Catherwood LibraryILR School

Gerawan farm workers in California protested outside the California Supreme Court this Tuesday during a crucial labor hearing between the team of United Farm Workers and the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board versus Gerawan Farming, Inc. The hearing was to determine if farm workers have the right to choose whether they want to be represented by the union or not, a question that scrutinizes the Mandatory Mediation and Concilliation provision of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act which provides the legal framework to allow the UFW to force unionization on all farm workers. The UFW was unsuccessful in negotiating a contract for the Gerawan farm workers, who say the union had abandoned them for twenty years. The UFW had only minimal and unsubstantiated contact with the Gerawan farm workers between their election by Gerawan workers in 1992 and 2012 when the UFW sent a negotiations request to Gerawan Inc. The union failed in their 2012 negotiations to reach a contract for Gerawan workers after 10 bargaining rounds following the request.