Donated Tubers Turn Into Hot Potatoes

Please pass the potatoes.

That’s what a host of Washington State University officials were trying their best to do Wednesday afternoon as a group of striking Boeing workers showed up in Othello, Wash., to glean potatoes from a WSU experimental farm.

The Spokane local office of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers sent a half dozen striking Boeing employees to Othello on Wednesday after someone from the WSU research unit there had offered a field of surplus potatoes to the striking workers.

But various WSU officials, concerned about the appearance that the university or some of its employees might be taking sides in a private labor dispute, did their best to pass these particular tubers to someone else.

“Those aren’t my potatoes,” said Dennis Johnson, a plant pathologist who does potato research at the Othello station. “I don’t think they should be given out in this situation, but please understand that I don’t represent those potatoes.”

Bob Thornton used to represent the potatoes. But he doesn’t anymore.

“The potatoes that are currently out there are no longer under my jurisdiction,” said Thornton, another potato research scientist. “We have released them to the station administration.”

Jim Carlson apparently does represent the potatoes - but only from a great distance.

Carlson, associate director for WSU’s agricultural research center, said crops from small experimental plots typically are donated to food banks.

Donating such crops to one side or the other in a private labor dispute would “absolutely not” be appropriate, Carlson said.

Late in the day Wednesday, Carlson’s investigation seemed to turn up an answer that covers all the bases.

In their wide-ranging search for potatoes, the union workers contacted the research center, Carlson said - not the other way around. Food banks already had come to the field and taken all the potatoes they wanted. They were followed by senior citizens, who took all the potatoes they wanted.

The Machinists got only the potatoes that the food banks and the senior citizens had left behind, and those leftovers had to be removed anyway because they are “a reservoir for disease,” according to Art Linton, superintendent of the research farm.

The Machinists will distribute food Friday to Boeing members from the union’s offices at 209 N. Havana.

Potatoes probably will be included.

But they might not be very good ones.

, DataTimes