The case has attract­ed the atten­tion and sup­port of some of the coun­try’s most pow­er­ful con­ser­v­a­tive and anti-union orga­ni­za­tions. Some have inter­vened to file briefs chal­leng­ing the law. Oth­ers have joined with the grow­er in this case, Ger­awan Farms, in an elab­o­rate cam­paign to remove the Unit­ed Farm Work­ers as the bar­gain­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the com­pa­ny’s workers.

Asso­ciate Jus­tice Stephen Kane, in a 3 – 0 rul­ing, said the law ille­gal­ly del­e­gates author­i­ty to the medi­a­tor. The Fres­no dis­trict of the appeals court is well known for its con­ser­v­a­tive bent. Unit­ed Farm Work­ers Nation­al Vice Pres­i­dent Arman­do Elenes imme­di­ate­ly announced that the union would appeal the deci­sion to the state Supreme Court.

At issue is the ​“manda­to­ry medi­a­tion” pro­vi­sion of the state’s Agri­cul­tur­al Labor Rela­tions Act. Using this sec­tion of the law, work­ers can vote for a union, and then call in a medi­a­tor if their employ­er refus­es to nego­ti­ate a first-time con­tract. The medi­a­tor, cho­sen by the state, hears from both the union and the grow­er, and writes a report rec­om­mend­ing a set­tle­ment. Once the Agri­cul­tur­al Labor Rela­tions Board (ALRB) adopts the report, it becomes a bind­ing union contract.

On May 18 in Fres­no, Cal­i­for­nia, the state’s Court of Appeals for the 5 th Dis­trict ruled that a key pro­vi­sion of the state’s unique labor law for field work­ers is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Should it be upheld by the state’s supreme court, this deci­sion will pro­found­ly affect the abil­i­ty of Cal­i­for­nia farm work­ers to gain union contracts.

Work­ers say they already feel the impact of the chal­lenge to the law. Accord­ing to Ana Gar­cia Apari­cio, ​“At this com­pa­ny, we’ve had many issues and injus­tices. This is the rea­son it is so impor­tant for us that our con­tract be implemented.”

Ger­awan Far­m’s 5,000 work­ers pick peach­es and grapes in the Fres­no region of Cal­i­for­ni­a’s San Joaquin Val­ley, one of the most pro­duc­tive agri­cul­tur­al regions in the world. The grape har­vest takes place dur­ing the sum­mer, when tem­per­a­tures in the fields nor­mal­ly rise to over 100 degrees every day. To pick peach­es, work­ers have to car­ry tall alu­minum lad­ders through the trees, along with the heavy buck­ets of fruit.

One work­er, Inez Gar­cia, says that not only is field work phys­i­cal­ly exhaust­ing, ​“but that the worst part was that the men two rows away from me were pick­ing at $11.00 dol­lars an hour, while I was doing the same work and get­ting paid $9.00 dol­lars an hour.”

Anoth­er work­er, Guadalupe Mar­tinez, says she was threat­ened after crit­i­ciz­ing a super­vi­sor for mak­ing it hard for her to get to the drink­ing water, a cru­cial issue dur­ing the sum­mer heat. ​“Now,” she wor­ries, ​“I am afraid that for next sea­son I will not be recalled to work since she is accus­tomed to doing what she wants with her crew.”

A medi­a­tor rec­om­mend­ed a union agree­ment at Ger­awan, using Cal­i­for­ni­a’s manda­to­ry medi­a­tion law. It dic­tates equal wages for the same job, and pro­hibits dis­crim­i­na­tion. It also man­dates a sys­tem for recall­ing work­ers each har­vest sea­son that bars favoritism or retal­i­a­tion. Ger­awan Farms work­ers, how­ev­er, are still wait­ing for the courts to man­date imple­men­ta­tion of this contract.

Work­ers here are try­ing to over­come the impact of their exclu­sion from the Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Act, passed in 1935. Out­side of Cal­i­for­nia, no state has a law giv­ing farm­work­ers a legal process for union recog­ni­tion and bar­gain­ing. Union agree­ments do exist in the fields else­where, but they’ve been won only after years-long cam­paigns and boy­cotts. As a result, just over one per­cent of the nation’s farm­work­ers are cov­ered by union agree­ments. Wages and con­di­tions in farm labor are worse than in almost any oth­er occupation.

In the absence of Fed­er­al law, how­ev­er, Cal­i­for­nia has been able to use state leg­is­la­tion to address grow­er intran­si­gence. The orig­i­nal Agri­cul­tur­al Labor Rela­tions Act (ALRA) was passed in 1975 and signed into law by Gov­er­nor Jer­ry Brown i n his first term. That law gave farm work­ers, for the first time, a legal process in which they could vote for a union and made it ille­gal for a grow­er to retal­i­ate against work­ers for exer­cis­ing their right to orga­nize. The law, how­ev­er, gave no teeth to the ALRB to actu­al­ly force grow­ers to nego­ti­ate and sign contracts.

As a result, work­ers could vote for the union, but had great dif­fi­cul­ty nego­ti­at­ing con­tracts after­wards. Accord­ing to Philip Mar­tin, Pro­fes­sor of Agri­cul­tur­al and Resource Eco­nom­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia in Davis, work­ers were unable to win agree­ments in 253 of 428 farms where they’d vot­ed for the Unit­ed Farm Work­ers between 1975, when the ALRA went into effect, and 2002.

