Creamery fallout hits Hispanic community

Fewer milkers asked to work harder until rough times pass

Originally published in the "3-26-09" issue.



Ferndale Dairy Manager Jose “Pancho” Alvarado, his wife Teresa, and three-month-old daughter, Valerie..

Jose Alvarado is not sleeping much these days.

To listen to Alvarado, 41, a Ferndale dairy manager talk about his job — and his worries — during a lunch break in his Sage Road living room is to understand just how deep the past month's Humboldt Creamery trouble runs.

He is one of an estimated 204 dairy employees in Humboldt County, according to the state government's labor market information division. In Ferndale they are yet another group left reeling by last month's creamery news.

Alvarado was the one to tell six hired men he supervised to look for other work after creamery members — including Alexandre Acres, his employer — deferred a $2 million payment March 1 following a fraud investigation triggered by the sudden resignation of the creamery's CEO.

Couple that with a new baby in the house — wife Teresa gave birth to Valerie, their fourth child, on New Year's Eve — and he is a little more tired than his 60- plus hour weeks usually leave him.

Ask Alvarado — called Pancho by most — whether he can remember folks being more worried in his 19 years at this dairy and his typically smiling eyes will grow serious.

"No," he'll tell you with a sigh. "Never."

Not every dairy has laid off workers since the "whole situation at the creamery" began, said Blake Alexandre, who owns Alexandre Acres and is a creamery board member. But for those who have the decision was one he called, "very, very hard." Three weeks ago he called Alvarado for a meeting.

"Him and I sat down for lunch real quick and just talked about making all the cutbacks we possibly could," said Alexandre.

"We met at the burger stand in Ferndale. That's when he gave me the bad news," Alvarado said. "He toldme ‘Hey,we need to get rid of some guys.’ I actually couldn't sleep that night."

He thought about it for two days, then called the hired men for a meeting.

"I just tell them about the creamery, that the dairymen wasn't gonna get paid. We were gonna try to save money," Alvarado said. Then he picked the six least senior employees, ranging from between age 21 and "early 40s" and sent them home.

For Alvarado and the remaining crew there were still 900 cows to be milked twice a day.

So at midnight the first shift starts. It takes about 10 hours, according to Alvarado, tomilk and wash the barn down. By noon the second shift starts. Then there's feeding, breeding and equipment repair, adding up to 60-hourweeks for most of the employees. Alvarado is on call "pretty much 24/7," he said.

"We have to work a little harder," Alvarado said, "but that's okay."

For the employees who were laid off, other work hasn't been easy to come by.

"One guy we laid off he keeps coming back to help," said Alvarado.

That guy, Narciso Martinez Marroquin, 23 from Guerrero, Mexico was at the Friday morning milking.

Asked why he hadn't gotten another job, one that paid, he said, "No hay." There are none.

If work remains scarce, he said, his best bet is to return to Mexico.

Whether Humboldt Creamery dairies have laid off employees, cut their hours or cut expenses elsewhere, uncertainty about what's next seems to be the biggest frustration felt by everyone involved.

"It's very frustrating waiting and not knowing," said Jim Regli, another Ferndale dairy owner. "If we were told 'this much of a cutback' you could work around it."

For now, however, he said he would probably cut employees' hours "a little bit" and make do.

"We can do more work ourselves and have the kids help out," he said. "You can't shut down. It's not like a store or a restaurant where you can close the doors. You have to milk the cows until you go out of business and you sell them."

For Alvarado, making sure the people he supervises have reliable information about events at the creamery has been its own challenge.

"When this first started, everybody was worried about this because they didn't know what was going on," he said. "They have a lot of questions every day."

With no Spanish language Ferndale news source to speak of, Alvarado does his best to keep the Spanish speakers on his crew informed. But can the Hispanic community at large get information on creamery events?

"I don't think so," he said. " (The dairy owners) don't have time or something. They should think about Hispanic people too."

Despite concerns, Alvarado, Alexandre and Regli are hoping for the best.

"We hope it's temporary," said Regli about an uncertain future at the 80- year-old creamery.

For Alexandre, he puts his hope in a business plan.

"We've decided to run lean and mean for the next three years. We've formally written out a cash-flow strategy and presented that to our bank, and best case scenariomeans we restructure at the creamery level as a group of co-op members and continue to have a viable business to manufacturer our product," he said.

And Alvarado repeats his hope. Of the six men laid off: "Hopefully after things get fixed we can get them back." Of the creamery payments: "Hopefully everything will get back to normal." Of his family: "Jose, (15-year-old son) helps in the summertime a lot. I think it's going to be okay."

And perhaps, he hopes, the pastmonth's events will be a "wake-up call" to people about Hispanics working on Ferndale dairies.

"I don't think it's fair. They should treat guys on the dairies like the guys on the creamery," he said. "What can they do without us?"