On Top of Mt. Olive?

People at Duke have been talking about pickles for a long time. Activists have chanted, "Don't eat pickles," while carrying signs featuring large crossed-out cucumbers. But despite the hoopla about the Mt. Olive Pickle Company, pickles have never been the real issue. In back rooms where Duke University officials decide what brand of pickles to buy, the issues have always been unionization, worker rights and social responsibility.

A group of union organizers from Farm Labor Organizing Committee caravan from their offices, about an hour northeast to the farm-sponsored camps where migrant workers live while harvesting the cucumbers that will someday be Mt. Olive pickles. At the corner of route 581 and Stoney Hill Church in eastern North Carolina, everyone transfers to one car. "We'll probably get kicked out of the camps," Leticia Zavala, one of the organizers, says, "so it's best to leave extra cars behind." About five miles up the road, the car turns onto a dirt path without any markings or signs. An old farmhouse that looks abandoned sits about 500 yards off the road. It looks like it might be a silo or a utility shack. Simple plank boards serve as walls and the outside is covered with tin scraps, a kind of weatherproofing.

A questionable staircase leads to a second floor with a sharply pitched roof and cracked, splintering floorboards. A warped screen door covers the wooden doorframe. A small man from Guatemala named Domingo stands at the doorway. He is less than five feet tall with a worn face and a thin black mustache. For the next few months, this is his home. He says he arrived yesterday to claim a good bed in the camp. Domingo will wake up at 5 a.m. each day and work until 3 or 4 in the afternoon, bent over, picking cucumbers. He says he will take a half hour for lunch if they make him. He gets paid based on how many cucumbers he picks, so he would rather work through meals. When he comes home, he will shower in a room with four toilets and several shower spigots, but no doors or privacy dividers. He will eat dinner cafeteria-style with the rest of the workers in a kitchen with mouse droppings in the corner and then climb the rickety stairs to his room. He will lie in his "good bed," facing four other people in beds--and perhaps as many as seven others who will sleep on mattresses that are currently stacked in the corner. Still, Domingo says living conditions are better here than they are in Guatemala, and he is sending money home to his four children--usually $400 a week, and sometimes as much as $600.

The camp Domingo is living at is completely legal, but it is not up to normal middle-class American standards. The workers do not seem to mind. "They are used to living in bad conditions," says Bob Quinn, a field manager for Mt. Olive. "The culture they come from is not the cleanest environment." This attitude underlines the need for unions, FLOC says. There is no way to improve workers' conditions unless someone forces farmers directly. Mt. Olive President Bill Bryan acknowledges that merely following the law often does not create an environment in which most people would live.

Activists at the University were just completing a two-year-long campaign against sweatshops that yielded new standards for the production of merchandise bearing Duke's name. Students had forced the University to become a national leader against sweatshop conditions, and they had the support of President Nan Keohane. If a group of undergraduates could fix conditions thousands of miles away in Asian factories, they should be able to alter poor working environments just a hundred miles away in eastern North Carolina.

Students picked Mt. Olive pickles and farmworker conditions as their new cause. A year-and-a-half campus awareness campaign began in the spring of 1999. Speakers from FLOC and Mt. Olive came to speak. Students tabled on the Bryan Center walkway. Nearly a dozen letters, articles and columns detailed the rationale in the pages of The Chronicle. Activists alleged that farms where Mt. Olive purchased cucumbers operated with poor working conditions including 12-hour work days, no toilets in the fields where the crop was picked, and dirty drinking water. They alleged that the workers had no access to health care or education and that they were paid only $3.80 an hour, well below minimum wage. These activists argued that Mt. Olive could change these conditions and, until it took responsibility, consumers should boycott the company.

Finally, in October of 2001, students approached Director of Duke Stores Jim Wilkerson, who had been instrumental in the anti-sweatshop campaign, and asked him to support the boycott. Duke Dining Services had not served Mt. Olive products for several years, but Duke officials disagree about whether it was a coincidence or an intentional honoring of the boycott. So that Duke Stores and Dining Services would be consistent, Wilkerson decided to temporarily pull Mt. Olive products from the shelves of campus stores while the University evaluated the case against the company.

From that point on, Duke became a key player in the pickle controversy. Wilkerson says it was never an issue the University wanted. He points to Duke's involvement as an example of the power undergraduates can exert on campus. "It was something students brought to us," he says. "We didn't seek it out, but once it was brought to us," he pauses, "well, we weren't going to duck it either. That's not the way we do things."

