Newsom Serving Agribusiness
By 
Gavin Newsom comes out of winning his recall election by…..vetoing a bill that would allow farmworkers to vote in union elections by mail.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday vetoed a bill that would have allowed farm workers to vote by mail in union elections, a change the United Farm Workers pressed for after the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year dealt a setback to its organizing practices.
Assembly Bill 616 would have allowed agricultural workers to select their collective bargaining representative through a ballot card election by voting at a physical location or mail or dropping off a ballot to the Agricultural Labor Relations Board office.
The UFW, which supported Newsom over the past several months has fought the campaign to recall him from office, had been a planning a 260-mile march this week from Tulare County to Sacramento to advocate for the bill. The march commemorates the 1968 march labor icon Cesar Chavez carried to highlight the plight of farm workers at that time.
Instead, UFW issued a statement over Twitter saying it would redirect the march to the French Laundry restaurant in Napa County, a reference to the pricey meal Newsom had with lobbyists as he asked other Californians to avoid mixed groups and indoor settings during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Workers are now marching towards the French Laundry, hoping to finally meet with the Governor,” the message read.
Ouch.
This comes after the Supreme Court’s annual anti-labor ruling overturned a 50 year old California law that allowed organizers to enter workplaces during nonworking hours, a decision with a potential huge impact on the ability of unions to organize. Glad to see California’s Democratic governor allying with Neil Gorsuch and Sam Alito to make the lives of California farmworkers worse.