PASCO, Wash. (AP) — Margarito Martinez says he was fired from the Eastern Washington dairy that employed him for more than a year because he tried to unionize the company. Nine co-workers say the same thing: They were let go for their affiliations to the budding union.

The owners of Ruby Ridge Dairy, though, say only two workers were fired, one for safety violations and the other for incompetence. The others quit, they said. The dairy owners don’t want the union involved in the dispute, but say they’re willing to do whatever the workers want as long as there’s a vote.

This summer, the United Farm Workers of America, the nation’s biggest farm worker union, filed suit on the workers’ behalf — the latest action from a union looking to increase its ranks among the tens of thousands of farm workers in Northwest agriculture.

Many still are afraid that if they join, they’ll be fired. But many people welcomed the union,” Martinez, 56, said in Spanish. “We worked without lunch breaks and breaks. They didn’t pay for all the hours worked. You worked 10 hours, you’d get paid 8, 9.5. It’s not fair.”

The union already represents 150 vineyard workers at the region’s largest winery, plus 250 workers at a Boardman, Ore. dairy that marked the first unionized agricultural operation in Oregon. The union says membership has quadrupled to about 600 workers in the Northwest. Nationwide, the union says about 27,000 people have worked at least one day under a UFW contract. The federal government, however, estimates the union’s membership at more than 5,000.

Nonetheless, the union’s push in the Northwest has prompted the Washington State Farm Bureau to send out guidelines to farmers on what to do in case their workers want to unionize.

“We’ve had four major organizing campaigns in the last five years, so we’ve been very active,” said Erik Nicholson, Pacific Northwest union director. “At Ruby Ridge, the workers came to us.”

The workers contend the dairy’s owners wouldn’t pay for a full shift, often cutting an hour, two or more from a paycheck. Bathroom and lunch breaks were discouraged or not provided.

They also reported verbal abuse, including an instance in which the owner told one worker he’d kill him for a cow that died under his care.The men, all immigrants from rural Mexico, have been working in the state’s agricultural industry, in orchards and dairies, for years. At Ruby Ridge, the 24-hour operation required graveyard shifts and workers say they were expected to toil with little rest.

“They never gave us benefits,” said Cirilo Ramirez, who is still employed at the dairy. “If we made a mistake they would not talk to us like human beings, they would talk to us like animals, yelling, insulting. I don’t think that should be allowed.”