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Farm workers gear up to push for rights

Top priorities in Oregon include binding arbitration and expanded rights to

organize

Tuesday, June 29, 2004

ALEX PULASKI

The OREGONIAN

The longstanding struggle over what rules should govern farm-labor

organizing in Oregon has begun anew, even though state legislators won't

tackle the subject until next year.

Farmers recently began circulating a position paper that outlines the

reasoning behind legislation they plan to seek in January.

Tim Bernasek, general counsel for the Oregon Farm Bureau, said its hope was

to find common interests with worker organizations in the next few months.

Among the key points in the bureau's position paper are forming a commission

to resolve disputes, allowing workers a simple-majority vote by secret

ballot when deciding whether to organize, and voluntary arbitration when

disputes arise.

The arbitration issue remains a key hurdle. Worker groups are demanding

binding arbitration similar to that provided by California law, and a

spokesman for Democratic Gov. Ted Kulongoski said the governor supports that

position.

Tom Chamberlain, a senior policy adviser to the governor, said a significant

question remains about how to define rules surrounding binding arbitration.

" The governor's trying to get the parties together to pound something out, "

Chamberlain said. " Without them reaching some kind of compromise, nothing's

going to happen. "

Farm-labor and other unions plan a news conference today in Portland

supporting federal protections expanding workers' rights to organize.

In Oregon, farm laborers are specifically exempt from union organizing

rights given to other workers. For decades, farmers argued that such an

exemption was necessary so they would not face harvest-time strikes that

could put them out of business.

That sentiment has been changing since the mid-1990s, following a state

appellate court decision granting farm laborers limited protections from

being retaliated against for concerted actions.

Farm Bureau-backed bills to limit that decision were passed in 1997 and

1999, but both were vetoed by then-Gov. Kitzhaber, a Democrat.

The Farm Bureau took on the broader issue of collective bargaining in 2001

and 2003 but has been unable to forge a bill palatable enough to workers

that it could survive a possible veto.

Boycotts by farm worker organizations have also caused farmers to

reconsider.

Oregon's leading farm worker union, Northwest Treeplanters and Farmworkers

United, ended a boycott of processing giant Norpac in 2002 after forcing the

cooperative into negotiations, and the United Farm Workers union is

pressuring a giant Boardman dairy and its buyers.

Safeway wrote the dairy, Threemile Canyon Farms, this month to encourage its

owners to enter good-faith negotiations with the union. The dairy has

refused. It recently paid a $70,000 legal settlement to workers who had

alleged minimum wage and other violations.

Pulaski: 503-221-8516; alexpulaski@...