ENT Section F / Page 1Los Angeles Herald ExaminerSundayApril 1, 1984

l;>eukmejian'sjann1abor polides may bring back cries oj 'boycott' and 'strike'

Sowing seeds of labor unrest~ . ~

..lSy Dick Meister

Remember'? The red ban­ners ofthe United FarmWorkers Union wavinghigh above demonstra­

~rs everywhere. The chants of'fboycottl" The cries of "'strike!"'tbe demand of UFW President~sar Chavez and other farm­worker advocates for unionrights.

. Thanks to Go\". Deukmejian$d his grower allies, those scenesare about to be repeated. For thegovernor has just about VOidedthe AgriCUltural Labor Relations~t that finally granted the de­qpnd of the UFW and its support·eJ'S in 1975.:: The nine-year-<:>Id law remains

Qi the books, certainly, as still theonly law in the country to grantfarm workers the collective-bar-

.I't);ck Meisler. 8 San Francisco writer.Ji co-author of "A Long TimeComing: The Struggle to UnionizeAmerica's Farm Workers. ",...

gaining rights granted most non­farm workers .w years beforethrough federal law. But the statelaw's effectiveness has been' vir­tually destroyed by Deukrnejian'scuts in the budget of the agencythat administers it, the Agricul­tural Labor Relations Board, andby his appointment of an anti­labor general- counsel to run theALRB.

The trouble began with thegovernor's austerity budget of lastyear. Although cutting other stateagency budgets by an average of 4percent, Deuk!nejian slashed 27percent - $2.6 million - fromthe already sparse ALRB budget.- That forced the board to re­

duce its staff of 190 by almost one­fourth. Since then, says a veteranboard staffer, "We've barely beenfunctioning at all."

That may be an understate­ment. The agency has been takingan average of almost five monthsto rule on complaints and almostai long to set up union representa·tion elections and certify the

results.Most of the complaints involve

growers who refuse to bargain orreach contract agreements witllthe UFW .despite their employees'

.votes for UFW representation,who fire union sympathizers,deny union organizers access totheir workers and otherwise vio­late the law.

The overwhelmed farm laborboard has a backlog of more than1,100 such complaints - a num­ber that .has been grOWing stead·i1y since Deukmejian imposed thebudget cut.

Growers, who contributed,more than $1 million to thegovernor's election campaign,naturally were "thrilled" byDeukmejian's action, as lobbyistRay Gabriel of the CaliforniaFarm Bureau Federation de­clared.

They ate as pleased by Deuk­mejian's refusal to propose anyincrease in this year's ALRBbudget, despite the board's wors-

. ening problems, the $950 million

reserve in the governor's overallbudget and his proposals forincreasing the budgets of mostother agencies.

But pr-obably the growers'greatest pleasure bas come fromDeutmejian's appointment offormer Republican AssemblymanDavid Sterling as the ALRB'sgeneral counsel. That made Ster·ling in effect the chief prosecutor,with the power to decide whethera complaint will be dismissed,delayed. settled administrativelyby regional officials or his head·quarters staff. or brought to theboard for decision.

Growers hardly could haveasked for more. Sterling votedagainst. labor's position 80 percentof the time during his six years inthe Assembly, supported the gov­ernor's ALRB budget cut and isopenly hostile to the board'smembers and much of its staff forwhathe attacks as their pro-union"bias."

L.abofIF-4 ~

tions - stem from an attempt byDeukmejian to greatly weakenthe farm labor law.

"He's trying to dismantle theagency," notes board memberJerome Waldie, a former con­gressman from Contra CostaCounty.

"He's telllng growers they canget away with anything," addsUFW official Roberto De La Cruz.

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Deukmejian won't have thepower to implement his plansfully until 1986, when the stag­gl'red (our·year terms of a major­ity of incumhent board memberswill have expired and the gover­nor will be able to replace themwith appointees who share ·hlsviews.

The UFW can't expect muchhelp from the board in themeantime, however - not withSterling running the show. Norcan the union expect much fromthe Legislature. After all, theSenate confirmed Sterling as gen·eral counsel - despite the UFW'sintensive lobbying, despite theprofessed ideological support forthe union by most members of theLegislature's Democratic major­Ity, even despite the UFW's $750,000 in contributions to theDemocrats' 1982 election cam­paigns.

