Today the Center for Worker Freedom (CWF) launched the second round in a series of billboards in Sacramento designed to bring attention to the plight of Fresno farm workers who are being forced into a union against their will.
Workers at Fresno-based Gerawan Farming voted last November in a decertification election to rid their workplace of the United Farm Workers (UFW). Union bosses at the UFW are trying to take three percent of the workers’ hard-earned pay, despite the fact that the union has negotiated no wages or working conditions for the workers in over twenty years.
But the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) is refusing to count the votes from last fall’s decertification election in an outrageous violation of the Gerawan workers’ constitutional freedoms of speech and assembly.
Writing for the LA Register, CWF Executive Director Matt Patterson notes:
“The union can’t win an election fair and square, so it’s using its lackeys in government to do its dirty work, forcing workers to join their gang and pay tribute money against their will.
The sad thing: Many of these workers came to this country to escape that kind of oppression.”
The CWF digital boards are located on the West side of I-5, just South of Richards Blvd (facing South) and on US 50 half a mile West of Howe Ave (facing East) in Sacramento. They will rotate a variety of messages through September designed to alert Governor Jerry Brown to the plight of the Gerawan workers, while urging him to help them get their votes counted.
The first message shows a picture of an infant and reads “Dear Governor Brown, Take Responsibility for Your Baby. Make the ALRB Count the Votes at Gerawan.” California Governor Jerry Brown created the ALRB during his previous term as Governor back in the 1970’s.
The second shows a picture of an ankle chained to a weight labeled “UFW’ and reads “Freedom of Assembly Includes Fresno Farm Workers.”
