Workers vote in potential landmark Gerawan case
Workers vote in potential landmark Gerawan case
Workers at Gerawan Farming Inc. in Reedley, CA, were finally given the chance to decertify the United Farm Workers as their contract bargaining agent in a potentially landmark election held Tuesday, Nov. 5.
It may well be weeks before the results of the election are known, but the outcome could have huge significance.
The UFW won a union election at the Gerawan company more than 20 years ago in the early 1990s. At the time, the UFW’s presence was waning on the California farm labor scene and there was never more than a cursory effort to negotiate a contract. This same scenario played out in many other farming operations in the state. For basically two decades those negotiations went dormant, with no efforts to revive them. Over the time, the workforce changed and for all intents and purposes the results of the election were moot.
However, in 2012 the California Legislature passed what agribusiness called an onerous update to the historic mid-1970s Agricultural Labor Relations Act, farm labor law that included binding mediations provisions seemingly giving the UFW the right to revive some of these negotiations under certain circumstances. Gerawan is one of the test cases that is being used to challenge that law.
Longtime farm employer attorney Ron Barsamian oif Barsamian & Moody in Fresno, CA, is one of the lawyers deeply involved in the case. His client has been arguing in motion after motion that the UFW has no right to represent these workers — many of whom were not even born when the last election was held. Recently Barsamian predicted that Gerawan would win the case in the courts but it would be a long protracted court case.
As those legal battles work their way through the courts, Silvia Lopez, a current Gerawan farm worker, recently filed a petition that a decertification election be held. That petition resulted in a back and forth battle between the California Agriculture Labor Relations Board (ALRB) and one of its district offices. The ALRB twice approved the request, granting Gerawan farm workers the opportunity to hold the decertification election overruling the objection of the ALRB’s district office. The ALRB finally ordered the election to be held and it was.
The ALRB was expected to impound the ballots cast on Tuesday until a myriad of unfair labor allegations by the union and the employer have been resolved. While that will take time, if the union is decertified by a vote of the current workers that could paint a clear path to victory for employers in future similar cases, of which there are many.