That year, then-Gov­er­nor Gray Davis signed two bills that set up the manda­to­ry medi­a­tion process. Grow­ers pre­dictably chal­lenged the law but final­ly lost in anoth­er dis­trict of the state Court of Appeals in 2006. Judge Kane and the Fres­no court are try­ing to undo this ear­li­er decision.

After 2006, the UFW suc­cess­ful­ly used the new law at sev­er­al large employ­ers, nego­ti­at­ing agree­ments cov­er­ing about 3,000 work­ers. In 2013, the UFW imple­ment­ed the law again, this time at Ger­awan Farms.

The UFW won an elec­tion among Ger­awan’s work­ers in 1992, when the grow­er employed about 1,000 peach and grape pick­ers. Com­pa­ny oppo­si­tion was intense, and one work­er, Jose Gon­za­lez, recalls that, ​“The com­pa­ny had hous­es for work­ers then and tore them down when they knew we were talk­ing about the union.” The ALRB lev­eled mul­ti­ple charges of retal­i­a­tion against Ger­awan as a result.

The com­pa­ny unsuc­cess­ful­ly appealed the union elec­tion vic­to­ry, and final­ly in 1995 Mike Ger­awan, one of the com­pa­ny’s own­ers, sat down with the union. He declared, how­ev­er, ​“I don’t want the union and I don’t need the union.” That end­ed bargaining.

The union says it main­tained con­tact with the work­ers in the years that fol­lowed, but had no way to force man­age­ment to nego­ti­ate until manda­to­ry medi­a­tion was passed and upheld. By then, Ger­awan had grown much larg­er, employ­ing 5,000 farm work­ers. Judge Kane, in his deci­sion, nev­er­the­less accept­ed the com­pa­ny’s argu­ment that the UFW had ​“aban­doned” the workers.

Once the union renewed its bar­gain­ing request in 2013, and then called for the medi­a­tor, the com­pa­ny unleashed a cam­paign to decer­ti­fy it. Accord­ing to a com­plaint lat­er issued by the ALRB, Ger­awan sought ​“to pre­vent the UFW from ever rep­re­sent­ing its employ­ees under a col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agreement.”

Two peti­tions, one fea­tur­ing forged sig­na­tures, were cir­cu­lat­ed, often by fore­men, call­ing for an elec­tion to decer­ti­fy the UFW. Super­vi­sors orga­nized ral­lies in front of ALRB offices to pres­sure it into hold­ing a vote. Accord­ing to Gon­za­lez, ​“When they passed around the decer­ti­fi­ca­tion peti­tions, they looked at the crews who did­n’t sign them. Then those crews did­n’t have any more work.” Sev­eri­no Salas, anoth­er work­er, says sim­ply, ​“Peo­ple were afraid to sup­port the union, even though they want­ed it, for fear of los­ing their jobs.”

Despite charges by its own inves­ti­ga­tors that the com­pa­ny was manip­u­lat­ing the process, the ALRB final­ly gave way in Novem­ber of 2013 and held an elec­tion. The bal­lots were all impound­ed, and have yet to be count­ed pend­ing the res­o­lu­tion of mul­ti­ple legal cas­es against the com­pa­ny. A Ger­awan state­ment claims, ​“We sup­port [work­ers’] right to choose, but the ALRB staff and the UFW do not. Our sole mes­sage to our employ­ees has nev­er wavered: ​‘We want what you want.’”

The com­pa­ny cam­paign got the sup­port of con­ser­v­a­tive groups nation­al­ly. The Cen­ter for Con­sti­tu­tion­al Jurispru­dence, a far-right legal insti­tute, filed briefs at the appeals court togeth­er with grow­er asso­ci­a­tions. In recent years the Cen­ter has joined the Har­ris v. Quinn suit against the Ser­vice Employ­ees Inter­na­tion­al Union in Illi­nois, in which the U.S. Supreme Court under­mined the abil­i­ty of unions to col­lect agency fees from non-mem­bers. It has argued for Hob­by Lob­by Stores against birth con­trol, and sup­port­ed the ini­tia­tive to end affir­ma­tive action in Michigan.

Anoth­er Ger­awan sup­port­er is the Cen­ter for Work­er Free­dom, which orga­nized and financed demon­stra­tions against the labor board. The cen­ter was set up by Grover Norquist’s Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform, alleged­ly with mon­ey from the Koch broth­ers. The cen­ter’s direc­tor, Matt Pat­ter­son, first achieved noto­ri­ety when he man­aged the cam­paign against the Unit­ed Auto Work­ers two years ago, at the new Volk­swa­gen plant in Chat­tanooga, Ten­nessee. Employ­ing a sim­i­lar strat­e­gy, the Cen­ter bought bill­boards in Sacra­men­to attack­ing the UFW and the ALRB.

Cal­i­for­nia grow­ers and these con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions clear­ly view manda­to­ry medi­a­tion not as a local issue, but a nation­al one. The law could be extend­ed to oth­er states, and the cam­paign’s goal is to kill it before it spreads. If the Fres­no appeals court deci­sion is upheld, the pas­sage of laws man­dat­ing enforce­able union rights for farm work­ers in oth­er states becomes much less likely.