Duke embarked upon a fact-finding mission to research the conditions on farms and determine the official University position. Wilkerson's office sent a questionnaire first to FLOC and then to Mt. Olive officials about farmworker conditions in the fields and at camps. Based on the answers to those questions and a series of meetings with students about the issues, Duke officials were convinced that farmworkers were being mistreated--living in what Wilkerson called "scummy" conditions and being denied full rights. The University decided in March of 2002 to honor the boycott. Keohane issued a public letter declaring Duke's support, and the University continued to withhold Mt. Olive products from its shelves. Students and FLOC organizers were ecstatic at the time.

"Leading up to March and with the initial decision, I felt Duke was very fair," says Matt Emmick, a former FLOC organizer who ran the North Carolina office at the time. "They did an investigation. We talked to them. They had several meetings with students that lasted until 2 in the morning." Duke, a major university with a respected national reputation had given credence to FLOC's claims. It was the first non-religious group to support the boycott. It was also the first corporate customer to withdraw its business. The symbolic significance of Duke's support far overshadowed the $3,000 worth of Duke business Mt. Olive would lose annually.

Mt. Olive officials reacted immediately to Duke's announcement. They arranged a series of meetings with Wilkerson and Keohane to present their case. Throughout the spring and the summer, representatives from Duke and Mt. Olive met in person a half dozen times and corresponded via e-mail and telephone more frequently than that.

When students came back to school the following fall, Keohane met with them and announced a new partnership between the University and the company aimed at improving conditions for migrant farmworkers. Mt. Olive now requires its cucumber suppliers to sign statements indicating they are in compliance with all laws and will notify Mt. Olive if they are either cited or under investigation regarding non-compliance. Duke can see the compliance statements or visit Mt. Olive supplier farms with 24 hours' notice. Duke and Mt. Olive agreed to work together with the government for better enforcement and stricter laws governing living and working conditions on farms, which are typically staffed by migrant workers from Mexico and South America, many of whom are here illegally. Keohane also rescinded the boycott, validating Mt. Olive's claims of fair treatment.

Immediately, Duke came under fire from groups suggesting the University had been bought off by Mt. Olive--an allegation both parties say is ridiculous. Further criticism has claimed that the new agreement does nothing for farmworkers and merely removes the power from the workers themselves. "Rich, white men in suits and ties had meetings in Durham to talk about farmworkers," says Emmick. "Nowhere in that process that led to Duke's change in farmworkers' positions did workers themselves speak."

The people at FLOC see themselves as the voice of the farmworkers. Their office is a small, dusty room in the back of a bodega that reads La Palmata on the outside. Inside, the store sells everything from food to videos. It is the only Spanish-speaking business for miles, and serves as a haven for much of the local farmworker community. There is no indication of FLOC's presence on the outside or within the store, but beyond the second doorway and through the gameroom where a half dozen people are playing pool, their message is ubiquitous. Flyers, newspapers and pamphlets line tables and racks outside the makeshift wall that partitions the office from the room. The office itself is blanketed with posters of Cesar Chavez, the champion of farmworkers, and old FLOC posters from their 1982 boycott of Campbell's soup in Ohio--the model for the Mt. Olive campaign.

Zavala, who is a small Mexican woman in her twenties, sits at a desk in the corner. She used to be a migrant worker herself, but now she works at FLOC. She does not spend much time at the office. Every day, she's in the fields and at the migrant camps, talking to workers, asking about their lives and making sure they know their rights. She believes that the only way these workers will ever be totally honest about conditions is if they are under a union contract. "Right now, the intimidation is so great that the workers are scared" to come forward with problems, she says. "They are afraid of losing their jobs."

Much of FLOC's clientele is poor and in the United States illegally. Migrants travel from Mexico to Florida looking for work, then move across the country with the harvest season. In most areas, they live in barracks supplied by farmers. The best dwellings look like boy scout camps with whitewashed walls and clean-swept floors, communal bathrooms and showers that are cleaned several times a week. The average ones resemble abandoned houses with a few beds lining the walls. The worst are unregistered with the state, and Zavala says they are little more than shacks, often without running water or electricity. Few of the workers speak English, and only a small number read Spanish, so the posters explaining minimum farmworker wage and standard workers' rights that are, by law, displayed at every farm are of little use. FLOC's job is to explain to the workers what they should demand from farmers, and to document any problems.

