Unions Try To Take Root In Orchards -- Teamsters And United Farm Workers Set Rivalry Aside, Join Efforts To Organize Washington's Apple Industry

YAKIMA - In a push that could reverberate through U.S. agriculture, two longtime union rivals - the Teamsters and the United Farm Workers - are collaborating to organize workers in the huge Washington apple industry.

The Teamsters union is targeting the 15,000 workers in packing warehouses, while the UFW is concentrating on the 40,000 who labor in orchards across Eastern Washington. They are seeking higher wages, health benefits and job security.

The campaign is the first major attempt to organize Washington apple workers in 20 years. With the apple industry now expanding and producing billion-dollar crops, union leaders believe it's a good time to act.

But no union votes have yet been scheduled in Eastern Washington's apple counties, where work has always been seasonal, compensation minimal and conditions harsh.

"We have to make some changes or otherwise our children will live like us," said veteran farmworker Celerino Tapia, a father of seven who left his job to become a UFW organizer.

"Changes aren't going to happen until we have a base of people to force them."

Apple-industry officials are resisting the union drive, arguing that wages and benefits are determined by markets and competitors, not farmers or packing houses.

"The industry is competitive within the economic parameters that it lives in," said Mike Gempler, executive director for the Washington Growers League in Yakima. "That includes the prices we

receive for our products, the availability of people to work, and the competition from the industry. Those are the things that determine what is paid."

Union efforts in the apple orchards reflect a more aggressive national labor movement. Trying to reverse decades of membership decline, the AFL-CIO is embracing fresh tactics and focusing on new industries.

Talk of an apple campaign surfaced at the AFL-CIO's winter meeting. The national labor federation approved two pilot programs: one targeting apple workers in Washington, the other strawberry workers in California.

With virtually no union representation in the apple industry, the Teamsters and the UFW agreed to coordinate their efforts. They ended a bitter feud dating to the 1970s, when California grape growers hired Teamsters to break a UFW strike. Two UFW picketers were killed.

The two unions seek to tap the frustrations of a work force that has swelled from a vast tide of Mexicans and other Latinos flowing north.

In the Yakima Valley, about 20,000 undocumented immigrants who had long worked in valley farms and orchards took advantage of a 1986 amnesty to obtain green cards, making them legal residents of the United States. Most are unlikely ever to return to Mexico.

They are people like Genaro Morales, 28, who came to Eastern Washington from Mexico when he was a child. He and his wife, Teresa, see their future in this country and want to contribute to the community. But they also believe that, without union support, they will be stuck in poverty.

Morales said his employer, the packing company Stemilt Growers, fired him for his pro-union sympathies but later rehired him. Stemilt denies it fired Morales for supporting the Teamsters; the company says he was laid off and recalled.

"We want a house, we want to have good health and money for the future," Morales said. "We won't be young forever."

Harsh conditions persist

Harsh living and working conditions persist for farmworkers nationally. These conditions have been documented by the General Accounting Office and the Environmental Protection Agency, among others.

Each year, farmworkers suffer hundreds of thousands of acute illnesses and injuries caused by pesticide exposure. Many still toil in fields without drinking water, hand-washing facilities or toilets. They live in substandard housing or, often, in seasonal makeshift camps. Their health risks are higher, and they have less access to medical care.

The stark conditions of the apple industry can be found in small farming towns such as Mattawa, about an hour's drive east of Yakima.

Mattawa in Grant County is overrun by seasonal and migrant farmworkers seeking jobs at the thousands of acres of new orchards planted a few miles away.

Raw sewage runs through the unpaved streets of the town. An acute housing shortage during harvest means as many as four families live in one mobile home.

The state last year reported annual wages to be $5,750 for apple-orchard workers and $11,000 for packing-shed workers, compared with the average state wage of $26,400. The U.S. poverty rate is $12,000.

But growers say those numbers are misleading because the state's report calculates annual earnings when most farmworkers are employed seasonally. Most orchard workers are employed about one-third of the year; if their wages were annualized, they would earn about $16,000. The state hourly average for apple pickers is $8.

Labor costs, which represent the growers' biggest expense, have risen 68 percent since 1976, according to state data. But apple prices fluctuate and remain volatile.

"There's just no fat in the budget" of apple growers, said Gempler of the growers league. "Every time you have a wage increase, something else has to suffer."

While annual earnings for farmworkers are rising, nominal wage increases have seldom kept pace with inflation. Real wages, when adjusted for inflation, have fallen since 1982, according to the federal Report of the Commission on Agricultural Workers.

Still, top workers at Jim Doornink's 100-acre orchard in Wapato, Yakima County, can earn as much as $10 an hour. Doornink pays an average hourly wage of $6.70 and offers his skilled people year-round work.

"I want these guys to be here next year," he said. "It's to my benefit to have a good relationship with them. If I'm not competitive, they'll end up in the warehouses, construction or whatever is the next tier."

The organizing campaigns come at a time when the state's apple industry, centered in Wenatchee and Yakima, has been on an expansion binge. It has been fueled partly by a growing export market and a demand for the tastier but pricier Gala and Fuji apples.

Production has nearly doubled to 94 million boxes of apples this year, from 50 million 25 years ago. Officials expect the trend to continue.

