Ripe for negotiations.

Byline: The Register-Guard

After a decade of frustration and failed efforts to establish a legal framework for farm-labor organizing in Oregon, it's time for workers, unions and employers to make the difficult compromises necessary to reach an agreement that the state Legislature can approve next year.

Deep distrust, even animosity, exists between agriculture and farm labor in Oregon, where state law specifically exempts farm workers from union organizing rights enjoyed by most other categories of employees.

In the mid-1990s, a state appellate court ruling gave farm laborers limited protections against retaliation for organized labor activities. Since then, the Oregon Farm Bureau and the state's leading farm worker's union, the Northwest Treeplanters and Farmworkers United Union (PCUN), have proposed legislation creating a labor-relations act covering farmworkers.

The farm bureau even managed to get bills passed in the Legislature in 1997 and 1999 only to see them vetoed by Gov. John Kitzhaber, a Democrat with an ear attuned to labor concerns.

Those efforts, along with others by labor, have withered on the vine because all parties were unable to resolve a tangle of contentious issues, most notably binding arbitration and secondary boycotts.

However, two new developments offer hope that a fair, just agreement acceptable to all parties can be reached.

The Oregon Farm Bureau recently began circulating a position paper that outlines the principles that it believes should guide negotiations. While the bureau calls the principles "an affirmative and positive roadmap to achieve a responsible collective bargaining law for Oregon agriculture," they include a number of concepts that have been fiercely opposed by labor groups. But bureau officials emphasize that the document is a starting point for discussion, not a laundry list of intractable demands.

Meanwhile, Gov. Ted Kulongoski appears willing to take a direct role in breaking the gridlock that has kept Oregon from joining the ranks of states with progressive, workable agricultural labor laws.

It will take personal intervention, even some political head-banging, by the governor to get the job done. Kulongoski already has made it clear where he stands on the issue of arbitration, indicating he supports worker groups' demands for binding arbitration similar to that provided by California law.

If properly crafted, binding arbitration would help level the uneven playing field between workers and farmers who now hold most of the high cards. It could also address the unique time constraints involved in agriculture - think ripe cane berries and 100-degree August heat - and other factors ranging from market conditions to the mobility of migrant workers.

If the farm bureau proves willing to yield on the issue of binding arbitration, then labor must be prepared to do the same on some of its own cherished demands. For example, the governor might ask unions to yield their right to conduct secondary boycotts, such as the lengthy one that PCUN used successfully several years ago to force processing giant Norpac into negotiations.

Many other difficult issues and obstacles remain. But with a firm guiding - and, if necessary, shoving - hand from the governor, and a spirit of compromise and reason by all parties, the result can be a fair, responsible collective bargaining law for Oregon agriculture.