Right-to-work group joins unionization fight between UFW, Wonderful
The unionization battle between two locally prominent ag organizations has been joined by a Virginia-based nonprofit known for representing workers trying to resist membership with a labor union.
The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation announced Friday it has filed charges with a state agency mediating the dispute between the United Farm Workers labor union and a subsidiary of the Los Angeles-based Wonderful Co.
Stepping in just five days ahead of a public hearing that began Tuesday in downtown Bakersfield, the nonprofit's filing April 18 alleged the UFW tricked ag workers into signing union membership cards. It said, as Wonderful has, that the union in some instances offered $600 payments that turned out to have been pandemic recovery checks paid for by the federal government.
The Keene-based union has denied its unionization campaign deceived the workers at Wonderful Nurseries LLC. It has instead accused the company of coercing workers and telling them to protest against the arbiter, the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board, which last month certified the UFW's success in unionizing the subsidiary's roughly 600 workers.
A spokeswoman for the UFW stated Friday that the foundation's allegations are false. She noted that the nonprofit filed for intervenor status with the ALRB that would have allowed it to examine witnesses and object to outcomes in the ongoing public hearing, but that the application was denied.
On Monday, ALRB General Counsel Julia Montgomery filed a complaint against Wonderful accusing the company of violating its workers' rights. It said supervisors insisted workers attend meetings where they were asked not to sign union authorization cards, among other actions she said "interfered with, restrained and coerced their employees in the exercise of their right to engage in concerted activity for the purpose of mutual aide or protection."
Wonderful countered that Montgomery's complaint "shows once again (the ALRB is) more interested in shamelessly backing the UFW than protecting farmworkers or safeguarding the integrity of a union vote that, in this case, was so clearly fraudulent."
The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation says it represents about 20 Wonderful workers free of charge. A news release it issued Friday said two of them, Claudia Chavez and Maria Gutierrez, have accused the UFW of using "artifice, fraud, deceit, misrepresentation, and/or coercion" to sign union membership cards.
It asserted that UFW bosses are illegally barring Wonderful workers from revoking their membership cards "and are harassing and retaliating against employees who oppose the union."
“Instead of just letting us vote in secret on whether we want a union, they went around lying and threatening to get cards and now are cracking down on anyone who speaks out against the union," the release said Chavez and Gutierrez said. "We hope the ALRB listens to us and prosecutes the union for its illegal acts.”
Also in the release, National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix criticized the union "card check" process Gov. Gavin Newsom grudgingly signed into law in 2022 after a union campaign that culminated in a 24-day, 335-mile march from Kern County to the state Capitol.
With the ALRB's certification last month that the UFW had registered a slim majority of Wonderful Nurseries workers using the card-check process, the subsidiary has become the only division of the large, privately held parent company to be union-represented.
The way that was handled is a point of contention. Shortly before the certification, Wonderful presented the ALRB with 148 signed declarations by employees asking to have their union authorizations nullified.
If those withdrawals were granted, it would theoretically be enough to overturn the certification. But whether that will happen, and whether Wonderful violated its workers' rights, are subjects of the public hearing set to resume next week inside the Bakersfield Marriott at the Convention Center.
