From: a student (fsu_usas@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Sep 13 2002 - 15:19:12 EDT
******PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY*******
Fellow USASistas,
Currently the Governer of California has a bill on his
desk that would allow farmworkers to seek binding
arbitration if they can't reach a contract agreement
with a grower. This will essentialy force growers to
recognize the farmoworker union after its been
organized in the state of California. However the
Governor has not yet signed this important bill
because of pressure from the growers themselves. EMAIL
GOVERNOR DAVIS AND TELL HIM TO SIGN THESE BILLS INTO
ACTION. The farmworkers in California and around the
country need your help. See below for an article on
the issue
You can find a sample letter at the United Farmworkers
website located in the link below
http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/SB_1736_Gov1
thank you,
Gabriel Pendas
FSU-SAS
Southeast Rep of the CC
Davis in jam over farm legislation
By VIC POLLARD, Californian Sacramento Bureau
e-mail: vpollard@bakersfield.com
Sunday September 01, 2002, 11:06:49 PM
The two bills sit on Gov. Gray Davis' desk,
practically glowing with political radioactivity.
The state's business community, especially
agriculture, wants him to veto both.
Labor unions, especially the United Farm Workers, are
pleading with him to sign one of them.
Both groups are major contributors to Davis'
campaigns. He is being forced to choose between two
sets of friends. The losers may never forget or
forgive.
The bills are different versions of plans sought by
the UFW to force growers to sign labor contracts after
workers have voted to unionize. The union says most
growers drag their feet for years, making a hollow
promise of California's historic 1975 farm labor
organizing law.
The process by which the bills got to the governor's
desk involved old-fashioned bare-knuckled politics at
their best, the kind that are seldom seen in today's
world of buttoned-down corporate lobbyists.
The first of the bills was introduced on behalf of the
union in February by Sen. John Burton, the powerful
president of the state Senate. Burton is a fiery
liberal Democrat from San Francisco whose loyalty to
the labor movement is infinite.
That measure would allow workers to seek binding
arbitration if they can't reach a contract agreement
with a grower. It worked its way through the
legislative process largely on party-line votes.
It drew intense opposition from farmers, who said they
would constitute the only major private industry
forced to submit to third-party arbitration in labor
disputes.
But it didn't attract much public attention until it
passed both houses of the Legislature in mid-August.
The four Republicans who represent Kern County --
Assembly members Roy Ashburn and Phil Wyman and
Senators Chuck Poochigian and Pete Knight -- joined
the united GOP front against it.
But one of the county's two Democrats, Sen. Jim Costa
of Fresno, provided the only break in Democratic
ranks. Costa voted against the measure in a move
consistent with his moderate record and his loyalty to
the farming industry in his district.
No one would have been surprised if the county's other
Democrat, Assemblyman Dean Florez of Shafter, had also
voted against it. Despite his Latino heritage, he has
a pro-business record similar to Costa's.
But this issue is different, Florez
said.
"I've always voted pretty much with growers and ag,
but on this issue, it's an issue of fairness," Florez
said.
He added that it is also a litmus test for ethnic
loyalty.
"It's a Latino issue," he said.
But he said it wasn't an easy decision for him and it
won't be any easier for Davis.
"This is going to be a real test of who the governor
is," Florez said.
The pressure on Florez was evident as a fellow
lawmaker interrupted this interview to tell him that a
delegation of grower organizations was waiting to
lobby him on the issue.
The bill had no sooner passed the Legislature than the
governor began to send signals that he probably would
veto it.
His staff reminded everyone that when the governor
signed a UFW-backed bill last year to crack down on
unscrupulous farm labor contractors, he sent a letter
asking the Legislature not to send him any more major
farm labor measures for a while.
Burton was furious.
"If he vetoes this bill, it will be the worst mistake
of his political career," Burton said. The Senate
president threatened to torpedo Davis' appointees and
legislation for the next two years.
In addition, the UFW launched the kind of campaign for
public support that the late Cesar Chavez perfected in
the 1960s and 1970s to get the Agricultural Labor
Relations Act passed.
Union members and supporters began a 10-day march from
Merced to Sacramento, with TV news cameras at every
stop.
The march concluded with a massive rally, a sea of red
union flags and chanting supporters around the corner
of the Capitol building from the governor's office.
It was pressure the governor couldn't ignore.
The next day, Marty Morgenstern, head of the
governor's personnel department, requested a meeting
with UFW President Arturo Rodriguez to discuss a
possible compromise.
The two sides differ on what was said in the meeting,
but Burton quickly introduced a new version of the
bill. This one dropped the demand for arbitration. It
provided instead for a mediator to listen to both
sides in the contract dispute and then submit a report
for approval by the Agricultural Labor Relations
Board.
Union officials said they accepted everything
Morgenstern offered except a provision that could end
the program after a two-year tryout.
"We accepted 90 percent of what the governor wanted,"
said UFW spokesman Marc Grossman.
But farmers argued that the second bill was no
different from the first because it would still force
a contract on a grower without his approval.
The new proposal whizzed through the Legislature last
week, again largely on party-line votes, with Florez
in favor and Costa in opposition.
But the politics didn't become any gentler.
In the Assembly, Latino lawmakers tried to block
approval of Costa's proposed $10 billion bond issue
for a high-speed rail system in retaliation for his
vote against the farm labor bill. Assembly Speaker
Herb Wesson eventually persuaded them to relent.
And for the same reason, Latinos and some liberal
Democrats in the Senate initially voted against a
Costa bill to allocate money from the 2000 water bond
issue for the little Tulare County town of Alpaugh,
whose water system has failed. They later approved a
compromise version.
But the story didn't end there.
UFW officials, apparently worried that the governor
would veto the second bill because it didn't have the
cutoff date he asked for, agreed to a last-minute
compromise.
Late Saturday evening, the measure was amended to end
the program after five years, instead of two years,
and place a cap of 75 on the number of contracts that
could be settled with the mediation procedure.
Now, both UFW bills sit on the governor's desk, where
they are definitely unwelcome.
There's not much doubt he will veto the first one, but
will he sign the compromise measure?
He hasn't said one way or another.
His friends in the agriculture industry don't like it
much better than the first one.
And his friends in the labor movement like it a whole
lot less than the first one.
But Florez, who helped broker the final compromise,
said he thinks the governor can go along with it.
"I think he'll sign it," Florez said.
__________________________________________________
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