One of California’s most powerful agricultural companies filed a lawsuit Monday against the state to overturn a controversial law to help farm workers unionize that Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom reluctantly signed into law two years ago under pressure from the White House.
Actions of Wonderful Co. come as she battles the United Farm Workers over a newly formed UFW local with 640 workers at one of its plants. $6 billion company founded by Stuart and Linda Resnick, who donated President Joe Biden and Newsom, produces many products recognizable to most grocery store shoppers, including Halos tangerines, Wonderful Pistachios, POM Wonderful pomegranate juice and Fiji Water brands.
Farm workers are not subject to federal labor regulations in the United States. But California, which collects most of the country’s produce, passed legislation and created a special council in 1975 to protect their right to unionize. This followed the legendary work of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta to organize farm workers throughout California into what would become the United Farm Workers.
But since then, the number of farmworker unions has declined sharply, and today only a handful of such workers are organized in California.
New law allows farmers to form unions by collecting a majority of signatures without holding a poll at the polling place, a provision proponents say protects workers from pressure from employers or attempts to retaliate against workers who vote to join a union. A trade union is created if more than half of the employees sign a power of attorney.
Vanderful argues that the law is unconstitutional because it goes too far in excluding employers from the process.
Newsom’s office said it was reviewing the lawsuit before responding and included his statement at the signing of the law that “California’s farmworkers are the lifeblood of our state, and they have the fundamental right to unionize and protect themselves in workplace”.
Agricultural industry leaders say the lack of secret ballots required by law leaves workers vulnerable to union coercion and elections vulnerable to fraud. Vanderund said that in the previous system, employers and union representatives were present at polling stations to ensure transparency in the process.
Currently, four trade unions have been created in accordance with the new law. No other company took any legal action. Vanderful said he is best equipped to lead the battle because other companies are much smaller.
The law does not require union ID cards to be dated or for employees to identify their employer, Wonderful’s lawsuit says.
Vanderful said the law does not have an independent review process to prove majority support for the union, violating due process.
Vanderful said he is also asking the Kern County Superior Court to issue an injunction to stop enforcement of the law until the court rules on his claim that it is unconstitutional.
Beauty goes against time.
By law, once a union is certified, employers must enter into collective bargaining within 90 days, Wonderful’s lawsuit says. It will be June 3 for the newly formed union Wonderful Nurseries in Wasco, California, which has been certified by the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board.
Wonderful filed a complaint with the board, saying its employees did not want a union. The company claims many employees thought the cards they signed gave them access to $600 payments under the federal pandemic relief program administered by the UFW, the largest farmworker union in the United States. The UFW denied the allegations.
The UFW called the lawsuit “unfortunate but not surprising.” The union said the Agricultural Labor Relations Board filed an unfair labor practice charge against Wonderful on April 22, accusing the company of requiring workers to attend a meeting to discuss revoking their signatures on permit cards they used to form a union. .
“Wonderful Nurseries now wants to get rid of the law that protects farmworkers,” said UFW spokeswoman Elizabeth Strater.
The case is heard by an administrative law judge, who takes the workers’ testimony during a week-long hearing.
Wonderful Nurseries claims the board failed to provide a fair process to the division’s 60 permanent employees and as many as 1,500 seasonal workers. The company’s only unionized workers are at Wonderful Nurseries, which grows table and wine grapes and other plants. According to the website, the company has about 10,000 employees.
Wonderful said its employees are well paid and the protections it put in place in 1975 have worked.
Before Newsom signed the new law into law in 2022, he and his two predecessors vetoed similar legislation over concerns about the voting process. The Democratic governor announced plans to veto it again in 2022, but reversed course after Biden announced support for the changes. He signed it on the condition that another method of forming a union – mail-in voting – would later be abolished.
Biden, who keeps a bust of Chavez in the Oval Office, said in a 2022 statement that “in a state with the largest population of farm workers, the least we owe them is an easier way to make a free and fair choice to organize a union.” .