RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -More than 8,000 farm workers brought to North Carolina under a federal visa program signed a deal Thursday for union representation, and the group said it would drop a years-long boycott of a major pickle company.

Mt. Olive Pickle Co. also said it would increase the price it pays growers for cucumbers by more than 10 percent over three years, and the growers said they would in turn raise wages by the same amount for the workers who pick those cucumbers.

State AFL-CIO officials called the unionization the largest in North Carolina history.

The deal between the Farm Labor Organizing Committee and the North Carolina Growers Association lets the Ohio-based union sign up legal migrant workers who come to North Carolina under the federal H-2A visa program.

The growers association uses the program to supply foreign labor to about 1,000 farms, including a small number that grow cucumbers for Wayne County-based Mt. Olive Pickle, which says it has the second-biggest-selling brand of pickles in the country.

“Workers have never been able to speak for themselves, and the union agreement gives them an opportunity to do that without fear of retaliation,” union President Baldemar Velasquez said.

The union agreed to end the boycott of Mt. Olive Pickle launched in 1999. The union had said Mt. Olive Pickle had a responsibility to improve working conditions on farms that grow its pickles. The company disagreed, saying farmers should handle labor issues.

No North Carolina groceries ever pulled Mt. Olive pickles from shelves, though major groups joined the boycott, most recently the National Council of Churches and the United Methodist Church.

“I am one pickle packer who is glad to be out of a pickle today,” said Mt. Olive Pickle President Bill Bryan, a Methodist.

The agreements were signed during a news conference at a Raleigh church social hall, which was packed with union supporters and more than a dozen farm workers who followed the event through translators. Two cucumbers adorned the signing table.

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On the Net:

Union: http://www.floc.com

Pickle company: http://www.mtolivepickles.com

AP-ES-09-16-04 1729EDT