Reception at 12:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 3 in Oxnard
Mayor, two workers from Salem, Ore. Pictsweet plant plant to brief Ventura County, Calif. civic leaders about company injustices in the Pacific Northwest
Salem, Ore. Mayor Mike Swaim and two workers from Pictsweet Mushroom Farm’s Oregon operation will use a noontime reception Friday at an Oxnard restaurant to inform community and political leaders in Ventura County, Calif. about workplace hazards and labor injustices endured by employees at the firm’s Pacific Northwest plant. They will also be joined by United Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez.
Since last year, more than 350 Pictsweet laborers in the city of Ventura north of Los Angeles have been asking consumers to boycott mushrooms from their facility because of the company’s refusal to negotiate in good faith for a union contract with the UFW.
Mayor Swain will be joined by Enrique Diaz, who recently lost his right hand in a workplace accident inside the Oregon plant, and Javier Velasquez, who was fired for supporting Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN), the Oregon farm workers union. Among those hearing stories of abuse at the Oregon Pictsweet plant will be many of Ventura County’s top civic leaders including Oxnard Mayor Manuel Lopez, Ventura Mayor Sandy Smith and County Supervisor John Flynn.
The reception is sponsored by the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Commission for Farm Workers’ Rights, the UFW and PCUN.
Pictsweet’s Ventura farm has also been the scene of controversy. In a detailed nine-count complaint issued June 26, prosecutors with the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board affirmed worker charges that Pictsweet in Ventura has systematically violated a host of state labor laws in its bid to avoid negotiating a contract with the UFW. Negotiations have gone on since January 2000 with Pictsweet refusing to respond to the workers’ basic demands, the UFW states. The Cesar Chavez-founded union has contracts protecting about 70% of mushroom workers on California’s Central Coast.
Who: Salem, Ore. Mayor Mike Swain, two mushroom workers from Pictsweet’s Salem plant,
UFW President Arturo Rodriguez, key Ventura County, Calif. civic leaders.
What: Reception to shed light on abuses of Pictsweet mushroom workers in Oregon.
When: 12:30 p.m., Friday, Aug. 3, 2001.
Where: Café on A, 438 So. "A" St., Oxnard, Calif.
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