05/10/23 8:42 AM By Brad Hooker
KEYWORDS budget trailer bills California Farm Bureau California Labor Federation influence on Newsom Cedar Point Nursery case at the U.S. Supreme Court farmworker rights for labor union organizing Gavin Newsom UFW Vince Fong Western Growers
United Farm Workers rally for AB 2183
Lawmakers rallied with United Farm Workers to pass AB 2183 in 2022. (photo: Brad Hooker)
Following a closed-door deal with labor groups, the Newsom administration has pushed through the Legislature sweeping changes to the way farmworkers vote in union elections. In less than a week, the governor’s office drafted and then state lawmakers passed a cleanup bill that erodes a key provision at the center of a lengthy debate over a United Farm Workers (UFW) bill.
Last year Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 2183, granting farmworkers an option to vote by mail and approving a controversial system for gathering votes known as card check, which enables union organizers to collect and submit ballots. The new collective bargaining agreements likely to result, along with a bump in penalties, could significantly escalate labor costs for employers.
Since the bill took effect in January, trade groups and legal experts have been stressing to employers to avoid the labor peace compact option in AB 2183 for mail-in ballots, since it would bar employers from making statements for or against unions. Not signing on to a labor peace agreement would instead subject employers to card check, in which a union would submit authorization cards demonstrating majority support to the Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) — and avoid an election entirely. No employers have so far opted for the labor peace option.
According to Newsom’s signing statement last September, farmworkers “have the fundamental right to unionize and advocate for themselves in the workplace.”
Yet just two weeks earlier, Newsom had publicly pledged to veto the bill and eventually bowed to pressure from President Joe Biden and other national Democratic leaders.
UFW had successfully elevated the issue to the national stage after rejoining the California Labor Federation, having pulled out of the influential umbrella group for unions in 2006 amid declining membership numbers. Former Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher took the helm at the federation last summer and marched with UFW to the Capitol, demonstrating how the state’s much larger unions have coalesced behind UFW. Unions representing Teamsters, nurses, Longshoremen and several other trades held UFW banners and donned red shirts in solidarity.
Mark StoneFormer Asm. Mark Stone, D-Monterey Bay
AB 2183 also came in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision limiting union access to properties — a pivotal ruling that handicapped California’s central law governing agricultural labor unions. While AB 2183 was nearly identical to one Newsom had vetoed in 2021 and similar to a card check bill vetoed by former Gov. Jerry Brown, the political dynamic had changed significantly.
Ahead of signing the legislation, Newsom met with UFW and the federation to iron out a compromise that would strike out the mail-in option and cap the amount of in-person card check elections over the next five years.
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Brad Hooker
Associate Editor, Agri-Pulse West