The Sacramento Bee just published an article featuring go-to Democrat campaign consultant, longtime lobbyist, and Godfather of the United Farm Workers, Richie Ross.

The Bee probably did not to intend to, but the article cements Ross’s intertwining and conflicting roles, like a reptilian shapeshifter, synonymous with the UFW and California Agricultural Labor Relations Board member Genevieve Shiroma, as well as his consulting business and allegiances to elected state… Read More

The Agricultural Labor Relations Board has spent$10.8 million to prevent Gerawan Farming Workers 2013 votes from being counted – more than $4,100 per vote to deny farmworkers their legal rights to be heard.

The Agricultural Labor Relations Board is also being sued for bias and conflicts of interest, and has been found actively and openly working on behalf of the United Farm Workers Labor union, rather than farm workers. And this takes money… a lot of money.

Growing the ALRB

Who says jobs are hard to come by? There have been significant… Read More

In a provocative and electrifying legal move, Gerawan Farming Company employee Silvia Lopez filed a legal brief to disqualify ALRB Board Member Genevieve Shiroma from the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, for bias and conflicts of interest.

Lopez cites evidence of Shiroma’s close political ties with the United Farm Workers union, and long time Democrat political operative Richie Ross. Silvia Lopez, a San Joaquin Valley farm worker, filed legal documents detailing payments over $120,000 from Shiroma to United Farm Workers’ Lobbyist Richie Ross, and documented Shiroma’s financial support of the author of a bill designed to help the UFW force itself on workers. UFW is the same union trying to force itself on the employees where Lopez works, as Lopez has fought for two years for her co-workers right to vote. Shiroma made the payments to the UFW’s lobbyist while she sat in judgment of issues directly involving that union, and while the workers ballots remain uncounted in a government vault

In 2013, I did an investigation of Shiroma and found some startling conflicts.

“In 1998, voters… Read More

There’s more good news for Gerawan Farming! Superior CourtJudge Timothy Frawley finds that the Agricultural Labor Relations Board IS subject to the California Public Records Act.

For several yearsI’ve been writing about Gerawan Farming in Fresno, and the company’s gutsy refusal to cave under the pressure of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board’s denial of farmworkers’ rights to vote for or against unionization.

Gerawan recently was granted a significant win by Sacramento Superior Court Judge Timothy Frawley, who agreed to the Gerawan’s request for documents in an unfair labor practice… Read More

Sacramento Superior Court Judge Timothy Frawley partially granted Gerawan Farming Company’s request for documents in an unfair labor practice complaint filed by the Agricultural Labor Relations Board. Frawley’stentative rulingcame out Thursday, prior to a court hearing Friday.

The tentative ruling is a win for Gerawan Farming and its employees. The court says that all communications between the ALRB and the General Counsel concerning the Temporary Restraining Order application authorization must be… Read More

After years ofintense government and union harassment by theAgricultural Labor Relations Board and the United Farm Workers labor union,Gerawan Farming Inc. notified its workers that effective February 25, 2016, the company will fully close its entire table grape operation, in the County of Fresno. Pursuant to the Federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, known as the WARN Act, Gerawan has been forced into a position of closing an entire arm of its farming operations because of California government assisting a labor union attempt to take over a large company.And Gov. Jerry Brown has not once intervened to stop the unlawful harassment by the union or his own state agency.

The table grape operation closure does not affect any of the employees’ employment in other Gerawan farming operations, but now thousands of farm workers will lose well-paying farm jobs because of California’s corrupt state government. Gerawan always exceeds industry average wages and are the first to increase wages. Gerawan’s website shows their hourly wage for grape packline as $16.27, and upwards of $20.00 per… Read More

This is the second part in a series; Part l is here.

California businesses are being targeted for retribution through a bill passed by the Legislature and signed into lawby Gov. Brown October 10, rewriting the definition of the labor rules governing piece-rate compensation in California.

Assembly Bill 1513 unfairly singles out two of the largest fruit growers in the San Joaquin Valley, for discriminatory treatment, based on demands that these two companies be excluded from protection under the bill’s affirmative defense. Both companies are targets of United Farm Workers unionizing efforts.

It is however, a violation of the U.S. Constitution to single out members of a group so as to inflict punishment on them without a judicial trial (United States v. Lovett).

Fowler Packing Company and Gerawan Farming are the victims of an injustice done at the behest of the… Read More

The IRS scandal in the headlines for several years revealed the Internal Revenue Service developed a scheme to prosecute conservatives who publicly oppose President Obama’s policies.

California Gov. Jerry Brown and his legislative Democrats have just accomplished a similar scheme with the passage of a bill targeting two large agriculture businesses, which dared to challenge the illegal stranglehold on Brown’s appointed Agriculture Labor Relations Board by the waning United Farm Workers labor union.

Family owned and operatedFowler Packing Company and Gerawan Farming are targets of Assembly Bill 1513, which unfairly carves-out the two employers who have long been targeted for UFW unionizing efforts, from the limited safe harbor provisions in the recently passed and signed bill.

Both large employers and growers, Fowler Packing grows peaches, nectarines, plums and mandarins, and Gerawan grows nectarines, peaches and grapes.

Wag the… Read More