FRESNO, California, Sept. 27, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — Gerawan Farming issues the following response to the September 27, 2018 decision by the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) to decertify the United Farmworkers of America (UFW) as the bargaining representative of Gerawan Farming’s agricultural employees.
The Gerawan family congratulates our employees on today’s decision. We are inspired by their struggle to vindicate their right to vote and to decide for themselves whether they want a union. We are humbled by their refusal to abandon that fight, in spite of the ALRB’s multi-million dollar effort to destroy ballots rather than to count their votes.
Today’s decision is a long overdue acknowledgement of a choice made five years ago by our employees. Seventy-five percent of eligible Gerawan employees — nearly 2,000 farmworkers — voted in the election. Eighty percent – an overwhelming 5-to-1 majority — voted “No Union.” One hundred percent of those who voted – whether for or against the UFW — reaffirmed their basic right to choose for themselves who will speak for them at the bargaining table.
When it ordered the ALRB to count the votes, the Court of Appeal made clear that democracy is threatened when a government agency entrusted to protect the right to vote conceals and suppresses the results of that vote. The court called upon the Legislature to ensure that farmworkers won’t have to wait five years to have their votes counted. We join in that call to legislative action.
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SOURCE Gerawan Farming
