Farmworkers in NY and CA File Federal Challenges Against Statutes Letting Union Bosses Seize Control Without Employee Vote
Workers contend that “card check” unionization method leads to false claims of majority union support, intimidation, and constitutional violations
Washington, DC (May 27, 2025) – Agricultural workers from New York and California have just filed federal complaints to challenge laws in both states that permit United Farm Workers (UFW) union officials to force them under union control using highly suspect tactics. Both sets of workers are receiving free legal aid from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys.
In New York, farmworkers Ricardo Bell and Jean Fenel Estrame, who work for Porpiglia Farms in Marlboro and Cherry Lawn Farms in Sodus respectively, are challenging the so-called Farm Laborers’ Fair Labor Practices Act (FLFLPA). In California, Wonderful Nurseries employees Claudia Chavez, Maria Gutierrez, and 18 others are challenging portions of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act (ALRA).
The New York agricultural employees are challenging the FLFLPA because, among other things, it lets union officials sweep to power through the coercive “card check” unionization method. The California farmworkers assert that the ALRA forces employees and employers alike to accept government-mandated union contracts after such coercion has occurred, and challenge card check itself in a similar state court case.
The card check process lacks the security of a secret ballot vote, and exposes workers to intimidation and manipulation from union officials who seek to collect enough cards to claim “majority support” among workers. Under the rules of both California’s Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) and New York’s Public Employment Relations Board (PERB), a union that presents the agency with cards obtained from a majority of workers immediately gains certification as the workers’ monopoly bargaining agent.
Charges of improper behavior in obtaining this status, including union lies and coercion while collecting cards, can only be dealt with after the union is certified – if at all. Further, under both statutes, certification starts a countdown to a government-imposed union contract that can trap workers in union ranks for years.
Even worse, Bell and Estrame’s complaint argues that New York’s FLFLPA violates the U.S. Constitution because it lacks basic provisions to guard workers from union boss malfeasance. The statute “does not require that unions fairly represent employees, does not give employees a right to refrain from union activity, and does not give employees a right to file unfair labor practice charges against a union,” the complaint says.
In the Wonderful Nurseries case, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California permitted the 20 employees to intervene in a lawsuit against the ALRB. The employees’ current complaint was then filed on May 19. Meanwhile, in New York, Bell and Estrame filed a motion on May 21 seeking to intervene in a suit in which the New York State Vegetable Growers Association, Porpiglia Farms, and other farm operators are challenging the FLFLPA.
Workers Challenged Union’s Rise to Power Through Deceitful Techniques
Wonderful Nurseries employees sought to intervene in a case challenging UFW bosses’ card check organizing campaign at first before the ALRB, after the agency certified the union’s questionable claims of majority support. In unfair labor practice charges before the ALRB, Chavez and Gutierrez described multiple fabrications – and even discriminatory behavior – that UFW union bosses used to get employees to sign authorization cards, including “representing that certain COVID-19-related public benefits available to farmworkers required signatures on union membership cards…that union membership cards were not, in fact, union membership cards to be used in any UFW organizing efforts…presenting to strictly Spanish-speaking discriminatees union membership cards only in English…[and] presenting to illiterate discriminatees union membership cards and misrepresenting their content and/or significance.”
Complaint: NY Ag Labor Statute Also Disrupts Workers’ Immigration Status
In addition to citing issues with card check, Bell and Estrame’s complaint notes that the FLFLPA’s imposition of UFW bargaining control over them interferes with Bell’s legal status in the country under the H2-A agricultural visa program. “The inclusion of H2-A employees in the FLFLPA statutory scheme and in bargaining units certified by PERB under the statute is preempted by the federal government’s general power to regulate the field of immigration…” the complaint says. According to the complaint, that overreach by the NY statute violates the Supremacy and Contract Clauses of the U.S. Constitution.
