Commentary:
By Luis Alvarado
President of Familias Unidas de California

One of the biggest injustices to California farmworkers can be found in California’s Agricultural Labor Relations Act (ALRA), which violates some of the most basic of civil rights when it comes to labor laws. It prevents farmworkers from having a voice the contracts that govern their wages, benefits and other workplace conditions.

In the year 2015 it is hard to imagine, but under today’s ALRA, farmworkers are not guaranteed the right to observe mandatory mediation talks about their contracts. More importantly, once those contracts are hammered out, these same workers are not able to vote on whether to approve or reject their contracts.

Assembly Bill 1389 (Patterson) seeks to correct these fundamental flaws in the ALRA, which currently freezes farmworkers out of the process involving mandatory mediated contracts.

The bill would make several commonsense upgrades to the ALRA that will better protect workers:

1) It protects workers from unions that abandon them. If a union abandons its workers for more than a three-year period, the workers have the right to choose a new union to represent them.

2) It gives workers the right to attend mediated negotiations on contracts directly affecting their pay, benefits, workplace conditions, etc.

3) It gives workers the right to approve or reject a mediated contract that governs their workplace.

The flaws in the ALRA were exposed during an ongoing labor dispute involving employees of Gerawan Farming in the Central Valley. AB 1389 will not have an impact on that issue, which is tied up in the courts.

AB 1389 should not be confused with the Gerawan situation. Rather, it merely seeks to establish basic rights so that future controversies can be avoided.

Latino civil rights for workers should not be a political issue – they are basic American issues. AB 1389 is about workers – not unions or employers. It simply empowers farmworkers to have a say in their contracts.

Supporting AB 1389 – set for hearing in the Assembly Committee on Labor & Employment for May 6 – should be an easy vote for anyone concerned about civil rights for California farmworkers and their families.