After almost nine years of struggle, the union leadership met on January 3 at the offices of the Farmworker Support Committee to sign the agreement, which covers 350 workers at Kaolin Farms in Chester County. Union president Salvador López said the new contract improves conditions and addresses the need for respect from supervisors.

A decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court last July upholding the right of mushroom workers to organize under the state Labor Relations Act set back the company's attempts to deny union recognition to the workers. In that suit, mushroom producer Vlasic Farms Inc., which had fired all their workers to break the union, had argued that mushroom workers were not covered by the state labor laws because mushroom picking is an agricultural activity.

The contract, which runs until August 2004, covers benefits, a wage increase, vacation pay, and health and safety issues. It includes a grievance and arbitration process with procedures for mandatory binding arbitration, and protection from layoffs out of seniority. It calls for the company to increase payment for 10 pounds of mushrooms picked to $1.46 by 2004. López said that a worker can pick six 10-pound baskets per hour.

There are a total of 5,000 mushroom workers in the counties of Berks, Chester, and Lancaster, making up about 40 percent of mushroom production in the United States. Almost all are immigrants from Mexico and the majority are not represented by a union.

In 1993 mushroom workers at Kaolin struck for five weeks and voted to have a union. Luis Tlaseca, former president of the union, along with 32 other unionists, was fired during the strike and blacklisted in the area. After a campaign against the company the state labor board ruled in 2000 that Tlaseca be reinstated. Owner Michael Pia relentlessly appealed to the courts to oppose union organizing until December 1998 when the state Supreme Court upheld the right of agricultural workers to a union and ordered Pia to start negotiations.

Pia, however, kept stalling the negotiations in hopes of demoralizing the workers, Tlaseca said in an earlier interview. The owner also expressed his contempt for older workers. "He would tell them, 'you are not good any more, get out of here,'" Tlaseca said.

"This is a good start," said López. "After the big strike in April 1993 mushroom workers saw improvements in the working conditions, such as accessible restrooms, a place to eat your food as opposed to the hallways, and there is a big bottle for drinking water installed now. But there were still more things to deal with such as paid vacations, fair treatment to everybody without favoritism, salaries, which this contract allows us to do now and in the future for others too."  
 
 
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