Fresno - Hundreds of farm workers will gather outside a California election office on election night to protest a state labor board suppressing their votes from a union decertification election.

The workers, from Fresno-based Gerawan Farming, voted to decertify the United Farm Workers (UFW) last November, but the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) locked up the ballots and is refusing to count them.

The Center for Worker Freedom (CWF) was featured in a profile by Politico on October 30.

Highlighted was the successes of CWF in helping to defeat the United Auto Workers (UAW) in the representation election for Volkswagen last February. The UAW lost in a 712-626 vote.

According to Politico:

“The (CWF) campaign culminated in a radio advertising buy in the run-up to the election, with the organization running ads in about 10 radio stations, and 13 revolving billboards with various anti-union slogan.”

Why would a union want to raise taxes on an industry that employs about 33,000 of their members?  

Labor union UNITE HERE’s recently sponsored study 12BILLION.org purports that 35 states grant jet fuel tax breaks to commercial airlines.  UNITE HERE alleges that these airlines received more than $1 billion in tax breaks on the 12 billion gallons of jet fuel they purchased in 2013. 

Editor's note:  From 2013 to 2014, CWF's Matt Patterson traveled to Tennessee regularly in his campaign against the UAW in Chattanooga.  This is what happened on one of those trips.

“Mechanical problems.”

It may not be the worst thing you can hear while sitting in a plane on the tarmac in Washington, D.C., waiting to take flight.

Wait, maybe it is.

Center For Worker Freedom's Executive Director Matt Patterson writes this week in The Sacramento Bee, responding to the United Farm Workers (UFW) Spokesman Marc Grossman. 

"By forcing the workers into a contract (against their will) that will siphon 3 percent of their pay to union bosses, the board is effectively confiscating property in direct violation of the 14th Amendment.

It’s not only the workers who need protection from the two-headed beast that is the UFW/ALRB – it’s the U.S. Constitution."

Center For Worker Freedom

722 12th Street NW Suite #400

Washington, D.C. 20005

On October 1, more than 200 Gerawan farmworkers gathered at the Radisson Hotel in Fresno on Wednesday to protest their treatment at the hands of the California Agricultural Relations Board (ALRB). The farm workers are angry because the ALRB refuses to count their votes from a decertification election last November.

Among the speakers at the protest were Tal Cloud, President of the Conservative Lincoln Club, Assemblyman Jim Patterson (R-Fresno), Assemblywoman Shannon Grove, (R-Bakersfield), and Fresno City Council Members Clint Olivier and Steve Brandau.