she said. “But the union empowered me in ways I couldn’t imagine, and farmworkers deserve that, too.”
The federal exclusions complicating farmworkers’ fight to unionize were rooted in racism and notably put the agricultural industry and consumers ahead of worker rights, according to a federal history documenting farmworker struggle and other historians and policy experts. When the National Labor Relations Act was passed in 1935, Black sharecroppers were doing most of the agricultural work in the South, and Asian and Latino workers were working in the West. Legislators argued that unions could threaten the nation’s food supply and lead to higher prices for consumers.
Decades later, the mushroom workers at Windmill have been unable to unionize for over a year, despite cases of discrimination, unjust firings and harassment that led the state to fine the farm’s previous owner $3.4 million. The farm, at that time known as Ostrom Mushroom Farm, was sold to Canadian-owned Windmill Farms in the middle of litigation.
Ostrom was able to get away with the discrimination and Windmill with ignoring the union because they know these are vulnerable workers without anyone advocating for them in the workplace, Romero said.
A multimillion-dollar settlement is great, she said in reference to the state’s fine, but it should never get to that point.
“We can get them their money back, but we will never be able to take the pain they endured,” Romero said.
Though the company has denied any retaliation or unjust firings, workers recently fired from Windmill stated they believe it was due to their involvement with the union committee.
UFW noted that of 18 initial union committee members at Ostrom, five remain employed at Windmill and three are still active with the union committee. Eleven workers have been fired under Windmill leadership in what appear to be retaliatory circumstances, and UFW is looking into how to respond.
Working people are concerned that a group of workers are denied the right to join a union unless their bosses allow it, said April Sims, president of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, the state’s largest union, who was in attendance at the rally.
She promised to support farmworkers until they get a contract.
“We will be outside Windmill Farms,” she said. “We will be in the grocery stores, and we will be in the streets fighting with you until you get the justice, the respect and the dignity you deserve.”
