The road that led the mushroom workers to their April 18 rally outside of Windmill Farms was riddled with corporate switchbacks and legal potholes. In 2019, Ostrom Mushrooms closed a mushroom farm that it had run since the 1960s in Lacey, western Washington state, and laid off more than 200 workers. It moved its operations to Sunnyside, in central Washington. The firm received generous support from different levels of government to subsidize its move and construction of a new $60 million plant on 43 acres. The State of Washington included $1 million in its supplemental capital budget to offset construction costs for infrastructure at the Port of Sunnyside, which sold the property for the site to Ostrom. Ostrom also received low-interest construction loans and an energy efficiency rebate from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a local public electric utility. More

The post Mushroom Workers Want a Union appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.