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Agricultural Labor Relations Board audit denied
BY JAKE HENSHAW
The Joint Legislative Audit Committee turned down a request from
Assemblywoman Anna Caballero, D-Salinas, for the state auditor to
investigate complaints of mishandled farmworker complaints, misused
state vehicles and staff favoritism.
"I am disappointed but I did what they asked me to do," Caballero said
of ALRB employees who asked her to request the audit.
The committee approved two other audits, which the state auditor said is
all her office can afford until later this year. But Caballero, who has
been trying to get a hearing on her proposal for a year, said she will
try again to get the ALRB audit approved.
"We find ourselves with a budget crisis, yet there are some real good
issues raised by people who really care about the ALRB [who] would like
to see it improved for farmworkers as well as for growers," Caballero
said.
The ALRB, established in 1975, conducts collective bargaining elections
and enforces unfair labor practice rules in agriculture.
In the hearing Wednesday, Navora Delossantos, an employee in the ALRB
office in Visalia, testified about delays in resolution of farmworkers'
complaints to boost agency statistics, about personal retaliation for
reporting the delays and about tainted employee examination results.
"I am here today to speak [about] a lot of things that I witnessed that
were inappropriate, misconduct and corruption within the Agricultural
Labor Relations Board," Delossantos said.
Sylvia Bueno-Casareno, who works in the ALRB Salinas office, claimed
problems with misuse of state cars and investigative delays in her
office that caused job-hunting troubles for complaining farmworkers.
"The bottom line is they have led ... taxpayers to believe, that we have
all these cases, that we need the staff and the reason that cases are
not being investigated are because we don't have the staff,"
Bueno-Casareno 'said.
"That is completely false. We have the staff, more than needed actually
and the simple fact is they are holding onto cases so we can have the
[statistics]," she added. "You have the stats, you have the funding."
ALRB officials responded that other state agencies haven't found merit
with the personnel allegations and that a new procedure to track cases
was established about a year ago.
"I can tell you that a lot of the information that you have been given
is inaccurate and the witnesses who provided it have not been in a
position to know whether it is accurate or not," said ALRB general
counsel Michael Lee.
While he opposed the proposed audit, ALRB board chairman Guadalupe
Almaraz, did not take a position on it, though he did defend the board
for initiating its own review of many of the allegations raised and for
steamlining the agency.
"We welcome an audit to help us improve," Almaraz said.
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