BY PETE SEIDMAN
KENNETT SQUARE, Pennsylvania -Workers at one of the biggest
mushroom companies in the country scored an important victory
December 14 when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected the
Kaolin Mushroom Farms' third and final challenge to a successful
union representation election. That 130-102 vote was won by the
Kaolin Workers Union following a hard-fought 30-day strike in
April 1993. Kaolin is now the only mushroom company in
Pennsylvania - the largest mushroom producing state in the
country - where workers have won union representation.
Kaolin owner Michael Pia had challenged the election, claiming that poor translation provided by the State Labor Board meant the workers, the overwhelmingly majority of whom are Mexican, did not understand what they were voting for. But Kaolin Workers Union leader Luis Tlaseca told the Militant, "All of us understood the people who were translating because they were saying exactly what the ballot said - yes or no to the union of Kaolin workers."
Tlaseca blasted Pia's hypocritical claims about good translation, noting that prior to the election management organized a campaign in the plant urging workers to vote against the union. "Supervisors ordered us to take off T-shirts with `union yes' signs. They threatened supporters of the union that we would not be rehired when we came back from visits to Mexico during the Christmas holidays," Tlaseca recounted.
This was a serious threat, he explained, because there is almost no work available in the Mexican state of Guanajuato where most of the Kaolin workers come from, only some garment factories and temporary work in the fields.
During the strike, Tlaseca explained, Pia fired 33 pro-union activists "and put their names on a list so they couldn't get work" in any of the approximately 60 other mushroom companies here in this self-proclaimed "mushroom capital of the world." A subsequent Labor Board ruling ordered Kaolin to rehire Tlaseca and ten other fired activists with back pay. Since the court ruling, Pia has written the union offering to begin negotiations immediately.
Tlaseca explained that before the union begins such talks, it has a lot of work to do. "We're going to have an assembly of the workers at Kaolin to elect representatives. There has been a lot of time since the strike and union election. There are a lot of new workers in the plant." Among the demands the union will put forward in negotiations are "more money per basket, paid holidays, health insurance, vacations, and fair treatment," he continued. "And other things, like the return of all those fired in this struggle.
"The first step," Tlaseca said, "is to get a union contract at Kaolin. Next, to extend the union to all the other packers. This is not easy and will take some time."
There have been a series of raids by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) both in the Kennett Square and Reading mushroom producing areas. Last June, a raid at the Blue Mountain Mushroom Company in Reading took place shortly after workers there won a union representation election by a vote of 80- 40 . "What happened," Tlaseca said, "is the INS came in and arrested the majority of workers and disorganized the struggle. They intervened to disorganize the workers, to support the owner."
Immigration cops have also raided plants in Chester County, where Kennett Square is located, since September. "In the last year, as Congress has boosted funding, the INS has increased [such] raids," the Philadelphia Inquirer reported November 20 .
Another big issue for the Kaolin Workers Union is housing. Pia recently purchased the Center Square Apartments, a run-down complex where many of the single men who make up the majority of the workforce at Kaolin live. "Now he's abusing these workers in their homes with the aim of getting more control over the people who work for him," Tlaseca said. "We're organizing to fight for their rights. It's linked to winning support for the union as it fights for a contract."
Pete Seidman is a member of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees in Philadelphia.