TACOMA — Workers from the Yakima Valley crossed the Cascade Mountains this week to rally support for a boycott against a mushroom company that sells products in Western Washington grocery stores.
Several dozen workers and labor movement allies waved signs and shouted slogans Monday outside a Safeway in Tacoma’s North End, urging shoppers to avoid mushrooms grown by Windmill Farms in Sunnyside, Yakima County.
The United Farm Workers labor union launched the campaign against Windmill in December to protest practices and conditions at the Canadian company’s Sunnyside mushroom farm, where some workers have been pushing for union recognition. It’s the UFW’s first boycott in 20 years, according to Antonio De Loera-Brust, a spokesperson for the union.
Monday’s rally took place on Cesar Chavez Day, which honors the late labor and civil rights activist who founded the UFW.
Windmill didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment Monday and couldn’t be reached by phone. Safeway didn’t immediately comment.
At the Tacoma rally, Crisanto Serrano said he used to work for Windmill in Sunnyside and was let go after participating in union organizing. The mushroom farm employs about 150 workers, according to the UFW.
“We want to make sure that everybody still at the company gets what they need,” Serrano said in Spanish before leading the crowd in the “Sí se puede” (“Yes we can”) chant popularized decades ago by the UFW.
Washington law protects farmworkers from retaliation for union organizing. But the state doesn’t require employers to recognize and bargain with their unions, and farmworkers are excluded from the National Labor Relations Act.
Some workers at the Sunnyside farm began organizing publicly in 2022 under a prior owner, Ostrom Mushroom Farms. They complained about excessive stress, brutal workloads, gender discrimination and other problems.
Then-Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson subsequently sued Ostrom, accusing the company of discrimination for wrongly replacing U.S.-based workers with temporary foreign workers and replacing women with men. Ferguson also accused Ostrom of retaliating against pro-union workers.
The company denied the allegations but settled the case for $3.4 million. Ostrom also was fined by the U.S. Department of Labor for mistreating its temporary foreign workers. It sold the Sunnyside farm to Windmill in 2023.
Most of the Yakima Valley workers at Monday’s rally no longer work for Windmill. But they said problems at the farm have continued under the new owner, and a UFW lawsuit against the company has yet to yield results.
That’s why the union is now asking grocery shoppers to get involved.
“We want to bring Windmill to the table” by putting pressure on the company’s bottom line, said Lionor Galindo, the UFW’s political coordinator.
The union wants shoppers to stop buying Windmill mushrooms at Safeway supermarkets and other grocery stores. Some of them are labeled with the Windmill brand, while others are sold under generic store brands.
Windmill is the Pacific Northwest’s regional supplier of mushrooms, and shoppers can assume that store-brand mushrooms with labels that mention Sunnyside are Windmill mushrooms, according to the UFW.
Some labels don’t disclose a specific origin at all, leaving shoppers in doubt. The UFW encountered the same situation during its original boycott campaign in the 1960s against certain table-grape growers in California, De Loera-Brust said. In that case, supporters stopped buying grapes, period.
“When in doubt, don’t buy the mushrooms,” the UFW spokesperson said.
Local workers from several other unions participated in the Tacoma rally, including longshore workers, laborers and public school teachers.
Tacoma City Councilmember Olgy Diaz also joined, saying she wants busy shoppers to stop and think about the workers across the mountains.
“People need to know that someone is in the dirt,” growing all the vegetables and processing all the meat, Diaz said. “Their lives also matter.”
