There is a major challenge between the United Farm Workers and Wonderful Company over union representation in their workplace, Wonderful Nurseries in the Central Valley. At issue is a vote certified earlier this year that gave 600 workers the right to have the UFW represent them with the grower. It was a simple majority of voter cards that won the election.
In 2022, Gov. Gavin Newsom made the process of signing union cards easier. Newsom signed a bill into law that gave farm workers the right to sign union authorization cards, or “card checks”, without having to personally show up at a location designated by the union and the employer, usually on the employer’s property, to vote. The law came at a time when pandemic voting, even in general elections, was becoming more oriented around mail in ballots for health safety. The card check option was a way to avoid grower/employer intimidation, to protect farm workers from retaliation, and was a help to union organizing.
After the vote was registered with the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB), Wonderful submitted their objection saying that workers were coerced into signing union cards with the promise of $600.00 in relief funds for working during Covid. Relief Funds are provided by application to the USDA and have been administered by a variety of organizations around the country, including the UFW Foundation. The UFW categorically denied this accusation saying that the Wonderful Company was simply using its vast fortune to stop the unionization process and to defame the integrity of the union. Anti-union actions are being cited by the UFW and both sets of allegations have been brought to the ALRB for investigation with the ALRB’s General Counsel issuing a formal complaint about unfair labor practices by Wonderful.
Near the end of the timeframe for arbitration and after the ALRB had declined to halt the process, having determined the election valid, Wonderful Company filed a lawsuit against the state of California regarding the constitutionality of the recent card check law passed and signed in 2022. This action has halted the arbitration and, if they win this case it may set back farm worker organizing in the state to where it was before the UFW was born.
For more about the campaign, go to https://ufw.org/ca_agvotingchoiceact/
To participate in organizational letters or faith leader letters to Wonderful Company owners, contact Julie Taylor at jtaylor@nfwm.org.
*With the Agricultural Labor Relations Act in 1975, California extended the protections of the National Labor Relations Act in their own state, specifically to give farm workers the right to organize without retaliation, an exclusion from the federal legislation passed in the 1930s. It was the first state to do so and with the law came an arbitration body, the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) whose job is to oversee and protect “the rights of agricultural employees to organize themselves in negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment.”