SALINAS CALIFORNIAN

October 16, 2007

Governor's veto will keep farm worker unions using secret ballots

By JAKE HENSHAW
The Salinas Californian Capitol Bureau

SACRAMENTO — Farm workers in California will continue to choose their unions by secret ballot, after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed legislation Sunday that would have given them another option for organizing.

Senate Bill 180 by Sen. Carole Migden, D-San Francisco, would have allowed agricultural workers and labor the choice of using secret ballots, as now authorized when organizing membership drives, or a “card check” approach, which allows them to collect signatures of a majority of workers to establish a bargaining unit.

The veto was welcomed by Jim Bogart, president of the Grower-Shipper Association of the Central Coast, one of the many farm organizations opposed to the Migden legislation.

“The best place to make that decision (on union representation) is in the sanctity of the voting booth,” said Jim Bogart. “That way you can ensure the employee will not be subjected to any threat or coercion or intimidated.”

Anticipating a veto, Migden also amended a second bill, SB 650 by Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Pacoima, late in the session that made one change in her original bill: the new bill would terminate the card check option in 2013.

SB 180 was open-ended.

Schwarzenegger vetoed both measures.

“This ‘card-check’ process fundamentally alters an employee’s right to a secret ballot election that currently affords them the opportunity to cast a ballot privately without fear of coercion or manipulation by any interested parties,” Schwarzenegger said in his veto message.

The governor also said his administration has taken a number of steps to improve farm employees’ workplace protections in areas such as housing, labor law enforcement and hot weather coping methods. They make the bill unnecessary, he said.