Agricultural Personnel Management Program
University of California

7/21/99 News Report -- New York Times

QUINCY, Fla. -- For farm workers in the South, where government officials and companies often boast about the absence of unions, what was going on in the bustling lunchroom was nothing short of extraordinary.

As 80 workers, mushroom pickers all, downed their tortillas and sandwiches, the farm's manager and a union president -- the type of person locals used to run out of town -- bellowed over the din to praise each other and pledge cooperation rather than continued combat.

Sounding like a union pitchman, Greg Verhagen, the mushroom farm's folksy, unpretentious manager, touted the advantages of the contract that the farm, one of the largest employers in Florida's panhandle, signed Tuesday with the United Farm Workers.

The agreement makes Quincy Farm's 450 pickers and packers the only farm workers in Florida to be covered by a union contract, and the contract is still more unusual because it promises profit sharing, a rare provision in agriculture, where many workers barely earn the minimum wage.

"As the company does well, you will do well," said Verhagen, who is lord of a farm that produces 25 million pounds of white button mushrooms a year and 500,000 pounds of giant portobellos -- all in the air-conditioned indoors.

It was understandable that a few of the lunching workers were mystified by Verhagen's professions of partnership, considering that they follow three years of all-out war between labor and management.

In March 1996, Quincy fired 84 pickers when they took part in a lunch-hour demonstration that protested low wages, safety problems and surly supervisors. Since then, the workers -- 60 percent are Hispanic and 40 percent black -- have pressed to join the United Farm Workers and have pushed a boycott of Quincy's mushrooms, gaining the backing of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and many local churches.

For years, Quincy responded by denouncing the union as a bunch of lying outside agitators more concerned about filling union coffers with workers' dues money than about helping the workers.

But Quincy's anti-union stance changed 180 degrees two months ago when it brought in Verhagen, who managed a unionized mushroom operation in Canada, where employers do not view unions as a force of evil the way many U.S. companies do. Not only did Verhagen stop battling the union but he agreed to recognize it when 68 percent of the workers signed cards saying they wanted the United Farm Workers to represent them.

"It's a big change from the mode we were in, entrenched in battle," said Frank Curiel, the farm workers' chief organizer and rabble rouser in this down-on-its-heels town, 30 miles northwest of Tallahassee. "I've been a union organizer for 25 years, and I've never seen a shift like this. They're talking partnership. They're going out of the way to accommodate the union, and vice versa."

For Arturo Rodriguez, the union's president and the son-in-law of Cesar Chavez, the union's legendary founder, the new contract is good news. (Rodriguez, who took the red eye from California to attend the signing, said he was proud that his father-in-law was one of the idols of John F. Kennedy Jr.)

The Quincy agreement gives the union one of its few beachheads outside California and is expected to speed its efforts to expand in Florida, the No. 2 agricultural state, with 300,000 farm workers. The contract also gives the union a much-needed boost after it suffered an embarrassing loss last month when 1,400 strawberry pickers at Coastal Berry in California voted to reject the UFW and join a rival union more sympathetic to management.

Rodriguez said the Quincy unionization victory was also noteworthy because it was brought about by Hispanics and blacks working together, overcoming the frequent tensions between them.

Perhaps the most important aspect of Tuesday's agreement is its signals that the union is embarking on a more cooperative approach toward management -- at least with management willing to take the union as a partner.

Rodriguez said he was embracing a more cooperative approach to demonstrate to growers nationwide that they should not fear or fight unionization, because it could raise productivity and profits. But he was quick to add that the union would not eschew boycotts and other tough tactics against employers who played hardball.

"We see real value in creating a much less confrontational relationship, demonstrating that the union and the employees can be an asset to the business rather than being their enemies," Rodriguez said. "One of the issues the nation is facing is a tighter labor force. Everyone's looking for quality, productivity workers, and we think we can assist in making that happen."

Most mushroom workers welcomed the union and the new partnership. With the emerging thaw in recent months, several workers said, supervisors have ended the most objectionable practices, like requiring workers to sign in and sign out when they went to the bathroom and reprimanding those who went too often.

These workers said supervisors have become more attentive about safety complaints. At Quincy, mushrooms are grown on 10-foot by 6-foot beds that have wooden sides. Sometimes stacked five or six atop each other, these beds may climb 12 feet, and workers say they sometimes take bad falls because the wooden sides they climb on to pick mushrooms are often slippery.

"There were bad conditions," said Francisco Lopez, a 31-year-old immigrant from Mexico who was fired after participating in the 1996 rally. "It was too wet, too slippery. The supervisors put too much pressure on us, always telling you to work harder. The union will make a big difference.

The 18-month contract will pay off immediately for many workers. Beginning packers will get a raise increasing their pay to $5.75 an hour from $5.25, just 10 cents above the minimum wage. The pickers, who are paid piece rates, do not get a raise, but they hope profit sharing will add appreciably to their average of $9 an hour.

Lopez suggested that the company made peace with the union because the boycott was cutting into sales. But Verhagen insisted that the boycott hardly affected sales, acknowledging, however, that it hurt the company's image. "That's the last thing companies want," he said.

"It's very simple why the company decided to work cooperatively with the employees and the union," Verhagen said. "It's time to get on with building the future and growing the future. The union presented itself as the new light for organized labor in that it wants to work in partnership for profit with companies like ourselves."

As a first step toward cooperation, Quincy will organize focus groups in which workers articulate not just their complaints but their insights for improving quality and productivity.

He said that if the workers felt they had no stake in the company, they might be careless in harvesting mushrooms, explaining that such carelessness hurt the quality and quantity of subsequent crops of mushrooms. He said he was confident that improved quality and productivity would offset the increased labor costs resulting from the union contract.

Diane Stark, who earns $6.85 an hour after working for eight years, said Quincy accepted the union because its managers saw that sour labor relations were sabotaging productivity.

"The supervisors saw that if you don't treat the workers right, we're not going to do all the production they want," she said.

Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company