Z Magazine, Dec. 2004
By: John E. Peck
In a now infamous backroom deal hatched between the American Federation of Labor (AFL), the Farm Bureau, southern white segregationists, and new deal democrats, farm workers and domestic servants were specifically excluded from the right to engage in activities of mutual aid, protection, and collective bargaining as extended to other U.S. workers under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Starting in WWII and through the mid 1960s the infamous “Bracero” program also facilitated the recruitment of close to four million seasonal farm workers from Mexico into the U.S. as a cheap labor option for agribusiness. This exploitable throwaway labor force persists today under the auspices of the federal H2-A Guest Worker program. Such institutionalized discrimination has been reinforced by U.S. refusal to recognize the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Labor Organization (ILO)’s rules on just compensation, forced labor, and union organizing. As a result, farm workers in the U.S. today remain among the most abused in the world, with no federal right to form a labor union, to earn overtime pay, or protection against child exploitation, workplace injury, and toxic exposure.
Thanks, though, to the historic struggle of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers (UFW) that began in the 1960s, California was forced to pass its own Agriculture Labor Relations Act in 1975, extending federal NLRA guarantees to farm workers. Similar farmworker organizing drives led by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), and Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN) are winning victories in FL, NC, and OR. Many of these struggles are documented in a March 2004 Oxfam report titled “Like Machines in the Field – Workers Without Rights in American Agriculture” (available online at www.maketradefair.com). Just like the UFW’s earlier CA grape boycott, these grassroots efforts are successfully bridging the economic and cultural divide that often separates rural workers from urban consumers through popular education, corporate campaigns targeting the likes of Taco Bell and Mt. Olive, as well as pro-fair trade, anti-sweatshop, global justice activism.
In the rolling desert-like grasslands along the Columbia River in northeastern OR another epic labor battle is now underway against one of the largest factory dairy farms in the Pacific Northwest. Threemile Canyon near Boardman, OR, employs 140 mostly Latino immigrants to manage its herd of 18,000 Holstein and Jersey cows (30,000 head total including calves), as well as raise potatoes, corn, wheat, and alfalfa. Threemile’s daily output of 1.3 million pounds of milk finds its way to national retail chains such as Safeway, as well as processors like Tillamook County Creamery Association, the famous OR-based co-op cheese maker. In a remote corner of the U.S., one now finds half mile long confinement barns, high tech carousels milking 500 cows at once, and workers facing a grueling 60 hour work week in a hell on earth reminiscent of a 19th century Dickens novel.
The 225 square miles on which Threemile Canyon sits was originally owned by aerospace giant, Boeing Corp. and subleased to farmers for irrigated operations. In early 2000, the ND-based potato giant, R.D. Offut bought out Boeing and launched a $185 million joint venture with Bos Family Oregon Farms, a mega-dairy outfit based in Bakersfield, CA. One of the first jobs of Threemile’s new management team was to address a backlog of environmental lawsuits due to massive water withdrawals from the Columbia River blamed for the destruction of wild salmon runs. By cutting its water demand in half (to 120,000 acre feet per year) and setting aside 23,000 acres of endangered juniper sage habitat for conservation, Threemile was able to turn a “green leaf” and placate many of its most outspoken critics. Everyone from the Nature Conservancy to the Wall Street Journal has since dumped accolades on Threemile as a great model of ecological stewardship and responsible business. In fact, Oregon’s ex-Governor, John Kitzhaber, is quoted on the factory farm’s own website as saying“ this farm merges economic and environmental values in a superb example of sustainable agriculture… I predict this will be the model and the standard for this kind of development in the future.”
Part of this sustainability includes recycling of potato skins and other pesticide-laden crop waste as feed to the locked-up dairy cows, which are also pumped full of synthetic hormones and subtherapeutic antibiotics. Oregon taxpayers forked over $20 million in low interest loans and tax credits to get the mega dairy off the ground, while the residents of Portland are paying Threemile another $500,000 a year in exchange for taking their food waste for its composting operation. Ratepayers for Portland General Electric are poised to spend another $1 million annually on the “green power” from Threemile’s methane project. Manure from the herd – an estimated 675 tons per day – is destined for a pair of 50 foot tall methane digesters to produce electricity. Without the guaranteed milk market offered by Tillamook, the massive taxpayer subsidies, as well as the $100 million line of credit from the Bank of the West, Threemile would probably not be solvent today.
