PART ll in ALRB Series:The Sordid Story of the Radicals at the CA Ag Labor Board.Click here for Part l

The ALRB’s Regional Director in the Central Valley, Silas Shawver, has a history as a union organizer, as do other ALRB employees. Shawver describes himself as a “union organizer turned lawyer.” (see graphic at right), and on his Linkedin page, Shawver lists “Organizer” as one of his jobs with UNITE HERE (graphic below).

“The California Agricultural Labor Relations Board was created in 1975 to ensure peace in the fields of… Read More

Senate Bill 277 by Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, unleashed a passion and a rage in California voters not seen in for years. The bill angered so many parents, Assembly and Senate recall elections are underway across the state, and a referendum to repeal the mandatory vaccination bill has been launched.

Parents say the new law violates Constitutional rights, as well as their right to choose what’s right for their children. Aren’t Democrats all about the right to choose, or is that only for abortions?

There are three important issues at stake in this… Read More

A bill in the California Legislature is blazing through to mandate the reduction of 50 percent in the use of petroleum-based fuels, 50 percent reduction in energy use by existing buildings and increases the Renewable Portfolio Standard from 33 percent renewables to 50 percent — notably as California is well ontrack to meet the 2020 goal.

SB 350 is authored by Sen. President pro Tem Kevin de Leon. “Do we have the courage to press forward,” asked De Leon, to legislative committee members at Monday’s Assembly Natural Resources Committee hearing on SB 350.

De Leon was long on drama about the “threat of climate change,” but short on verifiable data, and never broached what California can do alone if indeed climate change is the scourge of the entire world.

Radical activists have wormed their way into positions of government authority to implement carbon… Read More

A Sacramento Superior Court judge has put a halt to the City of Sacramento’s plan for a mass-deletion of millions of e-mails deemed “non-public record,” following two California Public Records Act requests — one of which was mine.

The California Public Records Actrequires judges to balance the publics’ right to access records with the public interests in not accessing records.City officials said that the email being deleted does not qualify as public record and is mostly “transitory in nature.”

I filed my PRA request June 25, 2015 specifically in response to the recent public statements by City Officials, including City Attorney James Sanchez, that the City will be destroying all emails in its possession, two years or older on July 1, 2015. My requests are, among other things, to obtain copies of those electronic messages prior to their deletion by the City.

Richard Stevenson, a grass roots community… Read More

Can California really reduce petroleum-based fuels by 50 percent and still have any sort of economy? Most of California’s businesses and residents rely on oil and gas for day-to-day transportation needs. But a bill currently in the legislative committee process, SB 350, would compromise the availability of transportation fuels.

TheRenewable Portfolio Standard, passed in 2011, called for 33 percent of electricity retail sales be served by renewable energy resources by the year 2020.

However, the President of the California State Senate, Kevin de Leon, no student of economics, is pushing a bill through the… Read More

The biggest labor dispute in California just got more interesting. Hundreds of farm workers from Gerawan Farms went to Sacramento last week to demonstrate outside of the Stanford Mansion where Gov. Jerry Brown and members of the Agricultural Labor Relations Board celebrated their 40th anniversary. I was told by several people who attended the event that pro-United Farm Worker union representative Dolores Huerta attempted to intimidate Gerawan workers, and got physical with anti-UFW leader Silvia Lopez. But the Gerawan workers stayed strong and demanded, “Count Our Votes!”

At the Sacramento celebration last week of the 40th anniversary of the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, one of the radical left’s most notorious UFW union labor leaders tried to prevent the new labor leader of the non-union farmworkers from taking a photo with the governor.

Many people at the gala witnessed 85-year-old Dolores Huerta strong arm anti-union farm worker Silvia Lopez.

Darling of the left and an openly socialist admirer of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Huerta has said publicly she believes that “Republicans hate Latinos.” Huerta encourages illegal… Read More

Nearly every climate change and clean energy expert admits that California will achieve the legislatively mandated policy goals of AB 32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which said the state has to reduce carbon emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020.

So why is the California Air Resource Board and Legislature seeking to move the target before the deadline?

The Assembly Select Committee on Clean Energy was asked to address how Californians can reduce on-road petroleum use by 50 percent, by 2030. Assemblyman Bill Quirk, D-Hayward, the Committee Chairman,… Read More

State superior court delivers a stunning rebuke to Agricultural Labor Relations Board’sTop Staff Attorney Sylvia Torres Guillén, citing “deficiencies in its investigation” and staff “embroilment” in worker termination.

An employee whistleblower at the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board has exposed wrongdoing by the activist attorneys in the state agency responsible for protecting the rights of farmworkers. The charges, made by an insider who participated in an ALRB investigation of Gerawan Farming, were brought directly to the office of the Board’s chairman, William B. Gould IV. The whistleblower employee alleges that the ALRB General Counsel and staff submitted false or misleading sworn statements to the Board in order to get agency authorization to file enforcement proceedings against Gerawan.

These charges could reveal the extent to which theGeneral Counsel TorresGuillénand staff manipulated evidence in administrative and legal proceedings in order to tip the scales – even perhaps illegally – in favor of the United Farm Workers.

The ALRB General Counsel’s… Read More