Last week I wrote about the liberal busybodies on the Berkeley City Council, who have inserted themselves into a labor issue 200 miles, and five counties away, at Gerawan Farming in Fresno.
Rather than offer support to the Gerawan farm workers in their fight to oust the United Farm Workers labor union from Gerawan Farming, two members of the Berkeley City Council member have called for a resolution and letters of support for the UFW labor union. And they want this on the agenda during a council meeting.
However, Gerawan Farming attorney David A. Schwarz sent his own letter to the council members and Mayor of Berkeley pointing out that Berkeley’s council members, in their zeal to support the labor union, got a few facts wrong.
Berkeley Adopts UFW Message word-for-word
The first recommendation for UFW support came from Berkeley Councilman Kriss Worthington in July. “Support the United Farm Workers by sending letters to Wal-Mart requesting it upholds its own ‘Standards for Suppliers’ and to Gerawan Inc. urging it to protect and aid its underpaid agricultural workers,” Berkeley Councilman Kriss Worthington said in a letter.
However, Worthington neglected to include in his letters that thousands of Gerawan employees have been protesting for two years to oust the UFW labor union from the farming company.
Council member Jesse Arreguín wants the Berkeley council to adopt a Resolution calling upon Gerawan Farming “to meet basic standards of conduct, including refraining from violating state or federal laws such as labor relations laws, anti- discrimination laws, and minimum wage and hour laws, and to immediately implement the union contract issued by the neutral mediator and the state of California.”
Gerawan Farming did not attempt to decertify the UFW; 2,600 of its employees held an election, one of the largest decertification elections in history. However, the ALRB refuses to count the workers’ ballots from that election of Nov. 2013.
It is noteworthy as well, that the resolution proposed by Arreguín not only ignores a letter sent by attorney Schwarz in July, the wording of their many incorrect accusations are word-for-word identical defamatory statements made in UFW press releases and statements, and in mass mailing donor solicitations.
Schwarz said the statements made by the Berkeley City Council “are not morally or legally defensible,” and asked the council to withdraw the resolution and retract the defamatory content.
The California Agricultural Labor Relations Board has steadfastly refused to count thousands of ballots collected by Gerawan farmworkers, cast nine months ago to decertify the United Farm Workers labor union.
It is ironic that the ALRB, created in the 1970’s to provide farm workers a voice, refuses to let workers have a voice to vote to decertify the UFW, because the outcome may not fit their agenda. And, perhaps even more ironic, is Berkeley, inserting itself in the labor dispute – on the side of the big labor union, rather than with the little farmworkers, fighting for the right to work without a union.