Teamsters Appeal To Public For Apple Packers

The Teamsters union is appealing to the public rather than following normal procedures to organize Washington’s apple packers.

The union has chosen not to file petitions for representation elections with the National Labor Relations Board because the system has become too easy for employers and their labor consultants to manipulate, said Yakima-based Teamsters organizer Julian Gonzalez.

The union is “going public to expose the owners, who are often seen as leaders in the community but who are actually a cause of a lot of the poverty there,” Gonzalez said.

So instead of a political campaign limited to the inside of a single apple-packing warehouse, the Teamsters union is leading a “social justice movement” to organize the state’s 15,000 workers in apple-packing plants, Gonzalez said.

“After a long history of decline in strength, the labor movement is re-evaluating how you win worker power,” Gonzalez said.

Part of the strategy is visibility in sticking up for workers, such as a September incident at Stemilt Growers Inc., a large packer in Wenatchee. The union alleged six workers, including union activists, were fired in a “warning shot” from Stemilt to the union. The union publicized the workers who lost their jobs, and they were re-hired, Gonzalez said.

But Kay Adam, human resources director at Stemilt, tells a different story. She said the workers were laid off because of slack time between harvests for pears and apples.

“Three of the six were heavily involved in the organization effort (but) we did not know this,” Adam said. “Evidently, they went to the Teamsters and said, ‘We were fired.’ That was not the case.”

Adam said the Mathison family, owners of Stemilt, feels unfairly targeted by the union. They are one of the few packers offering their 500 full-time employees medical, dental and optical benefits and a 401(k) plan, she said. The average wage for a packer at Stemilt is $8.60 per hour.

“We feel we have been targeted because of our size,” Adam said.

Gonzalez confirmed it.

“We’re focusing our resources on the largest, most powerful warehouses. They’re the keys to winning a good contract,” he said.

The Teamsters announced their intention to focus on the apple-packing industry last February. They are working with the United Farm Workers union, which intends to organize the state’s 40,000 apple pickers.

Washington State University researcher Fred Krissman, who has been studying Washington’s apple industry, predicted unions will face a fight before they win recognition.

“You can expect a call for a boycott against apples,” similar to the UFW’s lettuce and grape boycotts of the 1970s, he said.

Krissman also predicted growers and packers will begin using labor contractors, rather than hiring workers themselves, as a way to avoid unionization.