Posts tagged United Farm Workers
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.
Wonderful Nurseries Workers Hit UFW Union with Charges Detailing Fraudulent Union Campaign, Illegal Discrimination
April 27, 2024 // With the union installed and UFW agents not letting workers revoke their illicitly-obtained memberships in the union, Chavez and Gutierrez note that UFW union officials are now “engaging in a campaign of harassment, libel, slander, and intimidation against [employees who are] exercising their right of free speech and/or protest under [California labor law] to oppose UFW representation.” News reports suggest that scores of Wonderful Nurseries workers have engaged in outdoor demonstrations against the union, declaring “We don’t want a union, listen to our voices, don’t ignore us.” In addition to the ALRB charges, Chavez and Gutierrez, along with a dozen other coworkers, seek to intervene in the ongoing ALRB case in which Wonderful Nurseries is challenging the union’s card check majority “certification” as improperly based on cards collected through fraud and other improper means. Foundation staff attorneys represent the group of workers seeking to intervene in that case to defend their right not to be placed under union monopoly control as a result of UFW organizers’ illicit tactics. Claudia Chavez and Maria Gutierrez,
Farming giant claims UFW lied to farmworkers to unionize under new law
April 9, 2024 // An apparently successful card check campaign to unionize Wonderful Nurseries faces allegations of a scheme involving $600 federal relief funds.
Billionaire California growers battle farmworker union over biggest victory under new law
March 17, 2024 // Three workers, who now want their vote revoked, say they merely attended meetings and signed cards for the $600 relief payments and never wanted to join a union. They described feeling “tricked” and “lied to” by UFW organizers, while also pointing to the 3% dues that would be required by joining. They also struggled to recall specifics of when they met up with UFW organizers and if the cards they signed contained wording to make UFW their union bargaining representative.
UFW just got big union wins at New York farms. Is the same coming for California?
July 19, 2023 // Like many unions, UFW has struggled to organize over the last few decades, its membership dwindling from 60,000 to around 6,000. Even with legal protection, farmworker organizing is often slow, painstaking work. Many prospective union members are reluctant to give up 3% of their already low wages for dues, and worry that their immigration status leaves them vulnerable to employer retaliation.
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.
Suspect unions’ effort to evade state law could hurt marijuana workers
April 13, 2023 // In many states with adult-use legalization, state law requires legal marijuana businesses to sign a labor peace agreement, or LPA, with a “bona fide” labor union before receiving final licensing. The LPAs are contracts in which an employer agrees to be neutral during a labor-organizing campaign. In return, the union agrees not to picket, boycott or otherwise interfere with the employer’s business. States that require would-be cannabis industry operators to secure labor peace agreements under state law include some of the U.S. industry’s biggest markets: California and New York as well as New Jersey and Connecticut.
The Undercover Organizers Behind America’s Union Wins
April 5, 2023 // The practice of joining a workplace with the secret aim of organizing it is called “salting.” Westlake was addressing recruits at the Inside Organizer School, a workshop held a couple times a year by a loose confederation of labor organizers. At these meetups, experienced activists train other attendees in the art of going undercover. Speakers lecture and lead discussions on how to pass employer screenings, forge relationships with co-workers and process the complicated feelings that can accompany a double life. Most salts are volunteers, not paid union officials, but unions sometimes fund their housing or, later, tap them for full-time jobs. Workers United, the Service Employees International Union affiliate that’s home to the new Starbucks union, hired Westlake as an organizer around the time the coffee chain fired him last fall.
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.