After lawsuits and years of negotiations, D'Arrigo and UFW sign a contract.

For a few years, a battle raged not just between management and farm workers at D'Arrigo Bros., but also between the workers. 

Since D’Arrigo workers first unionized in 1975, they managed to successfully negotiate just one contract. As negotiations for a new contract wrapped up in 2010, workers circulated a petition to decertify, or drop out of, the union. 


That petition—specifically, whether it was generated truly by the workers themselves, or upper management that strong-armed workers to sign it—became the subject of an investigation by the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, and the basis of dueling lawsuits by the United Farm Workers and D'Arrigo, against each other. 

That all came to a peaceable end on Thursday, June 28 when the parties gathered at D'Arrigo's Harris Road headquarters to sign a new contract. 

Under the agreement, some 1,550 D’Arrigo employees—about 1,200 in the Salinas Valley, plus another 350 in the Imperial Valley in Southern California—will get pay raises and a new family medical, dental and vision plan, 100-percent covered by the company. They'll also get six paid holidays per year. 

In a joint statement from the UFW and D'Arrigo Bros., they stress that the terms are meant to make the company competitive and a desirable workplace for an industry that for several years has been facing a precarious labor shortage.

Some regional companies have been investing in workforce housing, an incentive for local workers, and also because seasonal ag visas under the H-2A program require that employers provide housing. 

"Both parties are pledging to eliminate or minimize conflicts, grievances and strife, and open a new relationship where management and union work collaboratively to help each other more effectively compete," according to the statement released by UFW and D'Arrigo Bros. 

The deal, they add, helps mitigate federal lawmakers' failure to make progress when it comes to immigration policy, which would help ensure a stable workforce in agriculture. 

"It comes at a time when the industry is confronting labor shortages and both sides are frustrated by bickering and inaction over immigration reform by policymakers in the nation’s capital."