Posts tagged farmworkers
Major agricultural firm sues California over farmworker unionization law
May 16, 2024 // Under the law, once a union is certified, employers must enter into collective bargaining within 90 days, Wonderful said in its lawsuit. That would be June 3 for the newly formed union at Wonderful Nurseries in Wasco, Calif., that was certified by the state’s Agricultural Labor Relations Board. Wonderful filed a complaint with the board, saying its workers didn’t want a union. The company says many employees thought the cards they signed were to access $600 payments under a federal pandemic relief program administered by the UFW, the largest farmworker union in the U.S. The UFW denied the allegation.
Union push pits the United Farm Workers against a major California agricultural business
May 10, 2024 // The 2022 law lets the workers unionize by collecting a majority of signatures without holding an election at a polling place — a move proponents said would protect workers from union busting and employers said lacked safeguards to prevent fraud. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom reluctantly approved the changes with a nudge from the White House after farmworkers led a weekslong march to the state Capitol. Farmworkers in California are overwhelmingly Latino and among the state’s poorest and most vulnerable residents. Many are seasonal workers, which makes it tough to organize a job site, and many lack legal status in the United States. The new law could lead to a rise in union influence and a resurgence of the UFW, which represented at its peak tens of thousands of farmworkers but has seen its numbers dwindle, said Christian Paiz, a professor of ethnic studies at University of California, Berkeley.
Efforts to unionize agricultural workers in WA face long-standing hurdles
May 9, 2023 // With Ostrom — and, now, Windmill Farms — workers, labor organizers and community members have held rallies outside the mushroom farm and at several locations where the mushrooms are sold. UFW has asked people to look for the mushrooms in their local grocery stores and help track their distribution. “We have also reached out directly to retailers that carry Ostrom products, asking them to also put pressure on Ostrom to recognize the union,” De Loera said in an email in February. “Consumers can help us do this work by helping to identify Ostrom products in their local stores.” Workers from Sunnyside, community members and UFW staff rallied outside an upscale Seattle grocery store in December 2022 to raise awareness among consumers. Students at the University of Washington successfully lobbied that the school stop using mushrooms from Windmill Farms. The students organized into a group called Students for Farmworkers (SFFW) at UW.
CA Farmworkers’ Right to Unionize by Mail May Change
March 8, 2023 // If a majority voted to unionize, the employer had to recognize the union. Labor advocates say this process poses significant barriers for farmworker unionization, as many workers fear employer retaliation. More than half of California’s farmworkers are undocumented. Also a 2021 Supreme Court decision put limits on union organizers’ access to growers’ property. Farmworkers are not covered by the union protections afforded most other workers under the National Labor Relations Act. California’s agricultural workers didn’t gain the right to unionize until 1975, when Gov. Jerry Brown signed the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, after years of United Farm Workers activism to improve work conditions.
Chicago saw a wave of new unions form in 2022. Getting to the bargaining table is the next challenge.
January 2, 2023 // But it’s not just Starbucks: In Chicago, museum workers at the Art Institute, faculty and staff members at its affiliated school and employees at the Newberry Library have all unionized this year. So have workers at Howard Brown Health, budtenders at Zen Leaf cannabis dispensaries and booksellers at Half Price Books in Niles. Baristas at four La Colombe Coffee Roaster locations filed for union elections in December. Thousands of graduate students at Northwestern and the University of Chicago filed petitions within two weeks of each other in November. For the hundreds of newly unionized workers in Chicago, the hard work has only just begun; now they must negotiate a first contract with their employers. Labor leaders see a contract as the gold standard for protecting workers’ rights and securing gains in areas like pay and benefits. But the process can take years.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom approves farmworker unionization law
September 30, 2022 // The new law will allow farmworkers who provide much of the nation's fruits and vegetables to vote by mail in union elections as an alternative to physical locations. Proponents say that would help protect workers from union busting and other intimidation, while owners say such a system lacks necessary safeguards to prevent fraud. It will give owners a choice between “a flawed mail-ballot scheme or ... an unsupervised card-check scheme,” said the California Farm Bureau Federation in opposition before Newsom announced the agreement on additional safeguards. Dolores Huerta, Larry Itliong,
Column: Farmworkers join California Labor Federation as Lorena Gonzalez takes over
July 29, 2022 // As Gonzalez told me Monday, two days before becoming the first woman and the first person of color to lead the Fed, joining with the farmworkers is a message: “We are going to ruffle some feathers, and you are not going to get any apologies.” McDonald’s, Amazon, Big Ag, Gov. Gavin Newsom — she’s talking to you. But I’ll get to that. UFW is down to fewer than 7,000 members by most counts and last fall suffered an ugly legislative defeat when Newsom vetoed a bill that would have allowed mail-in ballots for its unionization drives. immigrants, UFW President Teresa Romero, Cesar Chavez,
Labor Unions Trying Again for “Card Check” for California Farmworkers
April 14, 2022 // Card check elections give employers cause for concern. Commenters have noted that by taking away a voter’s secrecy, the employee’s vote is subject to intimidation because there is no longer voter anonymity – union representatives are able to track an employee’s votes. A union may also prefill a ballot card and present it to employee for signature without anything more. There is also concern of unions intimidating and threatening workers who do not sign off on the ballot cards, or pro-union employees using peer pressure to change a co-worker’s “vote.”
What a Surge in Union Organizing Means for Food and Farm Workers
March 25, 2022 // By organizing with the Warehouse Workers for Justice, many were able to get their jobs back and have their demands met. “What’s really interesting is that there’s a huge movement right now for worker centers and unions to work together ... to essentially surround the industry,” Oliva said. “So if an employer busts the union, the worker center emerges. If the worker center is unable to organize the workers, the union organizes them.”