Historic Victory for Pictsweet Mushroom Farm Workers in Oxnard, CA

After years of nation-wide boycotts, protests, and activist campaigns, Farm workers at Pictsweet Mushroom Farm in Ventura, Calif. have won their 17-year battle for a United Farm Workers union contract. The contract is the first to result from a law passed through the California State Legislature in 2002 allowing agricultural workers and companies to file for binding mediation when the parties fail to reach an agreement.

On Feb. 13, the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board adopted a report from a state mediator deciding the terms of a union contract, seven months after Pictsweet workers filed for mediation in accordance with the new state law. The contract went into effect this week, after a two-week period giving both parties time to challenge the mediator’s proposal. The proposed agreement went unchallenged, notwithstanding a scathing statement issued by Pictsweet condemning the binding mediation law and process. Pictsweet is one of six plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed a year ago on behalf of California agribusinesses who aim to overturn the legislation.

“How fitting that Pictsweet mushroom workers are the first California farm workers to benefit from the historic binding mediation law that allowed them to end their 17-year nonviolent fight for a union contract,” said UFW President Arturo Rodriguez as he officially called off the union’s more than three-year long boycott of Pictsweet mushrooms.

The new contract, which is retroactive to January 1s, includes a 2.5% salary increase per year for workers and complete family medical coverage for Pictsweet’s 300 workers.