On August 3, 2015, Katy Grimes reported in the FlashReport that the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) Visalia Regional Director Silas Shawver is leaving his post, bound for a job in another part of the state government. 

Shawver’s been the main prosecutor of the Gerawan farm workers in Fresno who have been working for years to decertify the United Farm Workers (UFW).

This is soon after his former boss, Sylvia Torres Guillen was promoted out of her job as the ARLB’s General Counsel to work in the Governor’s office amid allegations of her office falsifying testimony and the ALRB being used as a coercive tool of Big Labor.

Shawver’s new position will be for a different part of the state government, the department of Fair Employment and Housing according to Grimes. 

Shawver is known for his union activism for the UFW and other organized labor groups, which led many people to have questioned how he could possibly act fairly in his role at the ALRB.

Grimes gives context to the job change by saying, “this is how state government deals with its worst employees: they are … moved into higher paying jobs in other state agencies.”

If Shawver’s sudden change in career was intentional as a means of attempting to crush the scandal this would not be surprising. In an August 2013 hearing, California Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Y. Hamilton, Jr. questioned the impartiality of both the ALRB and Shawver. He said, “It almost seems like it’s [the ALRB] in cahoots [with the UFW].” Judge Hamilton continued to Shawver:

“You have a responsibility, unlike an advocate for one side, to bring out all of the evidence, not just evidence that is supportive of the union. And it appears to the Court that’s what you’re doing.”

But, regardless of the whether the transition was done with the intent to minimize embarrassment for the ALRB, maybe now that he’s gone the Gerawan farm workers will finally have a fair fight.