State shreds ballots to ‘protect’ voters

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/sep/23/agricultural-labor-agency-paternalism-vote-shred/

By Steven Greenhut | 2:35 p.m. Sept. 23, 2015

SACRAMENTO — “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive,” wrote British novelist and theologian C.S. Lewis. In his view, a “robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep,” but rulers “who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

This quotation jumped to mind after reading about the state government’s latest and ongoing “torment” of a group of Fresno-area farm workers who for nearly two years have been trying to get the Agricultural Labor Relations Board to count its votes in a union election. Instead, the agency has tried to cram down a seemingly unwanted union contract on the workers.

I write “seemingly” because we’ll never really know what the workers wanted. In the apparent view of the agency, these workers cannot be trusted to think or vote for themselves. Last week, one of its administrative law judges issued a 192-page ruling calling for the workers’ ballots to be destroyed. Instead, they are expected to accept a contract crafted by state officials and a union without their input. It’s all for their own good, I suppose.

The dispute goes back to 1990, when the United Farm Workers held a union election at this large fruit farm. Then, as workers and farm owners explain, the UFW disappeared from the scene. It came back in 2012 and declared itself the rightful representative of the farm workers, even though few of them were around 22 years previously. In November 2013, the workers held a union decertification election that was supervised by the farm agency, but that same agency has kept the uncounted ballots in a vault.

FULL story at link.


FILE - In this April 29, 2014, file photo, Dan Gerawan, owner of at Gerawan Farming, Inc., left, talks with crew boss Jose Cabello in a nectarine orchard near Sanger, Calif. A judge in California says one of the largest fruit growers in the nation committed unfair labor practices trying to block the United Farm Workers from representing its workers. Administrative law judge Mark Soble says Gerawan Farming tainted a vote nearly two years ago by workers asked if they want the union’s representation, or not. The votes remain uncounted. (AP Photo/Scott Smith, File) The Associated Press