Free Republic

It’s taken nearly five years of administrative battles, legislative interference, and lawsuits, but the California state government has finally counted farm workers’ votes in a union election at the state’s largest fruit grower, Fresno-based Gerawan Farming. The final verdict, tallied on Tuesday, explains why the Jerry Brown administration and Democratic statehouse leaders did everything in their power to destroy the votes without counting them. The margin: 1,098 workers voted “no” to the United Farm Workers, with only 197 workers voting in favor of UFW representation. There still are 635 disputed ballots, but even the math geniuses in Sacramento can see...

Fasten your seatbelts for one of the strangest union stories to come over the transom in a while. Back in 2013 (which is five years ago, for those who skipped math class), out in Fresno, California, the workers at farming corporation Gerawan Farming held a vote to determine whether or not they would decertify their membership in United Farm Workers (UFW), the union which had been representing them. The vote was held, and then… nothing. The union refused to release the results and even convinced a court arbiter that they could do so. They went on acting as the...

Where are the Gerawan Farming Workers' ballots from the 2013 UFW decertification election? Gerawan Farming workers just won a huge victory over the United farm Workers labor union and California Agricultural Labor Relations Board. In a 3-0 decision, the Fifth District Court of Appeal ordered the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board to count the workers’ ballots from the November 2013 election to decertify the United Farm Workers labor union, and issue a tally. But where are the ballots? The decertification election took place November 3, 2013. After all of the ballots were in, the ALRB impounded them, refused to count...

Gerawan's employees do not want to be unionized by the UFW or forced into union servitude by the California ALRB Surprising no one, on Nov. 27, the California Supreme Court upheld the dubious Mandatory Mediation and Conciliation law against Gerawan Farming. The California Supreme Court heard the Gerawan case last fall on whether the state’s attempting to force mandatory agricultural labor union contracts violates the constitutional safeguard of equal protection. Fresno-based peach grower Gerawan Farming is one of the largest agriculture employers in the state. The serious wrangling with the United Farm Workers Labor Union and ALRB began again in...

This is a bombshell because the agriculture industry, the governor's office, and the legislature knew the result could be the entire law being thrown out “The Marxians love of Democratic institutions was a stratagem only, a pious fraud for the deception of the masses within A Socialist community there is no room left for Freedom.”— Ludwig Von Mises California Gov. Jerry Brown and the Democrat-supermajority State Legislature hold the state Supreme Court’s purse strings. Evidence of this can be found in the Monday California Supreme Court 7-0 decision in the Gerawan Farming case.

Unions not only want a bigger cut of farm worker pay, they think increased overtime is one way to accomplish this. But the real goal is to force desperate farmers into union contracts Gerawan Farming just filed a motion with the ALRB to disqualify former Sen. Isadore Hall from making any decisions related to their pending cases. And for good reason. Not only does Sen. Hall have no experience in or related to agriculture,Hall even voted for the “farmworker overtime bill” to force more farming employers into United Farm Workers union contracts. At issue is Hall’s ability to be fair...