With more new orchards beginning to produce apples, 100 million boxes soon will be normal, predicted Jim Thomas, spokesman for the Washington Apple Commission, the industry's marketing arm.

"What we're looking at," he said, "is substantial growth."

With the world supply of apples down, prices are rising. This year's record harvest could be a bonanza for the state's 3,500 apple growers. Already, officials estimate the value of the 1996 crop could exceed $1.7 billion - the industry's second billion-dollar crop in six years.

The Washington apple industry controls 60 percent of the U.S. market and feeds a growing global appetite from Taiwan to Dubai. It dominates competitors in Michigan, upstate New York and abroad.

To union officials, that market dominance and the industry's current expansion are proof that growers and packing warehouses can afford to pay workers higher wages.

But growers argue they must plant new orchards or build new packing warehouses to remain competitive. Such undertakings are expensive, they say. It costs $12,000 to $15,000 to develop one acre of apple trees.As a result, the industry has been consolidating orchards into fewer but bigger hands. Twenty years ago, a grower could support himself on a 50-acre orchard. Today, it takes about 100 acres, industry officials say. Now 7 percent of the growers control 53 percent of the orchards.

Evar Dolph of Wapato operates a 33-acre orchard but divides his time between that and teaching biology at Yakima Valley Community College.

"I'm interested in paying working people a fair living wage," Dolph said. "I don't know if I pay that - that's the hypocrisy of it all.

"But I'm also confronted with the dilemma of making the orchard pay for itself," he said. "If the truth were told, it would be wiser for me to sell this orchard to one of my bigger neighbors."

Growers such as Dolph and Doornink say they recognize the value of their workers but can only pay what the market will support.

"We operate in a world economy, and we pay more for labor than anybody," Dolph said, citing reports that Chilean growers pay workers $8 a day. "If we had to pay what might be considered a decent wage, we might not be competitive."

Packing-house push

The Teamsters have focused much of their early pressure on Stemilt Growers of Wenatchee. With 500 workers and annual revenue of $100 million, it's one of the biggest packing warehouses in the apple industry. Union officials believe that if they can organize Stemilt, the other 124 packing houses in the state would follow.

The Teamsters have filed federal unfair-labor-practice charges against Stemilt for firing six employees who were openly pro-union.

"In the time I've been here, this is the first time there has been support for a union," says Asuncion Santiago, 39, a veteran apple-industry worker and Teamsters organizer, one of those fired by Stemilt. "We have asked them for some respect and ask that there would be some dignity at work. But I think the only way they'll take us seriously is if we organize."

Stemilt has since rehired Santiago and the other five employees and denies it fired them over their pro-union sympathies. Company officials said the employees were temporarily laid off and then recalled.

The company recently has offered an improved benefits package, paid vacations and a retirement plan. Workers earn an average of $8.60 an hour and can earn up to $10 an hour, company officials say.

"In our opinion, the people wouldn't benefit by paying union dues," says Bob Mathison, co-owner of Stemilt. "People don't like the unions coming to their homes uninvited and muscling them into joining."

Teamsters officials expect this campaign to take time. To overcome anti-union sentiment that runs deep in rural Washington, the union has been engaging in different tactics.

They have organized public demonstrations at the Washington Apple Commission in Wenatchee, passed out leaflets at the mall in Yakima, picketed the packing houses, and talked to religious and local government leaders.

They say boycotts and strikes are options as well.

"The strategy is really an attempt to get consumers to think through how the other half works - to understand the consequences of thousands of workers who work every day and live in poverty," said John August, chief organizer for the Teamsters.

But industry officials remain unimpressed.

"I think the Teamsters are trying to increase membership," Gempler said, "and that's a major factor why they're here. It's being imposed by the Teamsters, and it's not coming from the inside."

The Chavez legacy

Inside the Sunnyside office of the UFW is a shrine containing a portrait of union founder Cesar Chavez. Often, farmworkers kneel or cross themselves when they pass it.

It gives them hope, they say, in their struggle to end their poverty.

Since the 1970s, Chavez's union has tried to organize Eastern Washington orchard workers without much success. Farmworkers, unlike warehouse workers, have no collective-bargaining rights. A grower has no legal obligation to recognize a union vote.

The last significant attempt to represent Eastern Washington farmworkers came in the 1970s when Hispanic hop workers, upset about low wages, voted in a secret ballot for UFW representation at some ranches. But they were never able to negotiate contracts. Since then, there has been sporadic union activity in the area until recently.

It took the UFW eight years to secure its first collective-bargaining agreement with a major grower in Washington. About 200 regular and seasonal farmworkers now are covered by an 18-month contract signed last year with Chateau Ste. Michelle winery in Paterson, Benton County.

Company officials contend that workers receive nearly the same wages and benefits as before. But farm employee Juan Martin Rios said the contract gives them respect and job security.

"The contract now guarantees benefits for workers," Rios said. "Now that we have a voice, if we have a problem, we can discuss it with our supervisor and get it resolved."

That contract has inspired other farmworkers throughout the state, said Rosalinda Guillen, the UFW regional director for Washington state. "It's a real hope for the future."