Thousands of farm workers in the Central Valley object to unionization under a collective bargaining agreement with the United Farm Workers. But they’re being forced into the agreement anyway.
On Monday, the Agricultural Labor Relations Board turned down the farm workers’ petitions, delivered last Friday, to decertify the UFW. The farm workers also will not be allowed a vote on union representation, despite an ALRB rule which stipulates, “Under the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, farm workers have the right to choose whether or not they wish to be represented by a union by voting in a secret ballot election.”
Gov. Jerry Brown appointed all the current ALRB members. And a former UFW lobbyist, Martha Guzman Aceves, was appointed by Brown as his deputy legislative secretary for agriculture, environment and natural resources, working in Brown’s Capitol office. As I detailed in an Oct. 14 story, Guzman-Aceves has a long history of working for the UFW and has close ties to other pro-UFW organizations. Yet Brown delegated to her dealing with the pleas of the rebel farm workers. Monday’s petition rejection was the second time the ALRB rejected a petition by the farm workers. The first time was on Sept. 19.
Questions have been raised about the relationship between the ALRB, a government agency, and the UFW. During an August 21, 2013 court proceeding, Judge Jeffrey Y. Hamilton said, “So the Court is very suspect of, one, the ALRB’s position here. It almost seems like it’s in cahoots. And the Court finds it very troubling that the ALRB is taking such a position, especially sitting in a prosecutorial role.” (See copies of excerpts of the court transcript, below.)
The new Cesar Chavez
Because of her relentless championing of the rights of farm workers, Silvia Lopez has been called the new Cesar Chavez. Ironically, she is fighting against the union Chavez co-founded; but which has fallen far from his lofty ideals, according to a 2012 article in The Nation, a liberal magazine, “Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers: What Went Wrong?”
