Teamsters Attack Apple Industry Over Core Issues

Though there are no Teamster shops in the Washington apple industry, the national labor union produced a report Tuesday criticizing the billion-dollar business for paying its warehouse and field workers poverty-level wages.

The apple growers responded that the facts and statistics in the report titled “Ripe for Fairness” have been twisted to suit the purposes of the union and the whole campaign is designed to distract from the real issue: that apple workers aren’t unionizing.

“They aren’t feeling that they have the support of the workers,” said Mike Gempler, executive director for the Washington Growers League, a Yakima-based association of growers and packers. “The real issue here is whether the apple packing employees have the right to have a union. The answer is, they do.”

The 21-page report describes the Washington apple industry, particularly in Yakima and Wenatchee, as healthy and growing, while the workers continue earning low wages.

According to the document, a warehouse worker is paid about $12,000 per year and a field worker, $9,327.

The report doesn’t say how much workers’ wages have changed, though it claims the industry’s revenues have tripled since 1985. It also states that the workers aren’t given enough hours to qualify for health benefits.

“They’ve used statistics which are selected to back up their point of view,” Gempler said. “They’ve overstated the economic issues.”

The union did admit that the revenue figure had not been adjusted for inflation and that the numbers for annual income were for seasonal employment jobs. According to a union spokesman, the warehouse workers earn an average of $12,000 for about 10 months of work.

Gempler said he didn’t now why the union produced the report, except to distract from the fact that workers weren’t organizing.

“The workers are organizing,” countered Julian Gonzalez, an organizer with the Teamsters union.

The union has been talking with employees for the past year, he said. Some of them have been threatened by their employers, one of which suspended or fired 14 workers for trying to organize, Gonzalez said. When called before the National Labor Relations Board, that grower agreed to a settlement, he said.

“We’ve seen a complete lack of good faith from the employers in the industry and our belief is that their actions won’t stand up to public scrutiny,” Gonzalez said.

The report will spawn the scrutiny, the spokesman said. It’s not common practice for the labor union to create reports like this one, he said, “but this isn’t a common situation. This represents one of the clearest contradictions between the values of our society and the performance of the industry.”

The report concludes that if the workers succeed in organizing a union, the whole community would benefit.

The Teamsters union sent copies of the report to business, religious and community leaders as well as to public officials.

, DataTimes