“These farmworkers from New York and California are challenging the use of so-called ‘card check’ organizing campaigns in the agricultural sector. But they really speak for countless workers across industries who have faced intimidation, harassment, and other rights violations during card check campaigns just so union officials can seize bargaining control over them and collect dues,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Workers everywhere in the country should have the right to vote in a secure secret ballot election on whether they want a union. And, just as importantly, they should have a right to refrain from union activity and challenge union boss misdeeds if a union they oppose does gain control over them. Card check is a process designed to trample workers’ individual rights.”
New York Farmworkers Seek to Challenge ‘Card Check’ & Uproot UFW Union Bosses
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, January/February 2025 edition. To view other editions of Foundation Action or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
Farmworkers fight union argument that New York labor law lets union bosses trap workers forever
Porpiglia Farms workers, who were targeted by an aggressive UFW ‘card check’ campaign against the farmworkers, are banding together to vote the union out and ensure that union officials reap what they have sown.
MARLBORO, NY – In 2020, the New York State Assembly passed a Big Labor-backed law that granted union officials sweeping new powers to impose their monopoly bargaining control over the state’s farmworkers. Since New York is one of 24 states that lacks a Right to Work law, the law authorizes union bosses to force farmworkers to pay union dues or else be fired.
But that’s not all: New York labor law went even further by mandating “card check” organizing, in which union officials deny workers a secret ballot union vote and instead claim majority support by submitting cards ostensibly showing worker support. These cards are often collected through pressure tactics, intimidation, or even threats.
But even that dramatic increase in power over the agricultural sector and agricultural workers is not enough for United Farm Workers (UFW) union officials.
UFW tyrants are advancing the cynical argument that, under New York law, workers can be forced into union ranks but can never escape forced unionism. They argue this to counter a recent National Right to Work Foundation-backed union decertification case for employees of Porpiglia Farms, an apple farm in the Hudson Valley of New York.
NY Fruit Farmworkers Seek Union Ouster After ‘Card Check’
Porpiglia employee Ricardo Bell submitted a petition last year in which he and his coworkers asked the New York Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) to hold a vote at the orchard on whether to remove the UFW. (Despite its name, PERB is responsible for enforcing labor law in both New York’s public and agricultural sectors.)
In late 2024, Foundation attorneys filed a brief for Bell countering union officials’ absurd argument that one card check drive should lock employees in a union forever. Additionally, more Foundation-backed decertification cases are sprouting up in both New York and other Big Labor-dominated states for farmworkers who are rejecting UFW officials’ card check schemes.
Brief Challenges Theory That Workers Have No Right to Remove Incumbent Union
Bell filed his decertification petition with Foundation legal aid after UFW union officials seized power at his workplace through a hasty card check unionization drive. His newest filing attacks union bosses’ contention that once a union is certified as the monopoly union “representative” of a work unit, there can be no option to remove it.
“[New York labor law] does not indicate that employees have a single chance at self-organization,” the brief says. “If that were the case, the very action of choosing a representative under [New York labor law] would deprive employees of the ability to exercise [their rights] in perpetuity….”
Foundation-Backed Workers Battle UFW ‘Card Checks’ Across Country
Since Bell’s filing, Foundation attorneys have also assisted in a union decertification effort for workers at Cherry Lawn Fruit Farms near Rochester, NY, who were targeted by a similar UFW card check campaign. These two groups of New York farmworkers join Foundation-backed employees of Wonderful Nurseries in California in challenging the UFW’s tactics.
Wonderful Nurseries workers still have multiple unfair labor practice charges pending against UFW bosses for deceptive behavior during an early 2024 card check drive. The charges detail UFW agents lying about the true purpose of cards that they collected from workers, and harassing workers who now back an effort to vote the union out.
“The aggressive and often demeaning tactics that UFW union officials use to seize control over agricultural workers show clearly why ‘card check’ is a bad idea in the agricultural sector, the public sector, and in any sector,” commented National Right to Work Foundation Vice President and Legal Director William Messenger. “UFW officials are arguing that workers should have little or no chance at all to challenge a union’s ascent to power by this process.
“The idea that workers have no ability to eject a union once it is installed in power further demonstrates that this is not about workers’ choices at all, only about union bosses’ power over workers, even when workers overwhelmingly want nothing to do with union bosses’ so-called ‘representation,’” added Messenger.
