Thursday, December 07, 2017

End of the Legal Line for Gerawan Farms (David Bacon)

Photojournalist David Bacon has had many exhibits and written many books, such as The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration.   He has an important new photo essay that we'll note the opening of.






END OF THE LEGAL LINE FOR GERAWAN FARMS
By David Bacon
Capital and Main, 12/5/17
https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.de/2017/12/end-of-legal-line-for-gerawan-farms.html
https://capitalandmain.com/end-of-the-legal-line-for-gerawan-farms-1204



Members of the United Farm Workers in San Francisco protest the case brought by Gerawan Farms in a demonstration in front of the State Supreme Court.


California's gigantic peach and grape grower, Gerawan Farms, reached the end of its legal road last week at the state Supreme Court, when justices unanimously threw out its claim that the company was not bound by the Mandatory Mediation Law, a provision of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act (ALRA). In doing so, the court dealt a defeat to a cluster of right-wing think tanks, grower organizations and Republican politicians who sought to use the company's case to have the law itself declared unconstitutional, and to drastically weaken the collective bargaining rights of California farm workers.

"After four years of stalling," United Farm Workers president Arturo Rodriguez told Capital & Main, "Gerawan Farming Inc. should immediately honor the union contract hammered out by a neutral state mediator in 2013 and pay its workers the more than $10 million it already owes them."

The Gerawan case goes back a quarter of a century, to a union election held in 1990 and certified in 1992, when the company employed 1,000 workers. The election was marked by serious legal violations, and the Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) charged the company with tearing down housing for its workers among other efforts to intimidate them. Nevertheless, a majority of workers voted for the UFW.

The company challenged the election. After its appeal was rejected in 1995, the union asked to begin bargaining a contract to raise wages and provide benefits. In their one meeting, co-owner Mike Gerawan told union negotiators, "I don't want the union and I don't need the union." That ended bargaining.

In 2002, however, then-governor Gray Davis signed a bill to change that situation. Using this new section of ALRA, workers could vote for a union and later call in a mediator if their employer refuses to negotiate a first-time contract. The mediator, chosen by the state, hears from both the union and the grower, and writes a report recommending a settlement. Once the ALRB adopts the report, it becomes a binding union contract.

Growers challenged the law, taking it to the state Court of Appeals, where they lost in 2006. The union has since used mandatory mediation to negotiate contracts covering about 3,000 workers with several large California agricultural corporations, including D'Arrigo Brothers in Salinas and Triple E Produce in the San Joaquin Valley.

At Gerawan there was little union activity in the years following the company's refusal to negotiate, although the UFW says it maintained contact and relationships with the workers there. In 2012 the union sent the company another request to negotiate. A series of meetings were held, but agreement was never reached, so the UFW called for a mediator.

The mediator finally made a report to the ALRB, which adopted it in November, 2013. Under the law, that report should then have become the agreement. Gerawan, however, refused to implement it. Instead, by then it had already begun a multi-pronged campaign to avoid the contract and to challenge the law itself, including an aggressive campaign to get its employees to decertify their union. Gerawan benefited from the financial support of the Western Growers Association and the California Farm Bureau Federation. Its legal campaign was advised by the far-right Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence.

Inside the company, management organized a pro-company, anti-union group, which circulated the decertification petitions. Signatures were gathered by foremen, who canceled work shifts and pressured workers to attend pro-company rallies in Visalia and Sacramento. The rallies' expenses were borne by grower groups, including the California Fresh Fruit Association (formerly the Grape and Tree Fruit League). The Center for Worker Freedom, headquartered in the Washington DC offices of Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), publicized the pro-decertification demonstrations through, among other things, billboards in Sacramento attacking the UFW and ALRB. The ATR is funded by Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS and the Koch brothers, and its powerful political allies in the San Joaquin Valley include Republican Congressmembers Devin Nunes and Kevin McCarthy.

According to one worker, Jose Gonzalez, "When they passed around the decertification petitions, they looked at the crews who didn't sign them. Then those crews didn't have any more work." Severino Salas, another worker, says simply, "People were afraid to support the union, even though they wanted it, for fear of losing their jobs."
[. . .]











In the Fields of the North /
En los Campos del Norte

Photographs and text panels by David Bacon
documenting the lives of farm workers
Fotografias y paneles de texto por David Bacon
documentando las vidas de los que trabajan en el campo

Arbuckle Gallery / Pacific Hotel
History Park of San Jose, 1650 Senter Rd., San Jose, CA
10/26/2017 - 6/3/2018,
11A-4.30P, Tues/Martes - Sun/Domingo
 

In the Fields of the North / En los Campos del Norte
Photographs and text by David Bacon
University of California Press / Colegio de la Frontera Norte
302 photographs, 450pp, 9”x9”
paperback, $34.95
order the book on the UC Press website:
ucpress.edu/9780520296077
use source code  16M4197  at checkout, receive a 30% discount

En Mexico se puede pedir el libro en el sitio de COLEF:
https://www.colef.mx
 

Trabajo agrícola, migración y resistencia cultural: el mosaico de los “Campos del Norte”
Entrevista de David Bacon por Iván Gutiérrez / A los 4 Vientos
http://www.4vientos.net/2017/10/04/trabajo-agricola-migracion-y-resistencia-cultural-el-mosaico-de-los-campos-del-norte/

"Los fotógrafos tomamos partido"
Entrevista por Melina Balcázar Moreno - Milenio.com Laberinto
http://www.milenio.com/cultura/laberinto/david_baconm-fotografia-melina_balcazar-laberinto-milenio_0_959904035.html
 

EN LOS CAMPOS DEL NORTE:  Farm worker photographs on the U.S./Mexico border wall
http://us7.campaign-archive2.com/?u=fc67a76dbb9c31aaee896aff7&id=0644c65ae5&e=dde0321ee7
Entrevista sobre la exhibicion con Alfonso Caraveo (Español)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJeE1NO4c_M&feature=youtu.be
THE REALITY CHECK - David Bacon blog
http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com

Cat Brooks interview on KPFA about In the Fields of the North
https://kpfa.org/player/?audio=263826  - Advance the time to 33:15

Book TV: A presentation of the ideas in The Right to Stay Home at the CUNY Graduate Center
http://booktv.org/Watch/14961/The+Right+to+Stay+Home+How+US+Policy+Drives+Mexican+Migration.aspx
 

Other Books by David Bacon

The Right to Stay Home:  How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration  (Beacon Press, 2013)
http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2328
Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants  (Beacon Press, 2008)
Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008
http://www.beacon.org/Illegal-People-P780.aspx

Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100558350

The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004)
http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520244726

En Español:  

EL DERECHO A QUEDARSE EN CASA  (Critica - Planeta de Libros)
http://www.planetadelibros.com.mx/el-derecho-a-quedarse-en-casa-libro-205607.html

HIJOS DE LIBRE COMERCIA (El Viejo Topo)
http://www.tienda.elviejotopo.com/prestashop/capitalismo/1080-hijos-del-libre-comercio-deslocalizaciones-y-precariedad-9788496356368.html?search_query=david+bacon&results=1

For more articles and images, see  http://dbacon.igc.org and http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com
and https://www.flickr.com/photos/56646659@N05/albums







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