Disenfranchised Workers to Protest at CA State House

For Immediate Release:

January 21, 2015

Fresno – dozens of California farm workers will attend an upcoming labor board meeting to protest their disenfranchisement by state authorities. 

The workers, from Fresno-based Gerawan Farming, voted to decertify the United Farm Workers (UFW) from their workplace in November 2013, but California’s Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) locked up those ballots and refuses to count them in a shocking display of pro-union bias.

The ALRB will be discussing this Gerawan worker issue during its public meeting Thursday, January 22, 2015, at 722 Capitol Mall in Sacramento, California at 9:30 am.  The Gerawan workers, their families and supporters will trek north to attend this meeting in the morning and then march to the State House to meet with public officials at 10:30 am.

Silvia Lopez, a veteran of Gerawan Farming and leader of the anti-union movement, wrote an open letter to Governor Jerry Brown on January 21, 2014 in the Flash Report asking him to help the workers secure their civil liberties:

“By ignoring our votes and imposing a UFW contract on us, your government is depriving us of both our liberty (forcing us into an association) and our property (three percent of our wages).”

The Center for Worker Freedom (CWF) is helping to coordinate travel and communications for the workers.  The Center for Worker Freedom is a special project of Americans for Tax Reform.

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CONTACT:

John Kartch

202-785-0266

jkartch@atr.org