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Katy Grimes

Ag Labor Board Orders Employees’ Ballots Destroyed To Silences Farm Workers

On Friday April 15, 2016 the three-member California Agricultural Labor Relations Board voted to set aside the November 5, 2013 decertification election of the United Farm Workersat Gerawan Farming, and destroy the Gerawan employees’ ballots.

In other words, the ALRB is saying, “We will protect employee’s rights by destroying their ballots?”

Acting as an arm of the union, the ALRB did this to not to protect the farm workers – as is the ARLB mission – but to protect the flailing United Farm Workers labor union. Against every bit of evidence to the contrary, in doing so, the ALRB has declared by default that the employer has somehow violated the law. But in reality, the ALRB has violated the law, as I’ve chronicled in hundreds of stories, for nearly four years now.

This decision punishes the Gerawan workers, and demonstrates just how… Read More

Katy Grimes

Why Can’t California Farmers Get the Water They Need?

Part ll – California’s Political Water Wars Heating Up. Part l is HERE.

Despite some nice rainfall this year, the more than two dozenState Water Contractorsthroughout the state have been told to expect 45 percent water allocations.

A recent DailyRead More

Katy Grimes

Gov. Jerry Brown’s Minimum Wage Gift to Unions Is No Legacy

Despite all the evidence that increasing the minimum wage does little or nothing to reduce poverty, California Gov. Jerry Brown and the Democrats in the State Legislature just passed another minimum wage increase. Not one Republican in the Assembly or Senate voted for the bill, and all Democrats, save two, voted for the minimum wage increase.

The minimum wage has always been an arbitrary figure. If the arbitrary minimum wage is inflated, this also inflates prices, leaving low-wage workers spending more on everything.

This political decision by Brown will likely come back to haunt California, much as the 1999 political pension deal signed into law by Gov. Gray Davis… Read More

Katy Grimes

ALRB Board Ties to Dem Political Demagogue Richie Ross

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

Katy Grimes

ALRB Spent $10 Million To Prevent Gerawan Workers’ Ballots From Being Counted

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

Katy Grimes

New Assembly Bills Offer Union Employees (GASP) Union Choice

Two Assembly bills were just introduced addressing labor union transparency and designed to offer a choice of labor unions, and to force unions to open up their books.

Assemblywoman ShannonGrove, R-Bakersfield, is working with union employees who have been fighting the Service Employees International Union for transparency, and they’ve been educating members of their option to opt out of paying the share of dues that is used for political purposes. This is information the Union does not tell it’s members.

The bills are on behalf of the workers. Most media has reported that the bills are an attack on… Read More

Katy Grimes

CA Agriculture Labor Board Corrupted With Bias and Conflict of Interest

Genevieve Shiroma, long time member of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board, as well as a board member for the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District, is the subject of a legal brief to disqualify her from the ALRB for bias and conflicts of interest.

How could the SMUD board and the Ag labor board be tied together in a conflict?

ALRB board member Shiroma hired UFW lobbyist Richie Ross for her personal campaign the same year he successfully lobbied passage of the ALRB’s California Mandatory Mediation and Conciliation Statute. The MMC law empowers the board to write and force contracts on employers and workers.

In September 2002, then-Gov. Gray Davis signed into law SB 1156 and AB 2596, the first major amendments to the 1975 Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which was signed into law by then-Gov. Jerry Brown. The MMC law would compel Gerawan and its workers into a state-imposed “contract” that would saddle the employees with the UFW as their exclusive representative.

The UFW won an election to represent Gerawan Farming’s workers 25 years ago. But after only one bargaining session, the union disappeared and wasn’t… Read More

Katy Grimes

Gov. Brown Holding Road and Hwy Projects Hostage for Tax Votes

California state budgets no longer require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to be passed, butthere are still budget games, deals and hinky promises that happen in the process.. However, tax increases do still require two-thirds vote.

This year, Gov. Jerry Brown had proposed tax increases – a gas tax hike, a road tax for miles driven, a car registration hike, and a health plan tax… to name a few.

In order to get these tax increases approved, Brown and his administration use arm-twisting and extortive tactics on lawmakers who show resistance.

In… Read More

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