Farming Industry Challenges New Labor Law

Farm industry groups filed suit this week to overturn a new law aimed at resolving deadlocked labor disputes, arguing that it denies the constitutional rights of growers and workers to bargain for contracts.

The lawsuit, filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation on behalf of half a dozen grower groups around the state, challenges a farm labor mediation law championed by the United Farm Workers union and signed in September by Gov. Gray Davis.

The law permits state agriculture officials to impose mandatory mediation in cases where farm labor negotiations reach an impasse.

Filed Monday in Sacramento County Superior Court, the suit contends that state government has no business butting into contract talks between private parties and seeks to have the new law wiped off the books.

“The statute basically strips parties of their constitutional right to collectively bargain without government interference,” said David Stirling, vice president of the Pacific Legal Foundation. “It is not only bad public policy, but unconstitutional.”

The Sacramento-based public interest group filed the suit on behalf of some of the state’s most influential farm groups, including the Western Growers Assn. and the California Farm Bureau Federation.

Supporters of mandatory mediation dismissed the legal challenge, saying they’ve already looked carefully at issues that could have torpedoed the new law. They are confident they can win the legal fight and move forward with a measure they say is necessary to end decades of failed contract negotiations for farm workers.

Under the new law, farm workers can ask the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board to impose mandatory mediation in cases where contract negotiations with growers have stalled.

The mediator will have the power to propose the terms of a binding contract if the two sides can’t reach an agreement after 30 days of mediation.

Either side can appeal the contract terms to the labor relations board. The board’s decision can be appealed to the state Court of Appeal or California Supreme Court.

The lawsuit contends that the new law actually imposes binding arbitration -- not mediation -- on negotiations between farmers and workers, and that the mediation process violates various provisions of the state and U.S. constitutions, including claims that agriculture employers will be denied due process and equal protection of the law by having contracts forced upon them.

Farm groups say the issue is a matter of economic survival. They have maintained that passage of the new law would cripple the state’s $27-billion agriculture industry and put farmers out of business.

The law exempts farmers with fewer than 25 employees.

Since 1975, farm workers have voted for the UFW in secret ballot elections at 428 companies. Of those, only 185 have entered into union contracts.

“The farm workers don’t believe that growers have a claim,” union spokesman Mark Grossman said. “Farm workers have voted for years in state-supervised, secret-ballot elections, but many have never gotten what they voted for. That is what this law is about.”