Responding to Gerawan’s “fantasy facts”
The late U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said that, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not to his own facts.” Gerawan and its spokespersons have adopted a series of fantasy facts.
The Agricultural Labor Relations Board is biased and in “cahoots” with the UFW.
Neither Gerawan nor any of its surrogates—including Grover Norquist’s Center for Worker Freedom—have offered any evidence to prove this charge. The ALRB is a quasi-judicial independent state agency. Since last year, ALRB General Counsel (or chief prosecutor) Sylvia Torres-Guillen, a former federal attorney, issued five damning complaints or indictments against Gerawan following thorough investigations by state agents.
The UFW “abandoned” the workers at Gerawan for 20 years.
After voting for the UFW in 1990, workers’ attempts to obtain a union contract were repeatedly thwarted by the Gerawans. The Gerawans fired workers and their employer provided housing was closed by the Gerawans in retaliation for early organizing efforts. Workers tried organizing again after Gov. Gray Davis signed a landmark 2002 mandatory mediation law letting neutral state mediators hammer out contracts when growers refuse to sign them. Workers again organized for a contract after Gov. Brown signed a 2011 measure with new remedies when employers retaliate for union activities.
A neutral state mediator selected by the Gerawans issued a contract last year and the ALRB approved it. The Gerawans are avoiding millions of dollars in pay increases and other benefits by refusing to implement the contract.
The latest indicting complaint from state prosecutors, issued in September, details how the UFW’s renewed attempt to win a contract “in October 2012 sparked an intensive and ongoing campaign by Gerawan…to promote decertification of the UFW and to prevent the UFW from ever representing its employees (emphasis added).”
The UFW only wants a union contract so it can collect 3 percent of workers’ gross pay as union dues.
Under the terms of the union contract set by the neutral state mediator selected by Gerawan—and not by the UFW—and approved by the state of California last year, Gerawan owes its thousands of farm workers millions of dollars in pay increases and other benefits retroactive to July 2013. Gerawan will owe its workers many millions of dollars more over the duration of the contract.
The 2002 mandatory mediation law under which the union contract was issued by the mediator and approved by the state last year is unconstitutional, and Gerawan is challenging it in the Fifth District Court of Appeals in Fresno.
The agricultural industry mounted a vigorous legal challenge to the law after it was enacted in 2002. The Third District Court of Appeals in Sacramento heard the case and upheld the law’s constitutionality in 2006. The agricultural industry sought review of the case in the California Supreme Court and the state high court denied review of that case, thus affirming the constitutionality of the law. The arguments Gerawan raises in its challenge to the mandatory mediation law are essentially the same arguments raised by the agricultural industry that were rejected by the appeals court in 2006.
The campaign to decertify or get rid of the UFW is a grass-roots effort by Gerawan workers, and the company is not involved.
The fifth and latest indicting complaint since last year against Gerawan from the ALRB General Counsel concludes that Gerawan directly supported the decertification campaign. “During the course of the decertification signature gathering effort…Gerawan, through its owners, supervisors, and crew bosses, regularly made statements that encouraged and assisted in the effort to decertify the union and coerced employees in their ability to choose whether to support decertification (emphasis added),” the complaint states. It continues:
Gerawan discriminatorily used attendance policies to support decertification…Gerawan…regularly allowed employees supporting the decertification effort to arrive late to work, leave early, access Gerawan fields on days the employee did not work, take extended breaks during the work day, and to avoid work altogether to engage in signature gathering, protests and other activities in furtherance of the decertification effort (emphasis added).
[Meantime,] during the period of Gerawan’s negotiations with the UFW in 2013 and during the period of July 2013 through October 25, 2013, Gerawan applied strict attendance policies for union supporters and for employees whose absences were unrelated to decertification activities (emphasis added).
Moreover, Gerawan officials have interrogated, spied on and fired union supporters, state prosecutors have alleged.
The ALRB should just count the votes from the decertification election held last fall.
State agents exposed “a large number of forged signatures” on petitions to get rid of the UFW during a thorough investigation, according to the ALRB regional director, who ruled Gerawan’s extensive lawbreaking-documented in the five indicting complaints issued by the ALRB general counsel-made it “impossible” to conduct “a free and uncoerced” election. The election was held anyway; ballots were impounded and not counted, pending an administrative judge’s decision over voluminous evidence of serious, multiple and repeated law violations by the Gerawans. When illegal conduct is alleged to have infected the elections process, it is standard for the ALRB or its federal counterpart, the National Labor Relations Board, to determine whether the election was valid before beginning to count any votes.
Sylvia Lopez, the petitioner or leader of the decertification campaign against the UFW, is a longtime Gerawan worker and her efforts have nothing to do with the company.
The fifth indicting complaint issued against Gerawan by the ALRB General Counsel on September 9, 2014, supports the UFW’s belief that Lopez was handpicked by the Gerawans to lead a fabricated “grass roots” decertification effort. The complaint alleges that Lopez was not a 15 year employee, but rather that she “began her involvement in anti-union activities at Gerawan before she started working for the company in late June 2013 [and] “by late June 2013, [she] began to work sporadically for Gerawan (emphasis added).” The complaint continues:
By mid-July 2013, Sylvia Lopez, [other of her family members] and other employees were actively engaged in a campaign of gathering signatures to support the decertification of the UFW at Gerawan. Sylvia Lopez and other employees, including supervisory personnel, began to approach employees in Gerawan’s crews…on a regular basis, during work hours, after work hours, and during breaks, to gather signatures to decertify the UFW. During this period, Sylvia Lopez rarely worked a full day in her crew (emphasis added). Several other employees also took significant amounts of time off to engage in decertification signature gathering during work hours.
Gerawan Crew Boss Reynaldo Vilavicencio allowed employees Sylvia Lopez and Belen Solanto [Lopez’s daughter] to miss work approximately 75 percent of the time during the period of approximately July 1, 2013 through October 25, 2013, without requiring justification and without employee discipline (emphasis added).
Thousands of Gerawan workers have taken part in spontaneous demonstrations against the ALRB and the UFW.
-“Gerawan supported protest activities to decertify the UFW,” the newest ALRB General Counsel complaint alleges. It continues:
In September 2013 and October 2013, Gerawan…actively recruited and encouraged employees to join in protests against the ALRB and the UFW. During this period, Gerawan’s supervisory employees cancelled work and directed workers to protests in Kerman, Visalia and Fresno in support of the decertification effort (emphasis added)…Gerawan’s crew bosses…directed employees to protest against the ALRB an the UFW instead of allowing employees to work…Gerawan made sure that employees would not be able to access fields and work on September 30, 2013, thus coercing them into participating in protests in support of decertification (emphasis added)…
On October 25, 2013, Gerawan provided support to a media event in support of the decertification petition…encourag[ing] several hundred workers to leave work in the middle of the day to attend a protest in Fresno. Upon their return to work, Gerawan paid for the workers who participated in the protest to receive free pizza and tacos (emphasis added)…
On multiple days…Gerawan employees, with direction and support from Gerawan and its supervisors, stopped work and engaged in anti-UFW and anti-ALRB protests for the purpose of gathering signatures on the decertification petition and gaining support among employees, the public and state government officials for decertification (emphasis added).”