General Discussion

Omaha Steve

(99,622 posts) Wed Sep 10, 2014, 06:17 AM Sep 2014

Big-Money Radical Right Groups Help Huge Grower to Avoid Paying Millions Already Owed Its Farm Worke

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arturo-s-rodriguez/bigmoney-radical-right-gr_b_5786868.html

Arturo S. Rodríguez President, United Farm Workers Posted: 09/09/2014 12:55 pm EDT Updated: 09/09/2014 2:59 pm EDT

Well-financed anti-labor groups related to America's radical right are coming to the aid of giant Fresno, Calif.-based Gerawan Farming to avoid implementing a union contract under which it already owes millions of dollars to thousands of its grape and tree fruit workers. Gerawan, with more than 5,000 workers at peak harvest season, sells peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots and grapes under its Prima label.

Gerawan refuses to implement a contract with the United Farm Workers issued in 2013 by a state mediator and affirmed by the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board under a state law letting workers call in neutral mediators to hammer out contract provisions after failed attempts at traditional bargaining.

Gerawan's refusal to implement the contract is the latest in a long history of labor law violations that began in 1990, when its workers voted to be represented by the UFW in the last major union organizing drive under Cesar Chavez's leadership. The mammoth employer was soon found guilty of unlawfully firing a crew of workers and closing six labor camps in retaliation for employees supporting the union. Since workers brought in the state mediator in 2013, the state of California has issued a new series of complaints--tantamount to indictments--against Gerawan, alleging serious, multiple and repeated violations of the law. They include illegally refusing to bargain in good faith, instigating and supporting drives to get rid of the UFW; interrogating and spying on workers; intimidating employees exercising their right to participate in negotiations; and refusing to implement the state-issued union contract.

After heavily spending on an array of law firms, public relations firms and anti-union consultants (some of whom have been paid $3,000 a day), Gerawan is benefiting from slick media campaigns including billboards on Central Valley highways apparently orchestrated and underwritten by national chieftains of the radical right, which includes Grover Norquist and the billionaire Koch brothers (David and Charles). Behind the pro-Gerawan blitz is the Center for Worker Freedom, a project of Americans for Tax Reform and led by the anti-government activist Norquist, architect of last fall's Republican shutdown of the federal government. Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform has reportedly received significant financial support from the Koch brothers.

FULL story at link.