Wonderful Nurseries Workers Hit UFW Union with Charges Detailing Fraudulent Union Campaign, Illegal Discrimination
Charges: Union gained “majority status” through false pretenses and union agents are cracking down on workers that express opposition
Bakersfield, CA (April 26, 2024) – Claudia Chavez and Maria Gutierrez, two workers at food and drink company Wonderful Nurseries LLC’s Wasco, CA, grapevine nursery, have filed charges against the United Farm Workers (UFW) union. They maintain that UFW agents fraudulently obtained membership cards from employees and later used this as a basis to demand monopoly-bargaining power over Wonderful employees statewide. Chavez and Gutierrez filed their charges at the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) with free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys.
The ALRB is the California state agency responsible for governing labor relations in the state’s agricultural sector, which includes overseeing union attempts to gain bargaining control at farms and other facilities. Chavez and Gutierrez’s charges detail that UFW union officials installed themselves at Wonderful Nurseries through “card check,” which bypasses workers’ right to vote in secret on the union and instead relies on membership (or “authorization”) cards collected by union officials, sometimes under dubious circumstances.
The card check process lacks the security of a secret ballot vote, and exposes workers to intimidation and manipulation from union officials who seek to collect enough cards to claim “majority support” among workers. Under ALRB rules, a union that presents the agency with cards obtained from a majority of workers is immediately certified as the monopoly bargaining agent, a status that can only be challenged after the fact.
Chavez and Gutierrez argue that UFW union officials “by artifice, fraud, deceit, misrepresentation, and/or coercion” got them and many of their coworkers to sign membership cards for the union and the union falsely “represent[ed] itself as having obtained the support of a majority of the employees” afterward. Chavez and Gutierrez also contend that UFW bosses are now illegally forbidding employees from revoking the fraudulently-obtained cards, and are harassing and retaliating against employees who oppose the union.
“UFW union officials deceived us just so they could gain power in our workplace,” Chavez and Gutierrez commented. “Instead of just letting us vote in secret on whether we want a union, they went around lying and threatening to get cards and now are cracking down on anyone who speaks out against the union. We hope the ALRB listens to us and prosecutes the union for its illegal acts.”
Union Officials Spread Lies About Union Cards and Engaged in Discrimination to Obtain Signatures
Chavez and Gutierrez’s charges describe multiple fabrications – and even discriminatory behavior – that UFW union bosses used to get employees to sign authorization cards, including “representing that certain COVID-19-related public benefits available to farmworkers required signatures on union membership cards…that union membership cards were not, in fact, union membership cards to be used in any UFW organizing efforts…presenting to strictly Spanish-speaking discriminatees union membership cards only in English…[and] presenting to illiterate discriminatees union membership cards and misrepresenting their content and/or significance.”
With the union installed and UFW agents not letting workers revoke their illicitly-obtained memberships in the union, Chavez and Gutierrez note that UFW union officials are now “engaging in a campaign of harassment, libel, slander, and intimidation against [employees who are] exercising their right of free speech and/or protest under [California labor law] to oppose UFW representation.” News reports suggest that scores of Wonderful Nurseries workers have engaged in outdoor demonstrations against the union, declaring “We don’t want a union, listen to our voices, don’t ignore us.”
In addition to the ALRB charges, Chavez and Gutierrez, along with a dozen other coworkers, seek to intervene in the ongoing ALRB case in which Wonderful Nurseries is challenging the union’s card check majority “certification” as improperly based on cards collected through fraud and other improper means. Foundation staff attorneys represent the group of workers seeking to intervene in that case to defend their right not to be placed under union monopoly control as a result of UFW organizers’ illicit tactics.
“UFW union officials have treated Wonderful Nurseries workers as pawns to be used in their pursuit of power, deceiving them with no regard for their rights and now engaging in retaliation against those who exercise their free speech rights against the union,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Their situation above all shows the glaring flaws of the ‘card check’ process, in which workers are denied a chance to vote in secret on a union and are left exposed to a multitude of illegal union tactics.”
