wfn.org | WMD panel approves grant to union-organizing group

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Note #6554 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

7-June-2001
01198

WMD panel approves grant to union-organizing group

Congregation and presbytery defend pickle company targeted by boycott

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE - A Hunger Program grant to a union-organizing campaign in North
Carolina was approved on June 6 over the protests of a congregation that
counts among its members the president emeritus of the pickle factory the
farm workers are boycotting.

The Presbytery of New Hope - which includes both the Mount Olive Pickle
Company and the Mount Olive Presbyterian Church - appealed the decision of
the Worldwide Ministries Division (WMD) Committee, which alone has authority
to approve the grant or not.

An evening hearing was held shortly before a meeting of the full General
Assembly Council (GAC) of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

The Toledo-based Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) is boycotting the
Mount Olive Pickle Company, the largest pickle producer in the Southeast, in
an effort to get the company to pressure cucumber growers to improve
conditions for farm workers.

A pastoral letter explaining the decision is to be sent to the Presbytery of
New Hope.

The secret-ballot vote authorizing the Hunger Program to release the grant
was 8 to 5.

The pickle company, which supports more than 500 rural families, does not
employ farm workers directly. That is one reason it resents being singled
out for a boycott. Its community relations director, Lynn Hoffman, an elder
at Mount Olive Presbyterian who also represented New Hope Presbytery during
the hearing, told the committee: "The division between us is not between
those who support farm workers and those who do not. It is the boycott we
object to, not attempts to change the lives of farm workers in North
Carolina."

Hoffman's opinion is one among many in the debate. Another coalition of
Presbyterians see's FLOC's organizing as an effort to improve farm workers'
sub-standard living conditions.

That the presbytery is of two minds is reflected in its voting record. Two
presbytery committees voted to endorse the Hunger Program grant over a
period of two years, and appealed the grant only when the Hunger Program's
Advisory Committee authorized its release after a series of delays in the
presbytery process.

Hurricane Floyd bashed the presbytery in the meantime, and for a while,
Hoffman said, "the world stopped" and very little outside of recovery work
was done.

The Rev. Gary Cook, the Hunger Program's director, told the division
committee that endorsing the grant is not tantamount to endorsing the
boycott. He said the boycott is only one tactic used by FLOC to organize,
and is not grounds enough to warrant a denial of the grant.

"You'll be tempted to find the middle ground ... to look for service
programs, to mediate," Cook told the committee.

He said the farm workers weren't asking the PC(USA) for help, but only to be
allowed to organize to help themselves.

"Organizing is about power," he said. "And these people are in a system that
brought them there to be powerless and to be kept powerless." He argued that
the company is in the middle of the struggle because it is the only entity
with enough clout to get farmers, distributors, processors and workers to
sit at one table.

Without that clout, he said, it is impossible to get the loose
conglomeration of growers to take part in negotiations.

The pickle company says it buys 100 million pounds of cucumbers and peppers
a year, about 35 million pounds from independent growers in North Carolina.

Hoffmann said the cucumber crop is a minor harvest for growers, taking only
three weeks of work - which may not be "incentive" enough to draw the
growers to the table.  She said the company wants to "remain neutral" in
dealings between growers and workers.

The farm workers' struggle hasn't gone unnoticed in the national media.

According to a January article in The Christian Century, studies conducted
by the Agricultural Missions Office of the National Council of Churches, the
National Farm Worker Ministry and Human Rights Watch have documented
mistreatment, intimidation and wage manipulation in the growers' dealings
with the estimated 100,000 migrant workers brought to North Carolina each
year to pick cucumbers, watermelons, sweet potatoes and tobacco on 22,000
farms.

The Rev. Ray Anglin, of Fort Lauderdale, FL, a WMD committee member, spoke
in support of the Hunger Progam's decision to give FLOC the grant. "I
believe we've done the just thing … to improve the wages and the working
conditions of farm workers," he said. "In the meantime, what is happening?

"They have the right organize. It is the right and positive thing to do. Is
this the Christian thing? Are we afraid to act? I am not afraid to act."

What gripes the Mount Olive company, however, according to Hoffman, is the
way it has been depicted in the dispute. She insisted that the pickle
producer is civic-minded and has turned down offers to use overseas packers
and has provided steady, year-round work for its employees.

Hoffman said that a recent study revealed that only one of the company's
growers did not provide state-registered housing for migrant workers. The
company's literature states that the company has said "time and time again"
that it is its prepared to meet with other agri-business leaders as well as
with farmers, state officials, farm workers and advocates, "to plan work
toward ways and means of alleviating or remedying poor conditions."

Hoffman said that Mount Olive's president emeritus is John Walker, a
longtime Presbyterian whose father-in-law, Darby Fulton, was a Presbyterian
missionary in Japan and moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the United
States' General Assembly in 1948.

"We just can't see the church funding something that attacks as this
(boycott) does, (especially) given this company's reputation," Hoffman told
Presbyterian News Service. He said FLOC has unfairly characterized the
company and has made unsubstantiated charges.

"There was no invitation to help," she said. "It was: 'Do this or you will
be targeted with a boycott.' And like most Southerners, we don't cotton to
that kind of language."

Hoffman said the company, the presbytery, the synod and the Mount Olive
church have committed $11,000 to improve toilet facilities for farm workers
in the fields and to support a mobile health clinic in the camps -
ministries that would probably not have been undertaken, she acknowledged,
without the boycott and debate.

The congregation wanted the GAC to hold the grant back until FLOC lifted its
boycott, which Hoffman said has affected the company's profits only in
northwestern Ohio, where Kroger supermarkets have stopped stocking Mount
Olive pickles.

The committee considered a suggestion to hold up the grant but issue a
statement urging Presbyterians to support farm workers and welcoming FLOC's
training arm, the Farm Labor Research Committee, to reapply later.

Former Moderator Marj Carpenter, of Big Spring, TX, favored that suggestion
and opposed the release of the grant. "I'm against it," she said. "I much
preferred the (other) option, where they were asked to re-apply. I take very
seriously honoring our presbyteries. And I think we need to honor their
vote."

Jerome Seely, a FLOC representative, told the committee that other church
groups, including the Jewish Fund for Justice and the Catholic Campaign for
Human Development, have funded training activities without specifically
endorsing the boycott.

The pastoral letter being sent to the presbytery says the committee's
decision will "bring joy to some and disappointment to others," and goes on:

"We call upon all parties who are involved and currently in conflict over
this complicated issue to continue to seek truth in love and mutual respect.
Let no faction claim victory. Let no faction feel defeated. Rather let all
know and believe that their honest and sincere statement of conviction has
and will contribute ultimately to fulfillment of God's purpose."

Similar sentiments were addressed to the union, the company and the
presbytery by committee member Cliff Sherrod, of Lubbock, TX, during a
late-night meeting. "We hope the company continues its efforts to assist
farm workers," he said. "We hope that becomes a reality. We hope FLOC will
treat this decision in the spirit it was intended, and not twist it to
whatever your agenda might be.
We are trying to act in good faith. We'd like to have the same response from
the parties involved."

Only one other Hunger Program grant has ever been appealed. It also was a
grant to FLOC approved in the early 1980s and appealed by the Maumee Valley
Presbytery. At that time, FLOC was boycotting the Campbell Soup Company.

In 1990 the presbytery supported a second grant, and later also gave its
peacemaking grant to representatives of FLOC, Campbell and the Campbell
Growers' Association - which reached a three-way settlement that increased
prices, growers' income and workers' wages.

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