Conditions for workers on such factory farms are extremely filthy, dangerous, exhausting, and poorly compensated. Three Latino workers on a mega-dairy in CA died recently when they were overcome by toxic hydrogen sulfide and ammonia fumes. Another CA farmer, Patrick Joseph Faria, is finally going to trial in late Sept. 2004 on involuntary manslaughter charges involving the deaths of two Mexican immigrants. Enrique Araisa and Jose Alatorre back in 2001. Alatorre had climbed down into a 40 foot deep manure pit to unclog a pipe when he was overcome and when Araisa responded to his cries for help he also died of asphyxiation. Workers are sometimes forced to work in manure up to their waist, leading to open festering sores that in turn spread disease their own families. Given such rampant contamination, it is no wonder farm workers and farm managers on factory dairy operations seldom dare drink the milk they produce.
Workers also break bones from being kicked by cows and from slipping on manure drenched concrete floors, which explains why the rate of injury on dairy farms is the highest in all of agriculture and higher than that in any other private industrial sector, according to a 2003 Journal of Agricultural Safety and Health article. One worker quoted in an Aug. 27, 2004 Salon.com article said, "I worry every day that I will break my hand or get hurt, but I never say anything for fear I'll lose my job. No American would do this job. This is a shit job, for shit money." Dairy farm workers in OR earn as little as $5.15 per hour and are often forced to work 12-16 hour days with no overtime or bonus pay. Until Feb. 2004, farm workers in OR did not even have the legal right to a lunch break or rest periods.
In Feb. 2003 the United Farm Workers (UFW) launched an organizing drive at Threemile Canyon after a hundred workers went on wild cat strike and walked off the job following a cut in pay. Union activists soon encountered harassment, intimidation, and in some cases physical assault and illegal firing. Safety violations were rampant, and OSHA now has a dozen citations against Threemile in its records. In all of 2003, though, federal and state regulators only managed to inspect 51 out of the nation’s estimated 86,000+ dairy farms. Seventeen workers who sued Threemile for minimum wage violations and illegal payroll deductions accepted an out of court settlement for $70,000 in June 2004. Plaintiff Reginaldo Rodriguez, remarked “I feel very satisfied with the money that we won...but we’re concerned about the company retaliating, because the employee handbook says that we don’t have rights...that the company can fire us at any time.” On Sept. 24, 2004 three women also filed suit against Threemile Canyon, alleging discriminatory hiring practices. Only two women’s names appear among a UFW list of 150 pro-union dairy workers at the farm. According to April Ortiz of Umatilla, OR quoted in an AP press story on the lawsuit, “I’m sure I’m just as qualified as a man to do the job.” Ortiz who has extensive experience in farm work and food processing applied for a job at Threemile back in July but never heard back. Several men have been hired since.
Agribusiness outfits prefer to hire undocumented workers so that they can simply fire them at will if they get hurt, sick, pregnant, complain, or otherwise prove to be a problem and a drag on profitability. This also enables them to avoid pesky workman’s compensation claims and evade other laws dealing with employment non-discrimination and workplace safety. A different spin is provided by Agnes Schafer, vice president of Kansas City-based Dairy Farmers of America (DFA): "Farmers in general are pro-Hispanic because it's economical and it's people who want to work and who value agriculture.” DFA has long been criticized by farmers for its ruthless corporate-style management that places short-term profit above the interest of its own co-op members. DFA is currently under investigation by the U.S. Dept. of Justice in several states for anti-trust activities involving manipulation of milk prices and corruption at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
Sitting in on agribusiness seminars, though, one quickly discovers that “la leche” is all the rage. Many industry groups are now producing their own Spanish-English phrasebooks and even offering special “cross cultural” workshops for more efficient management of this growing dairy workforce. Land grant colleges are diligently researching, at taxpayer expense, on how best to assimilate “problematic” immigrant populations – Latino, Hmong, Somali - into low wage dead end jobs at the veritable bottom of the U.S. food chain. The bitter defeat earlier this year of 470 UFCW meatpackers at one of the nation’s largest pepperoni plants in Jefferson, WI, on strike against Tyson Foods for over a year, does not bode well. Twenty years ago meatpackers in the U.S. earned $18 per hour, but now the non-unionized industry "standard" is down to $6 per hour. One can almost see the day when powerful vertically integrated corporations can dictate wages and labor conditions across an entire food sector – from the farm field and packing plant to the fastfood outlet and supermarket.
