Teamsters Target Apple Workers Union Will Try To Organize Warehouse, Packing House Employees

Interest in joining the Teamsters Union picked up over the winter, so the union is exploring the possibility of organizing the 13,000 warehouse and packing house workers in the apple industry in Washington.

The Teamsters, with more than 1.4 million workers nationwide, had members in apple warehouses years ago, but there’s virtually no representation today, according to Bob Muehlenkamp, organizing director for the union, and Mike Gempler, executive director of the Washington Growers League in Yakima.

An official of the Yakima Valley GrowerShippers, which represents packing houses, declined comment on the Teamsters campaign.

Muehlenkamp told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer the organizing effort hasn’t yet proceeded to the point where the union is collecting cards asking for an election. And he said the union would not try to organize field workers; that would be left to the United Farm Workers Union.

The average wage among apple warehouse workers is $6.50 an hour, and the main issue for workers is money, Muehlenkamp said.

The organizing effort was first described by union officials this week at the AFL-CIO winter executive council meeting in Bal Harbour, Fla.

The Teamsters and UFW had a bloody battle in the 1970s over the right to represent California farm workers. But officials at the meeting told The Los Angeles Times that the unions were working out an agreement that would give the Teamsters jurisdiction over warehouse and packing house organizing, while the UFW would work to organize the 40,000 or more field workers in Washington’s apple industry.

“If that’s the direction these two unions go in, it would be labor history,” Linda Chavez-Thompson, executive vice president of the AFL-CIO, told The Times. “It’s an important measure of what we want to do with our new approach in the American labor movement.”

The UFW’s first victory in Washington and first outside of California - came last year, when it won a long effort to represent workers at three vineyards operated by Stimson Lane Ltd., which produces Chateau Ste. Michelle wines. The victory came after an eight-year boycott of the wines.