Inside the building the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was hearing arguments on a legal move by Vlasic Farms, a unionized grower purchased by Money’s Mushrooms of Canada, to try to strip all mushroom workers in this state of the right to organize under the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Act.

In another effort to break the union, Money’s announced shortly before the court hearing that it was closing the unionized mushroom picking part its Pennsylvania plant, while keeping open the nonunion packaging department. They admit they will be getting their mushrooms from Kaolin Mushroom Farms, another plant where the employers are attacking the union, and from another company, Giorgi, but claim their move is for financial reasons, not to bust the union.

Demonstrators at the bilingual rally were welcomed by Luis Tlaseca, president of the union’s Kaolin local, and Antonio Gutierres, president of the Vlasic local. Unionists who expressed their solidarity at the rally were Tom Cronin, president of District Council 47 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents city workers; John Myerson of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776; John Braxton from Jobs with Justice, and a representative of the Screen Actors Guild, which has been on strike against the producers of television commercials.

"Some of the justices seemed to like the idea that workers making anything you can eat shouldn’t be able to organize," Art Reed, the lawyer representing the mushroom workers, told the crowd. He added, "Mushrooms are a half-billion dollar industry in Pennsylvania, employing thousands of workers."

Tlaseca noted that most of the mushroom workers are immigrants, mostly from Mexico and Central America. "But we deserve the right to unionize and fight for a decent life like everybody else," he said.

Demonstrators marched around City Hall. The rally concluded with testimony from mushroom workers describing the conditions in area plants.  
 
Workers meet MST leader of Brazil
After the rally, Tlaseca convened a meeting in Spanish of mushroom workers to hear from Gilmar Mauro, a leader of the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) of Brazil, who was on a two-week visit in the United States and had been invited to the rally by leaders of the mushroom workers.

Mauro described the conditions facing landless peasants in Brazil and the efforts of the MST to mobilize to win land, legal rights, and political freedoms. He explained that they had recently conducted a national plebiscite, called the "Cry of the Excluded," where more than 6 million people cast ballots at voting sites set up by the MST in favor of canceling Brazil’s foreign and national debt.

Mauro expressed his solidarity with the mushroom workers, and presented them with resolutions and other documents adopted at the last national convention of the MST. After exchanging information on how to remain in contact, the mushroom workers said they would follow the MST’s campaigns and support their brothers and sisters in Brazil. New Mexico miners fight bosses’ harassment BY JACK PARKER  
TSE BONITO, New Mexico--"The company has forced us to take two of our grievances to arbitration," Lawrence Oliver, president of United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) Local 1332 at the McKinley coal mine here, said in an interview.

Oliver was describing the current stage of the union’s fight against the Pittsburg and Midway (P&M) bosses’ attempts to harass and intimidate workers following the UMWA’s successful strike against the company this summer.

UMWA locals 1332 at McKinley and 1307 in Kemmerer, Wyoming, waged three-month strikes against P&M, a subsidiary of oil giant Chevron. The union beat back the bosses demands to impose 12-hour workdays and gut company-funded health-care programs.

This was an especially important victory at McKinley, a mine on the Navajo reservation with an overwhelming Native American workforce. Here the company tried to get workers to use Indian Health Services, a federal program available to the Navajos, instead of the company’s fully funded plan.

"We had a discharge recently," Oliver said, describing the most serious recent attempt by the employer to intimidate union members. "The company implemented a ‘zero tolerance’ physical contact policy, and one of our members--a drag line operator--was fired because he grabbed another guy when he was kidding.

"Two days after that, a foreman poked a miner in the chest with his finger after he told him to get off a dozer that another foreman had told him to run," Oliver said. "Only this time, management says it was okay because the foreman says he was kidding. The guy who was poked in the chest doesn’t think so."

"Another thing they are doing is trying to change the absentee policy," Oliver added. "For years, those on day shift who had a doctor’s or dentist appointment or some other personal matter they had to attend to could leave work an hour or two early to take care of it. Now the company is saying you have to take off a whole day."

"P&M is refusing to pay both [UMWA 1332 recording secretary] Bob Brown’s and my signing bonuses," Oliver explained. "This is a clear violation of what we voted for, which says, ‘Each employee who is actively working during the first pay period following ratification of the agreement shall receive a return-to-work payment of $1,000.’"

When Oliver and Brown returned following the walkout, they went on union business, something that both the UMWA and the company had agreed to. "We had to wrap up a few things after the strike, like getting out the last strike paychecks and dealing with local issues," Oliver explained. "We met with management and worked out vacation scheduling, staggering the crews for the dragline, and the bids that were up."

"The company claims that since we weren’t technically at work they don’t owe us our money," Oliver said. "Our argument is that anybody employed is ‘actively working.’"

Both Oliver and Brown were confident the union would beat back all of these attacks. "We came out of the strike much stronger," Brown explained. "We are more united than ever and we are not going to let the company get away with any of this."

The UMWA members continue to work hard to make the mine a safe work environment. "MSHA inspectors recently came to McKinley," Oliver said, referring to the Mine Safety and Health Administration. "The company was given 30 citations including 13 that were considered significant."  
 
 
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