Under intense public pressure to negotiate with UFW, Threemile Canyon hired Portland television celebrity and public relations flak, Len Bergstein, to advise them in their union busting work. In a February 24, 2004 Oregonian article, Bergstein asserted, "the history of this thing is that the union lies about the operations of the farm for their own purposes. They've been unable to gain widespread support, so they make these outrageous charges without any regard for the truth." Among these charges is growing worker concern that Threemile is contributing to the Mad Cow epidemic in the U.S. through its sloppy handling of dead animals, foodwaste, compost, and feed rations with the same mechanical equipment, leading to dangerous cross contamination. Reminiscent of the gross animal abuse scandal now embroiling KFC, an employee at Threemile stated, "I saw how they killed the calves with hammers; they hammered the calves' heads until they killed them." One upset worker who videotaped such livestock abuse at Threemile was promptly fired. Other workers have been told by supervisors to continue milking cows regardless of mastitis since the elevated bacteria levels would still be diluted enough to pass regulatory health inspection.
Utilizing secondary consumer-based boycotts, the UFW has mounted a grassroots pressure campaign against Threemile’s major milk buyers and financial creditors. Feeling the heat, both Tillamook in April 2003 and Safeway in June 2004 have now called on Threemile to negotiate with the union, leaving DFA (owner of the “Borden/Elsie the Cow label), Bank of the West, and Sorrento Lactalis (maker of “Precious” and “Sorrento” brand cheese products), as targets. On April 24th,, 2004 when Bush’s Interior Dept. Secretary, Gale Norton, appeared at the Portland, OR zoo for an Earth Day ceremony marking Threemile Canyon’s conservation efforts, protestors were on hand to expose the green washing and union busting behind the award.
On Aug. 18th, 2004 dozens of Threemile farmworkers and their supporters formed a “human billboard” along Highway 395 in Herminston ,OR to protest the illegal firing of union activist, Daniel Sepulveda. Sepulveda was sacked for insubordination after an altercation in June that led to his hospitalization with a crushed foot. According to supervisor, Shawn Francis, Sepulveda intentionally put himself in front of his moving truck and got run over. Threemile has brought in union-busting consultants to met with workers in small groups of 3-4, and convincing them to sign an anti-union petition. One of the consultants has reportedly even told workers that it is illegal to have a union in Oregon. While the corporate managers at Threemile Canyons have made some concessions on wages, healthcare, and safety to undercut the UFW drive, they still refuse to recognize the union itself and are lobbying for new state laws allowing indefinite farmworker contracts and outlawing harvest strikes.
Grassroots pressure in support of dairy farm worker rights and the UFW organizing drive at Threemile can be sent to:
Bank of the West, 1450 Treat Blvd., Walnut Creek,
CA 94597 tel. #800-488-2265
Sorrento Lactalis, 2376 S. Park Ave., Buffalo,
NY 14220 tel. #716-823-6262
DFA, 10220 N. Ambassador Dr., Kansas City,
MO 64153 tel. #816-801-6455
For more info on how you can take action in solidarity with the dairy farm workers’ struggle in OR, contact:
United Farm Workers #509-839-4903
Oregon Farm Worker Ministry #503-990-0611
Farmworker Justice Coalition #541-607-9097