The harvest season is late this year because of heavy rains and cooler weather, but even in early June, FLOC workers have filled several notebooks with carefully documented complaints. Some of the grievances are standard for the job. Picking produce is not considered desirable work by many. "It's always going to be filthy and hot and nasty in June in North Carolina, especially in the middle of a cucumber field," says Lynn Williams, community relations representative at Mt. Olive. But some of the complaints are legitimate. FLOC documents late payments to workers, a lack of toilets in the fields, inadequate drinking water supply and substandard housing.

To combat all these problems, FLOC claims the workers need to unionize because the government agencies tasked with enforcing labor laws are too understaffed and poorly funded to be effective. For the past six years, organizers have approached farmers, producers and workers trying to get them all to sit down together and negotiate a contract that would allow workers to come forward without fear of being sent away or fired. "If there were contracts," says Blake Pendergrass, FLOC coordinator for North Carolina, "there would be a grievance procedure, and the contract would be law and there couldn't be retaliation." His concern is for all farmworkers, but because of the way North Carolina's agricultural industry works, this current campaign focuses on cucumber farms. Pendergrass says it is the best starting point to unionize all workers and improve conditions.

Prior to FLOC's calling the boycott of Mt. Olive, it suggested to cucumber purchasers a contract that would raise the price of cucumbers 5 percent. That increase would then be divided: Farmers would make more money, workers would earn more and someone would ensure that FLOC received a percentage of workers' salary for union dues. The pickle companies would have to reduce profits or pass along the cost to the consumer.

The proposal was rejected. Farmers did not see how FLOC's plan would work. "They don't have any foundation of anything," says Bruce Howell, a farmer who supplies cucumbers to Mt. Olive. "I'm talking about the first time they approached. They told me they were going to get me more money for my crop. I asked them how. They couldn't tell me." FLOC representatives are still not able to explain the financial workings of the plan any more clearly. Mt. Olive claimed the workers were not its employees, and therefore it had no jurisdiction to participate in the contract discussions. "We don't believe it's appropriate to tell another employer that they need to sign a union contract," says Williams. So FLOC called a boycott against Mt. Olive until it decides to participate in a process to establish collective bargaining for workers.

FLOC organizers have conceded on several occasions that farms selling to Mt. Olive generally have adequate conditions that are at least in line with the law. And the company has a well-respected name for community involvement and its relationship with its factory workers. But as the only North Carolina-based processor, it has the most stake in North Carolina conditions.

"We targeted Mt. Olive, I guess, because it was the most anti-union," says Zavala. "The thing is, we have to start somewhere. Everybody's like, 'Oh, poor Mt. Olive,' but they can do so much more. They're making a profit off of these workers. Why don't they ask the workers if they're being paid minimum wage? Why don't they do what we do if they're so concerned?"

Mt. Olive says that in addition to the jurisdictional concerns, it does not have the influence to force farms to unionize. The most it can do is work with farmers who have fair labor practices--something it has done for years. "We don't want to be the police," says Quinn, "but we do choose or not choose to do business." Mt. Olive says before Duke's involvement, its practices with workers were nearly identical to what they are now.

"Even before FLOC ever came to North Carolina we were targeting the kinds of growers who, as best as they can, guarantee a crop every year," says Bryan. "Those are the same kinds of growers who practice good labor, and good labor seeks them out."

Mt. Olive has always cared about farmworkers, Bryan says. The difficulty is discovering any legal violations. FLOC will not release its complaint records to Mt. Olive because it fears the workers who have come forward would be blacklisted. FLOC says in the past Mt. Olive's only actions have been to terminate relations with improperly run farms. Bryan says their hands are tied unless they know specifics about farm violations. "We've asked [FLOC] time and time again: If you've got a bad situation on the farm, if they would let us know. And the first thing we're going to do is validate, find out if it's really a problem. If it is, we're going to educate the grower," says Bryan. "And we're going to try to get him back into compliance. If he refuses to follow our lead, we'll find someone else to replace him. We're not just going to go off, and cut him away and leave him to dry on the vine."

The agreement between Duke and Mt. Olive aims at making farmers aware of the laws. It also includes a commitment to pass better laws governing worker conditions. Currently, the partnership is advocating a bill--likely to pass the state legislature during the next short session--that requires all farmers to carry workers' compensation insurance. (Right now small farmers are exempt.) FLOC organizers say following the law is not enough, even if the laws are stricter. They do not trust the farmers to self-monitor, and they say Duke's decision to lift the boycott was premature. "From the time they went into the agreement until now, there haven't been any workers out there so you can't really say that conditions are better," says Zavala. "Not until they get here."

