For a year we have reported on the farm workers for Gerawan putting up with high-handedness, bureaucratic delay and abuse by state labor officials. The workers entered into a contract with the United Farm Workers 20 years ago. But the UFW failed to do anything for the workers, so the workers want a divorce.

The union is a shadow of what it was under famed founder Cesar Chavez, who died in 1993. The workers don’t want to pay high dues for nothing. But the Brown administration officials have sided with the union.

The workers now are led by Silvia Lopez, featured in the nearby picture in front of Gov. Jerry Brown’s office.

According to an announcement by Americans for Tax Reform, which is siding with the workers:

Ms. Lopez will speak at a protest held at the ALRB regional offices in Visalia beginning at 3:00 p.m. today, August 26.  Supporters of the United Farm Workers were also expected to have a presence, though Center for Worker Freedom Executive Director Matt Patterson says he hopes the proceedings will unfold without incident.

“The Gerawan workers have a positive message that they want to deliver peacefully: They just want their votes counted,” said Patterson. “We hope the union, and the ALRB, will allow Ms. Lopez and her colleagues to speak their mind.”

Lopez is also challenging the ALRB in court, suing individual board members including Genevieve Shiroma, Cathryn Rivera-Hernandez, and J. Antonio Barbosa in Federal District Court for violating her First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. 

Lopez attorney Paul J. Bauer explained:

“In order to protect the rights of the farmworkers, we filed a lawsuit in federal court against the ALRB board members and regional director for violating their civil rights.  The farmworkers’ due process rights and First Amendment rights are being trampled by a group of people that will stop at nothing to keep the votes from being counted.”

Recently U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence J. O’Neill allowed the suit to move forward.

By John Seiler

The Los Angeles Times writer Robin Abcarian informs us:

“There’s no intolerance like good conservative intolerance.

“On Easter Sunday, Google incurred the wrath of the conservative Twittersphere when it chose to feature on its home page a portrait of California civil rights pioneer Cesar Chavez instead of Jesus Christ.”

Actually, the protest was foolish, not “intolerant.” For one thing, why were these religious people even looking at Google on Easter Sunday? Shouldn’t they have been in church, with their families or engaged in acts of charity?

And who really cares what Google does, anyway?

But back to the Tolerance Police at the Times. What’s “intolerant” about wishing that Easter was celebrated yesterday by Google, instead of Chavez? If Chavez’s birthday had fallen a day earlier, and Google had featured him on Saturday, nobody would have minded.

And were these just “conservatives” objecting, or other Christians? Even Latinos who revere Chavez might have wanted him celebrated by Google instead on Monday, when the state of California actually remembers him with an official state holiday, Cesar Chavez Day. If the state could move the celebration to a day after his actual birthday, why couldn’t Google?

Liberalism morphs

What’s happened is a change in liberalism, from tolerance to intolerance. When I went to the University of Michigan in 1973, most of my professors were liberals. But most of them also were highly tolerant of conservatives and libertarians. They enjoyed good discussions.

Unfortunately, modern liberals are afflicted with extreme Political Correctness. Campuses, notoriously, nowadays tolerate little dissent from the Party Line, and even have become extremely hostile to Christians.

Recently, a professor in Florida forced his students to stomp on the name of “Jesus.” Can you think of anything more “intolerant” short of actual violence?

One brave student refused. But what’s shocking is that, even though most of the students in his class likely were Christians, no others did, so indoctrinated have today’s students become to be Politically Correct and to worship P.C. professors. It was reminiscent of a Maoist “self criticism” session.

The student, Ryan Rotela, then was suspended from the school, Florida Gulag University.

After an international uproar, the school relented and ended the suspension. The P.C. prof, Dr.  Deandre Poole, since has been put on leave. I suspect that he’s still being paid, will be back next year and will be hailed as a hero by his fellow P.C. faculty.

Poole also is vice chair of the Palm Beach Democratic Party. Ah, yes, the Party of Tolerance!

I miss the old, tolerant liberals I knew 40 years ago.

Contra Robin Abcarian, today the intolerance mainly is with her fellow liberals, as her own incomprehending intolerance of “conservatives” over the Google flap shows.

Commentary

MAY 23, 2011

By DAVE ROBERTS

In my misguided and misspent youth I was a liberal idealist who supported the United Farm Workers union in its struggle for better wages and working conditions for the poor folks doing the backbreaking labor needed to put food on our tables.

