Farmworkers Deserve Democratic Protections

William Gould

(This opinion essay was first published for CalMatters on August 20, 2021.)

Assembly Bill 616 is misleadingly being portrayed as merely a way to shift farmworker union elections to mail-in ballots. In reality, the bill could deprive California farmworkers of many of their existing rights in choosing whether to form or join a union, including the secret ballot.

The Legislature or the Agricultural Labor Relations Board should provide for genuine mail-in balloting in farmworker union elections in a way that maintains the current protections for farmworkers.

Though the law is badly broken today, California once led the nation in providing for the rights of farmworkers to join unions and engage in collective bargaining when it passed the Agricultural Labor Relations Act in 1975 — and thereby addressed the federal government’s failure to include farmworkers under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.

(Continue reading the opinion essay on the CalMatter’s page here.)