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.
