Behind a struggle for justice:
Thoughts on Passion and Pickles
by Carl Mazza

Where is the Justice? Here is the justice, it is Just Us! We have to do the work. We're not going to lie down and die.
- Habeebah Ali

The Mt. Olive Pickle Company: To boycott or not to boycott? We debated this question at the Feb. 5 meeting of New Castle Presbytery. I was amazed by the discussion's level of fervor, though not surprised by the wide difference of opinion.

The company made a strong presentation to Presbytery. They are in business, and want to be perceived as humane good neighbors. They expressed concern for the farm workers, but denied there was anything they could do, as they employed none directly. Yet, there is no doubt that they are the single dominant force in the cucumber growing region in North Carolina, as the largest pickle company in the Southeast and second largest in the country. How could they not be a part of any discussion on the welfare of those, on whose hard labor they so obviously depend and from which they so greatly benefit?

Above all, the Mt. Olive Pickle Co. does not want to recognize the farm worker's Union. Their plant is not unionized, and they live and breathe in an anti-union environment in the rural South. But the farm workers are not powerless in this struggle to be heard. "How is it," I thought as I came to know more about this struggle, "that the corporate composure of this great Company is so rocked by the challenge and ardor of a little boy?"

I was privileged to have the chance to spend time talking with Baldemar Velasquez. We spent most of an evening together when he came to Wilmington to take part in the presentation before Presbytery.

The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) was founded by Baldemar over thirty years ago to organize migrant workers nationally for better life and working conditions. In the 1980's FLOC organized a successful boycott against the Campbell Soup Company, and won substantial benefits for his people in Ohio. A similar effort is now being mounted on behalf of farm workers in North Carolina.

FLOC has called for a boycott of Mt. Olive Pickle Company products until the Company recognizes the Union and participates in the process to negotiate better wages for the workers. No specific wage amount or benefit is in question; all that the Union requires is that the Mt. Olive Pickle Company recognize the validity of the workers' struggle, and open the door for discussions which may lead to the justice of a better life for them.

As in any negotiation, the issues are more complex. Not the least of which is that Mt. Olive Pickle Company does not employ any migrant workers directly, but rather sets the rates and influences the policies of the cucumber growers -- who are the direct employers. FLOC argues that without the participation of the single major player, for whom the pickles are grown and harvested, there is no possibility of a successful contract to be negotiated among scores of growers who are, after all, completely dependent on their own agreements with the Company.

As I came to know Baldemar a Meeting Ground General Council has voted to endorse and support the Farm Labor Organizing Committee's call for a boycott of Mt. Olive Pickle Company products.little better on a cold, snowy night in Philadelphia - I began to sense the strong personal motivation which is behind his intense struggle for farm workers' justice.
He is of Mexican ancestry. His family has labored for generations in this occupation, and he himself has worked in the fields since he was old enough to remember. As one speaks to the man, hair turning gray and possessed of mature insight of long life and struggle, one quickly sees the energy of a child in his eyes.

It is an 8 year-old boy working hard in a dusty field. He looks around, shakes away the sweat and insects which have covered his head and sees the ones he loves all around him. Hard work is their life. Yet, in place of reward for this he sees degradation: filthy housing, polluted drinking water, meager diet. The children have no promise of a better future, and basic health-care is an absurd dream. Their work is devalued, their skin color is like a curse. Only one question comes into his mind -- "why?" You can feel his young spirit forming, questioning, growing angry, demanding answers of a world which seems to care little, and is all too willing to exploit.

So the child Baldemar, now a veteran of decades of struggle, continually frustrates and angers his opponents, because his passion
runs so deep. Long ago, as he says, he learned to channel the overwhelming disappointment and anger into a determination for what he calls "reconciliation." His strong personal faith requires this, and it is reminiscent of the same spirit that motivated Gandhi, Martin Luther King , Jr, Dorothy Day, and Cesar Chavez. They too refused to bow to negative antagonism, and determined to make the struggle one which elevates the spirit of all humankind.

It is easy to see a little boy named Baldemar being prepared by the Great Spirit for this very purpose in the tough fields of the Southwest so many years ago. Such power there is in a guileless soul. Children are, after all, the lambs of God. And the very power of our creator is the power of a lamb.

New Castle Presbytery meets on April 1 to vote on the Boycott. In preparation, the churches are studying the question Whatever happens, I cannot forget that the power which brought this issue to us is that great authority, resident in the soul of a child. We people of faith ignore this voice at our peril. We may not agree with what it asks, but we lose our own authority if we fail to hear what it is crying to say.

For more information:

Farm Labor Organizing Committee
1221 Broadway Street
Toledo, Ohio 43609
(419) 243-3456
Web site:
http://www.iupui.edu/~floc/nc.htm

Mt. Olive Pickle Company
PO Box 609
Mt. Olive, NC 28365
1-800-672-5041 phone
1-919-658-6296 fax
Web site:
http://www.mtolivepickles.com