This week, dozens of Latino labor leaders and elected officials, including state Sen. It also exerts a powerful symbolic force. It has successfully pushed for policies such as far-reaching rules that regulate how and whether workers can labor in heat. Estimates put membership at fewer than 7,000, and some critics complain that the union has not spent enough time actually organizing workers and winning contracts.īut the union remains a source of political might in California. Those provisions, the governor said, would be “codified into law with a bill next year” that the governor and the union have vowed to support.ĭespite Cesar Chavez’s status as a national icon whose name now graces schools, parks and streets in towns across the state, the union he led has struggled in recent years. In signing the bill, Newsom also announced that his office, the UFW and the California Labor Federation had come to a “supplemental agreement” that would put a cap on the number of card-check petitions over the next five years and would allow the Agricultural Labor Relations Board to protect worker confidentiality and safety. “In the state with the largest population of farmworkers, the least we owe them is an easier path to make a free and fair choice to organize a union.”

“Farmworkers worked tirelessly and at great personal risk to keep food on America’s tables during the pandemic,” Biden said in a statement.

”īut the most powerful people in Newsom’s own party - including the president - begged to differ. A spokesperson said last month that his office “cannot support an untested mail-election process that lacks critical provisions to protect the integrity of the election and is predicated on an assumption that government cannot effectively enforce laws. Union officials said the changes are necessary to protect farmworkers from intimidation and even deportation for supporting a union.īut Newsom, who vetoed a similar measure last year, had until the eleventh hour indicated he might not sign the bill.

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