Basic Vegetable Products Corp. Family-owned
vegetable producer could be sold to agribusiness giant
AP 31oct00
WALNUT CREEK, CA -- The family that owns Basic Vegetable Products Corp., a 68-year-old maker of dehydrated vegetables, was on the verge Tuesday of selling the company to agribusiness giant ConAgra Inc.
Basic Vegetable Products, owned by the children of founders Jack and Bill Hume, has been saddled since July 1999 with a bitter strike at its garlic and onion dehydration plant in King City.
The Teamsters union has led a boycott of dried instant potatoes, beans and other products from Basic American Foods, a company also owned by the Hume family.
John Barnecut, general counsel for both Hume companies, would only say that Basic Vegetable Products was in discussions to sell to ConAgra and that Basic American Foods was not for sale. Karen Savinski, a spokeswoman for Omaha, Neb.-based ConAgra, would not comment further.
However, the companies have already notified the Federal Trade Commission of their intent to merge, and the agency cleared the deal on Oct. 2.
Also, employees at Basic Vegetable's Walnut Creek headquarters received a notice on Oct. 20 that said the ``closing date for the sale could be as early as Oct. 31.'' The notice said the office would be closed and all its employees would be laid off when the deal was completed.
The vexing strike in King City has involved as many as 780 workers at a plant that dehydrates onion and garlic. It is the biggest employer in the town of 10,000, 150 miles south of San Francisco.
The plant has been operating with a mixture of replacement workers and strikers who have gone back to ensure the company could not win a vote to decertify the union.
Mike Johnston, recording secretary of Teamsters Local 890, said he expects that ConAgra's Gilroy Foods division, which has been a Basic Vegetable Products rival, will be more willing to settle the strike.
``We were locked in with an ownership at Basic that took the thing very personally, had a very strong ideology and was very intransigent,'' he said. ``I can't imagine that they're (ConAgra) buying the place to shut it down. That doesn't make any sense to me. In our experience, ConAgra is a pretty pragmatic outfit.''