FLOC organizers accuse Duke of bowing to corporate pressure when it rescinded the boycott. "Probably Duke's real interests are in going back and not being controversial and in pleasing people that have a lot of sway in the University," Pendergrass hesitates but continues. "Then again, they did endorse the boycott in the first place so I don't know." He is at a bit of a loss to explain Duke's position. Pendergrass believes so deeply that the boycott and unionization is the best option for farmworkers that he cannot understand why anyone who actually cares about workers' welfare would disagree with him.

But there are two places where FLOC's reasoning stumbles. The first is that a boycott will aid the formation of a union. The second is that collective bargaining is crucial to solve or even alleviate poor working conditions on farms. Mt. Olive has focused its objections on the first point; Duke officials seem to be concentrating on the second.

Historically, Duke has not been particularly union-friendly. Many on-campus outfits, such as nurses in the health center, are not unionized despite occasional stirrings of organization. Senior vice president for public affairs and government relations at Duke John Burness says these areas have "chosen not to be unionized," but allegations that the University applies anti-union pressure are common. In this case, Duke has agreed with FLOC that Mt. Olive is both responsible for and in a position to better conditions on North Carolina farms. Burness says when Keohane endorsed the boycott in March 2002, she did so to affirm Mt. Olive's responsibility. "At the time she made the final decision that she would support the boycott, I don't think she was making a case for unionization," he says. "She was making a case for a specific boycott... We wanted to see Mt. Olive take some steps."

Duke cut a new path. Keohane's statement announcing the boycott reads, "This support of the boycott will remain in place until the company demonstrates its support for good working conditions." The statement does suggest that unionization may help improve worker conditions, but it explicitly reads "we are not, however, requiring this particular action as a condition of reviewing the boycott, any more than we require our contractors overseas to work only with unionized employees." Duke created a new set of demands for Mt. Olive; they used FLOC's methods but to different ends.

The statement also set out a course for Mt. Olive to improve worker conditions-- one parallel to the process Duke recently set in place for its overseas contractors. No less than four times in her statement does Keohane compare Mt. Olive's position with farmworkers to Duke's with sweatshops. The justification for holding Mt. Olive responsible is taken directly from the position on sweatshops: a company cannot absolve itself from responsibility for the conditions under which its products are produced at contracted or sub-contracted venues.

The compliance statements are based on the sweatshop agreements too. Duke enlisted Jane Pleasants, assistant vice president of procurement, to help "transfer the sweatshop model" to the farms, she says. She has been involved in the process as Duke has helped educate cucumber growers and Mt. Olive about how to self-regulate their industry. She says Duke is there to ensure the implementation of the program and to help keep Mt. Olive on track.

Despite early protests from Mt. Olive that it did not have the influence to enforce unionization or to better farmworker conditions, officials have worked with Duke since the University declared the company was sufficiently powerful to wield some influence. Their cooperation has helped Mt. Olive dodge a public relations bullet. Having Duke's support has helped validate its position. "The Mt. Olive Pickle Company is using Duke to show that they're a good company," says Nick Wood, FLOC's boycott coordinator. "They use Duke University as a way to defend themselves. They're smart at Mt. Olive. They know what they're doing and they're doing it intentionally. Soon Duke will realize they're getting played, and hopefully they won't like it."

Duke says it is involved because it is morally obligated to act when possible. "It's all well and good to say, if they could get collective bargaining that would really give them the power to do what is needed, and I believe there is some validity to that," says Burness. "At the same time, that could take ten or twelve years. It could take twenty years. In the interim, do we do nothing except argue for unionization? I think we looked at it as, 'Okay, what can we do in the interim?' Now a lot of folks say, 'There's nothing we can do. You might solve an individual area but that isn't going to solve the broader issue of how these folks are treated.' But if in fact we can make a difference for a hundred and fifty or two hundred people as a result of what we do, that's a difference for those 200 people. And I feel some sense of responsibility at least."

Regardless of its efforts to help workers, Duke's involvement has hindered the unionization effort. It may be one of the nuanced differences between the anti-sweatshop activism and this that has been lost by largely treating them the same way, and why the University's involvement with farmworkers has not yet been greeted with open arms by activist groups. Duke is, however, beginning to address the problems that everyone agrees plague migrant workers. It is yet to be decided whether the University's efforts will be successful or if they will be enough.