Andrew Grossman
Windmill Farms workers organized under the United Farm Workers (UFW) rallied in Seattle, WA on August 31st to demand the company recognize their union and engage in the collective bargaining process. The workers voted to form a union with UFW in 2022, while the Sunnyside, WA farms were owned by Ostrom Mushroom Farms. Windmill Farms has refused to recognize the union.
The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) does not cover farm workers, and so there is no force of law to bring down on the companies. When first conceived, the NLRA left out black sharecroppers from its protections as well as the mostly Hispanic and immigrant farm worker force of today, enshrining into law the lower stratification of farm workers, rural and often isolated, among the class as a whole.
Windmill Farms purchased the operation in February while the original company was facing a civil rights lawsuit from the Washington State Attorney’s Office for a variety of abuses including dangerously fast-paced work expectations, mass firings of women employees, and an instance of a manager assaulting a worker for going to management with safety concerns. Another grievance was the mass replacement of domestic workers with H-2A migrant workers—foreign nationals used to fill temporary agriculture jobs who have fewer rights and are paid less than domestic workers.
Since Windmill Farms bought the operation, the company has retaliated against union organizers. One organizer alleges she was re-hired by Windmill Farms as a picker when she worked for years before as a janitor under Ostrom, effectively ensuring she would fail to meet her picking quotas and face termination. Only 5 of the original 18 union committee members organizing the workers remain employed by Windmill Farms after a series of firings and resignations forced by harassment.
The UFW has called for a boycott of Windmill Farms mushrooms, mainly sold in Seattle-area grocery stores, and has been protesting outside the farm and holding rallies for months to attempt to pressure the company into recognizing the union.
The constraints of workers organizing within the existing order—relying on the weight of bourgeois law or the good graces of the employers—are on full display at Windmill Farms. While the workers are placing moral pressure through rallies that expose the working conditions facing one of the lowest strata of the US working class, their economic pressure has been limited to a boycott. There is yet to be a strike to demand recognition of the union or the re-hiring of the fired organizers.