I organized a boycott of non-UFW lettuce at Penn State, which went nowhere, having persuaded perhaps a handful of students to skip their salad for a day or two. On a summer break, a friend and I took a Greyhound bus to California where we spent a few days working on construction of Agbayani Village for retired Filipino farm workers in Delano (probably doing more harm than good as we wildly pounded nails) and joined the picket line where we serenaded field workers with an off-key version of “De Colores.”

Like many, I was inspired by the image of a self-sacrificing, non-violent César Chávez, the Latino Martin Luther King. It also made me feel good to champion the cause of such downtrodden workers.

In 1976, Chávez placed Proposition 14 on the California ballot. Its goal was to ensure that farm workers would have secret ballots when deciding whether they wanted to be represented by a union. A UFW flier explained why it’s so important for farm workers to be allowed to vote in secrecy:

For eleven heartbreaking years farm workers in California have been struggling for the right to a decent life for themselves and their children. And the right to vote in secret elections for a union of their choice. Last year, at last, a law was passed and a Farm Labor Board created to see that the elections were honest. Farm workers rushed to vote.

But the big corporate growers didn’t like the results of the elections, so they put pressure on a small group of state legislators and cut off funds for the Board. The result: no more elections. No more law and justice in the fields. An invitation to the growers to go back to child labor, spraying pesticides on workers, beating up farm worker organizers.

That’s why Proposition 14 is so important. The people themselves can now guarantee the right of farm workers to vote in secret elections — a right that can’t be taken away by lobbying pressures by corporate growers.

Gov. Brown Backed Secret Ballot

Prop. 14 was backed by religious leaders, unions and Democratic politicians, including Gov. Jerry Brown, who had worked with Chávez to enact the Agricultural Labor Relations Act in 1975, which Prop. 14 was seeking to fund and strengthen.

In his endorsement, Brown wrote, “I will vote yes on 14 because it is right. Because it saves taxpayers money and it will bring peace and the rule of law to the fields of California. Because it will serve farmers, farm workers and all the people of California.”

It turned out that Prop. 14 was defeated 2-1 after a strong opposition campaign was waged by growers. But funding was later restored to the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board, which oversees union elections. And much legislation has been passed in the last 35 years to ensure that wages and working conditions in the fields have improved considerably.
Ironically, that has resulted in a decreased interest among farm workers in belonging to a union. The UFW’s membership, once more than 70,000 in the 1970s, has dwindled to about 5,000.

Card Check Bill

As a result, and even more ironically, the UFW sponsored SB 104, by Senate President Pro Tem Darryl Steinberg, D-Sacramento. This “card check” bill would result in farm workers losing the right to secret balloting on whether to unionize. This will likely lead to an increase in UFW membership through intimidation and coercion of farm workers who simply want to be left alone to put in a day’s work and not have a percentage of their wage siphoned off for union dues.

So the union that once argued in favor of having secret union elections for farm workers that can’t be taken away by lobbying pressure is now using lobbying pressure to take away secret elections. Befuddled farm workers must be singing The Who’s refrain: “Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss.”

The bill easily passed the legislature due to overwhelming Democratic support and awaits a signature from the same Gov. Brown who worked with Chávez to keep farm worker balloting secret. Chávez died in 1993, and must be spinning in his grave at what’s become of his union. If Brown signs the bill, it will be one more act of exploitation against farm workers who have already suffered enough.

Several Republican Assembly members pointed out last week that increased unionization would lead to higher costs for growers. That could result in marginal farmers going out of business and more successful ones investing in increased mechanization, which would put farm workers out of work. It would also lead to higher food costs, which hurts the poorest the most.

Tim Donnelly, R-Twin Peaks, who is one of the rising GOP stars in the Capitol, made the most persuasive case against AB 104, pointing out that many farm workers are exploited illegal aliens:

I rise in opposition even though I support the cause of farm workers in the field. Right now we tolerate a system where people are abused, exploited, sold into indentured servitude and slavery. All that this bill will do is codify that exploitation and abuse, because it won’t do anything to change their status.

Right now the vast majority of those who work in our fields are here illegally. They live as second class citizens. When they can’t afford to pay the coyote, they are owned. They are virtual human slaves. This bill does nothing to address that abuse. This bill will encourage violence and intimidation as each farm worker is approached by a union rep and told they must sign a card. This is not going to protect them. This will force them into a union that will then represent itself as every union has over time.

It is a travesty that in the year 2011 to have my colleagues [sponsor this bill] instead of coming up with a solution to protect folks who have been abused for so many years. Those people who are picking the crops to feed our families, we owe it to them to come up with a guest worker program where we can serve the interest of the companies so they have a stable work force and protect the taxpayers and safeguard the workers who will then come under the protection of all of the California laws.