PCUN—Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (Northwest Treeplanters and Farmworkers United)—is Oregon’s union of farmworkers and nursery and reforestation workers, and Oregon’s largest Latino organization. PCUN’s fundamental goal is to empower farmworkers to understand and take action against systematic exploitation and all of its effects. To achieve this end, PCUN is involved in community and workplace organizing on many different levels.Founded in 1985 by 80 farmworkers, PCUN has since registered more than 5,000 members, 98 percent of whom are Mexican and Central American immigrants. PCUN represents their interests through a wide variety of organizing projects. PCUN’s organizing and outreach efforts encompass workers from the various areas of agriculture, including year-round employees, irrigators, seasonal workers, nursery and reforestation workers, and cannery workers.
PCUN is located in Woodburn, a town of just over 20,000 in the mid-Willamette Valley, the center of Oregon’s agricultural industry. Woodburn, which evolved during the 1960s into a service and cultural center for the Valley’s Mexican community, currently has a majority Latino population of just over 50 percent. It is the largest municipality in Oregon with a Latino majority or a majority of people of color.
PCUN’s Collective Bargaining Committee uses various direct organizing tactics, such as visiting fields, distributing leaflets, and holding house meetings and marches. PCUN also organizes through its Service Center for Farmworkers, which provides members in good standing with support services such as translation, referrals to lawyers for work-related incidents, and immigration services (usually petitioning for close family members to gain legal status).
PCUN also works collaboratively with a wide variety of other local organizations, including eight “sister organizations” brought together under the umbrella of “CAPACES.” CAPACES is a movement-building collaborative that fosters relationships among various groups, cross-training of workers, and a shared sense of vision and scale.
On a national level, PCUN collaborates with other organizations to promote legalization of undocumented workers and to ensure immigrants’ rights. It also entreats the Oregon Legislature to protect farmworkers’ rights through legal means. PCUN’s Workplace Health project has been a national and statewide collaboration around issues such as documenting pesticide exposure, controlling pesticide use, educating workers on safer practices, and combating workplace sexual harassment and sexual assault.
PCUN, in all its parts and programs, continues to be a growing and vital organization that actively seeks to enhance the lives and working conditions and protect the rights of Latinos involved in the agriculture of our state.