In June 2009, four former employees of the Ruby Ridge Dairy near Pasco, Wash., sued, claiming owners Dick and Ruby Bengen did not provide meal breaks or drinkable water, threatened them and fired them for refusing to disown the union.
The Bengens’ attorney at the time called the claims “patently false.” They were later joined in the suit by other employees.
“There’s a moral obligation that you have to fight evil — wrong is wrong,” Dick Bengen, owner of the dairy, told the Capital Press on May 8. “That was the basis of continuing this.”
The remaining plaintiffs, the Bengens and the dairy and the UFW agreed to a “walk-away agreement,” effective May 3, said Dan Barnhart, the attorney representing the Bengens and the dairy.
“Everybody released all the claims they had against each other and walked away,” Barnhart said. “Nobody had to pay any money of any kind for damages, attorney fees or costs or anything. They all walked away from each other.”
The dairy had previously offered a similar settlement, Barnhart said.
The trial was scheduled to start May 20 in Pasco. Barnhart said the union’s attorney called and offered the walk-away settlement.
“Their proposal was that it would be confidential; we agreed to settle a walk-away on the condition that it not be confidential,” Barnhart said.
The Bengens agreed to the settlement because “they are in the business of running a dairy, not litigating claims,” Barnhart said. “They did not file this lawsuit, this lawsuit was brought to their door 10 years ago. They felt the need to defend themselves and they did that.”
“We made them an offer a long, long, long, long time ago,” Bengen said. “And then we just said, ‘OK, it’s up to them now to walk away, not us.’ We’d spent all the money for trial prep, we’re ready to go. My assumption is they wouldn’t have done this if they didn’t know they were in trouble.”
The union said the workers — Margarito Saucedo Martinez, Miguel Espiritu, Elvis Flamenco, Miguel Cuevas, Rafael Munez, Armando Herrera, Saul Solorio, Cirilo Ramirez, Teresita Anguiano, Manuel Reynaga, Jesus Perez and Gildardo Perez — will receive back pay that they contend they lost from not receiving their rest and meal periods, according to the UFW website. The unpaid wages will be paid by an anonymous supporter, according to the UFW.
The anonymous supporter “was so outraged that Ruby Ridge (would) compel workers to look at having to go to court for upwards of six weeks, lose employment and was very concerned about the message this was sending to other dairy workers,” Erik Nicholson, UFW national vice president in Tacoma, Wash., told the Capital Press.
The union also says the dairy’s 2011 lawsuit against the UFW and the workers was filed in retaliation for workers seeking to recover their wages.
Nicholson said it’s a satisfactory outcome.
“The workers have been made whole, the litigation is done and we can now focus on the task at hand — making sure workers are not subjected to retaliation, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, a multitude of other challenges they report facing being employed on these dairies,” he said.
Bengen said the settlement was the outcome the dairy was hoping for.
“They wanted a union on this dairy — there is no union on this dairy,” he said.
Bengen declined to provide an estimated cost of the lawsuit, but said it has been “extremely expensive.”
During the course of the lawsuit, production suffered and cows were lost and injured due to sabotage and neglect due to employee misconduct, Bengen said.
Bengen said they felt they had a trusting relationship with employees before the lawsuit. It’s taken a long time to restore that trust, he said.
“We’re pretty much back to there again, but I don’t know if we’ll ever be as trusting as we were,” he said. “Employees are the backbone of your operation, at least the way we operate. It’s been tough getting that back in our minds and hearts. … It’ll never be the same again, but it’s an acceptable state.”
The dairy has about 45 employees and 4,300 to 4,400 cows.
“This didn’t affect just me, Ruby and our family,” Bengen said. “It also affected a lot of employees who were also hurt by the situation.”