Field of dreams?

When 18-year Oregon farmworker Leonides Avila goes before audiences to share his story, he talks of what workers commonly seek through collective bargaining: better wages, paid holidays, vacation, breaks, medical benefits, seniority benefits, a retirement plan. He speaks of poor working conditions--inadequate access to water and bathroom facilities, overexposure to weather and chemicals, lack of on-the-job child care, and bad living conditions in farm-labor camps.

In 1985 the Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN;www.pcun.org) union formed to help organize migrant Latino farmworkers in Oregon. For the last seven years they have been trying to get the 240 NORPAC-member farms to go to the bargaining table. NORPAC, maker of FLAV-R-PAC and Westpac frozen fruits and vegetables, is a grower-owned ("cooperative") food processor in Oregon's Willamette Valley. The union has been calling on consumers and especially institutional customers--universities, hospitals, nursing homes, and student organizations--many faith-based, to boycott NORPAC, specifically Gardenburger, Inc. products (according to PCUN, Gardenburger contracts with NORPAC Food Sales, the sales arm of NORPAC). Through the boycott the union hopes to pressure farm owners to negotiate labor contracts with their workers.

While the boycott has been gaining momentum, only four small growers have signed contracts with PCUN, but the union counts these victories as the necessary small steps to larger settlements. The efforts of the union are not, however, without opposition. According to a story in the Portland, Oregon Catholic Sentinel, NORPAC and its members claim the union is not representative of the will of workers (PCUN has 4,500 members among a workforce of about 12,500) and challenges the ability of the union to assess the impact of the boycott. The local Teamsters Union has also opposed the boycott on the grounds that it puts union cannery jobs in danger. At the Teamsters' request, the Oregon AFL-CIO has agreed not to support the boycott. In response, PCUN president Ramon Ramirez told the Sentinel, "Canneries can be unionized. Why not farmworkers?"

Citing these and other concerns--that the boycott cannot be successful, is divisive, and imposes a solution on the workers--the Catholic Archdiocese of Portland has refused to endorse it, despite the fact that the 16-denomination-member Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, to which it belongs, backs the boycott. "Our opposition to the boycott," said archdiocesan chancellor Mary Jo Tully, "is contingent on growers' working to better meet the needs of the workers."