On Valentine’s Day 2023, over 100 workers at an indoor mushroom growing operation in Sunnyside, Washington, were summoned to a parking lot outside the plant office. Ostrom Mushroom Farms had been sold to Greenwood Mushrooms, a plant manager told them, and effective immediately they were all fired. Then each employee was handed an envelope containing a new employment agreement — spelling out lower wages, different positions than they previously held, and a mandatory arbitration agreement. Workers were told they had to sign the documents immediately if they wanted to keep working. It was winter, when job opportunities were scarce for agricultural workers in the Yakima Valley. They had little choice but to sign.
Three years later, that calculated ruthlessness is about to get close scrutiny by the Washington Supreme Court in a lawsuit filed by the United Farm Workers (UFW) union.
Soon after Ostrom opened its state-of-the art mushroom grow plant in 2019, workers say high production quotas created dangerous working conditions. Workers began organizing and contacted UFW in 2021, and in 2022, they asked Ostrom to recognize their union. The company refused. The following year workers and the UFW filed a lawsuit against Ostrom and its new owner: Greenwood Mushroom, which itself is owned by Instar Asset Management, a private equity firm based in Toronto, Canada.
Among other things, the lawsuit alleged that the company had refused to let workers use legally mandated sick leave and had fired pro-union workers — using failure to meet unreasonable mushroom-picking quotas as a pretext.
The trouble was, on pain of losing their jobs, workers had signed those mandatory arbitration agreements, waiving their right to sue and instead agreeing to adjudicate disputes out of court through a private arbitrator. It’s a process that workers’ rights advocates say is frequently biased against workers. Citing the signed arbitration agreements, a Yakima County Superior Court judge ordered workers to handle their claims in arbitration. Attorneys representing the workers and UFW appealed to the Washington Supreme Court, arguing that the workers shouldn’t have to use arbitration because the conditions under which they agreed to it were unconscionable. In December, the Washington Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
“Companies should not have so much power that they can just force workers into arbitration agreements and deprive them of their jury trial rights,” said Ann Gong, an attorney representing the plaintiffs.
A court date hasn’t been set yet.
The court’s ruling in this case could have larger ramifications for other instances where workers are forced to sign arbitration agreements.
