UFW Labor Union Trying to Force Unionization on All Calif. Farm Workers

It’s deja-vu all over again. Assembly Bill 2183 authored by Assemblyman Mark Stone (D-Monterey Bay) and sponsored by the United Farm Workers to allow farmworkers to vote by mail in union elections, will go to Gov. Gavin Newsom a year after he vetoed the last version of the bill. The never give up.

There are serious legal issues with AB 2183, which will violate farm workers’ right to a secret vote and open the door for union leaders to intimidate them during union elections, Senate Republicans said Wednesday.

“Contrary to legislative Democrats’ rhetoric, this measure is an ANTI-WORKER bill because it makes workers more susceptible to intimidation, coercion and threats of retaliation,” Senate Republicans said.

They are correct.

This is deja-vu all over again because a very large group of farmworkers spent many years fighting unionization by the United Farm Workers labor union, and the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board.

I explained in 2018 the plight of the Central Valley Gerawan Farming employees, which I covered since 2012:

The serious wrangling with the United Farm Workers Labor Union and ALRB began again in October of 2012, when the union insisted that a multi-decades old collective bargaining agreement covering Gerawan workers be reactivated, and tried to invoke a 2002 law that empowers the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board to impose a union contract on the company’s farm workers, and to deduct three percent of the 5,000 Gerawan employees’ pay—without their consent.

The Mandatory Mediation and Conciliation law allows state mediators to force union contracts on workers through binding mediation — in essence, it shoves a contract down the throats of workers, without their consent. In a 48-page decision, the California Supreme Court Justices said, “We conclude that the MMC statute neither violates equal protection nor unconstitutionally delegates legislative power.” That was predictable.

“California Gov. Jerry Brown and the Democrat-supermajority State Legislature hold the state Supreme Court’s purse strings. Evidence of this can be found in the Monday California Supreme Court 7-0 decision in the Gerawan Farming case,” I wrote at the time of the decision.

“Today’s decision imposes the United Farm Workers on our employees, whether they want the UFW or not,” Gerawan Farming said in a statement. “In this case, since UFW had disappeared for almost two decades, 99% of the Gerawan employees never voted for UFW representation.” The California Supreme Court justices also notably did not place any value on Gerawan’s argument that the UFW labor union’s 22-year absence meant it forfeited its status as an employee representative.”

Gerawan petitioned the United States Supreme Court for review of California’s Mandatory Mediation and Conciliation law, which collided with the First Amendment and due process principles. Gerawan Farming and its employees fought back and eventually beat back the UFW and ALRB, but at tremendous cost.

This all started in 2012 with Senate Bill 25, authored by then-Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, which would have forcibly unionized 5,000 Gerawan Farming employees along with other farm employees. And it would have made the workers surrender 3 percent of their paycheck as dues to the UFW — or the workers would be fired.

Assembly Bill 2183

“Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, D-Los Angeles said the bill is ‘90%’ of what the governor asked for. ‘This bill, in this form, gives farmworkers a chance to fix a system that has not worked for a long time,’ Durazo said,” the Sacramento Bee just reported.

Now-Senator Maria Elena Durazo once led the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor , a group of self-proclaimed socialist and Communist California labor officials. Durazo’s labor union and Democrat Party operatives created a program to target Latinos and immigrants (illegal and legal) to permanently drive California politics far to the left, Democrat political consultant Richie Ross wrote in CalBuzz in 2010. Ross openly boasts of targeting the Latino community’s fear of anti-illegal immigration measures, to drive the community even further into the arms of the Democratic Party, I explained in my book co-authored with attorney James Lacy, “California’s War Against Donald Trump; Who Wins? Who Loses?”

This was all part of the plan.

The Senate Republican Caucus’ veto letter on AB 2183:

… “This measure violates a right to vote in secret, a fundamental tenet of democracy. Under this process, union organizers can approach farmworkers in person and ask them to sign a card representing their vote for the union. Because these representatives will know how the workers voted, the workers would be more susceptible to intimidation, coercion, and threats of retaliation.”

Will Gov. Newsom again veto mandatory unionization by the UFW of California farm workers or support unionization – “Whether you like it or not?” as he once famously said.