That will mean, sclYs CesarCha.vez, that the century-longstruggle between California'sfarm workers and growers willmove once more from Sacra­mento "out to the streets and Intothe fields."

"Now that we no longer haveaccess to the law," says Chavez,much of the money and effortthat previously went into political'activities aimed at guaranteeingand furthering the UFW's rightsunder the law will go Into directaction.

Instead of complaining to theALRB about growers who refused'to sign union contracts, the UfWwill wage strikes and "high-tecbboycotts" against the growers'produce and the stores seIlIng theproduce, using computers andhigh-speed presses for extensivedirect-mail and telephone cam·palgns.

The UFW's concentration onlegal and polit.ical activity sinceenactment of the farm labor lawand the slowdown in enforcementof the law has caused greatproblems for the union. But theUFW has not forgotten how tpwage the boycotts that were thekey to winning the law. In Janu­ary. for instance, the union'shoycott pressures (orccf! LuckyStores to pull ocr the shelves of182 markets In four stat.es lettucefrom Salinas grower BruceChurch, a primary UFW targetwho had been selling fully 10percent of his lettuce to thesupermarket chain.

"Sure, Gov. Deukmejian haseliminated the effectiveness ofthe law," says Democrat RichardFloyd of Hawthorne, chairman ofthe Assembly's Labor Committee."But Cesar Chavez and the UnitedFarm Workers will do very wellwithout it. The ALRB did notcreate the UFW. We're going tosee a lot of heavy-duty actionfrom now on."

Chavez agrees: "Unions aren'tcontrolled by governments. Thr.yare very hard to destroy....

LaborContinued from page F·1

Most of the members and staffsee the Agricultural Labor Rela­tions Act as purposely "biased" infavor of farm unionization, just asthe National Labor Relations Actof 1935, which excludes farmworkers, clearly was "biased"lnfavor of industrial unionization.But Sterling - like Deukmejianand the growers - doesn't agree,even though the "bias" was ob­vious in the debate precedingenactment o( the (arm labor law.

The law was envisioned as adevice to grant the protection ofunionization to the state's se­verely exploited farm workersand to end the cOnflict that wasoccurring hecause of the workerattempts to win union rights Inthe absence of legal procedures.

Sterling nevertheless main­tains that the law must be carriedout in the "balanced" mannerfavored by the governor andgrowers. 'n practice, that hasmeant actions which have stym­ied the ALRB at least as much asthe budget cut.

During the 14 months as gen·eral counsel, Sterling has:. 0 Ordered his own staff in

Sacramento to review all rulingsmade against growers in theboard's regional offices. In manycases, this has delayed actionbeyond the short harvest seasonscommon in farming, so that work­ers whose rights had been vio­lated were gone by the time aruling was Issued. It also hassubjected workers to hostility(rom employers, who know thatworkers' complaints will not beruled on for a long time -If ever.

o Unilaterally withdrawn atleast three complaints Issued pre·.viously against growers andmoved to lessen the penaltieslevied against some other viola­tors. In one case In Bakersfield,Sterling ordered an ALRB lawyerto settle for less th~n eveh thegrower acknowledgetl owing em·ployees in hack pay' for his five­year-old refusal to bargain withtheir union. During settlementtalks with a regional board offi­cial, who charged the grower withowing $400,000, the grower admit·ted owing $314,000. But aftertalking with a lawyer for theWestern Growers Association,Sterling ordered the penalty cutto $200,000.

o Transferred to other regionsstaff members whose conduct hadbeen criticized by growers In theregions where they had beenworking.

Since Sterling began takingsuch actions, the average waltbetween the filing and resolutionof complaints has Increased by1J,I, months, and the number ofcomplaints outstanding at anytime has more than doubled.

Sterling blames that on "ex­tremely biased" board and staffmembers who insist on granting"100 percent of what the unionwants" in settling complaints,rather than compromising ­being "more businesslike," in thewords of growers lobbyist Ga­briel.

Courts, however, have rejected95 percent of the grower appealsof the ALRB's supposedly biasedrulings. It's much more likely thatthe delays - and Sterling's. ac·