Bill in California would help farmworkers form unions

SACRAMENTO, Calif. The temperature was nearly 100 degrees as 17-year-old Maria Vasquez Jimenez pruned grapes for nine hours at a vineyard near Stockton in California’s Central Valley.By the end of the day, the pregnant teen was dead from heat stroke, and her death set off renewed calls among union advocates for greater protections for farmworkers. But in the two years since, efforts to unionize workers have largely been unsuccessful.

Unions claim that’s because employers have illegally interfered with union elections, and their Democratic supporters pushed a bill through the California Legislature last week that will automatically declare a union victory if employer misconduct is shown. The bill is awaiting action by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Between 307,000 and 450,000 people work on California farms, depending on the season, according to the state Department of Food and Agriculture. But fewer than 16,000 full-time farmworkers belong to a union, and a tally by the state’s Agricultural Labor Relations Board found 40 percent of agricultural labor elections between 2000 and 2007 resulted in a vote against representation.Critics say the bill passed last week is simply an effort by its sponsor, the United Farm Workers, and other unions to boost their anemic numbers by – in the words of the California Farm Bureau Federation – “foisting union representation” on employees.

Nearly one out of every five union workers in the U.S. lives in California, although union membership among agriculture and forestry workers is low.Under a system established in 1975, the union election process begins when a majority of a farm’s employees sign authorization cards indicating their desire to put unionization to a secret-ballot vote. Workers submit those cards to the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, which calls for an election.

The bill passed last week, SB1474, would not change that. However, it stipulates that in cases of proven employer misconduct, the authorization cards would be considered evidence of workers’ desire to organize, and a union would be authorized.”This bill is about simple parity and basic equality and something positive for some of the hardest-working people in our state,” said its author, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento.

While the current system allows tainted election results to be thrown out, union advocates say there’s nothing to keep employers from interfering in subsequent elections. And, since many farmworkers don’t speak English and rely on their jobs to support extended families, they are particularly vulnerable to intimidation by anti-union employers.”Given the long history of illegal conduct by some growers, this bill has incredible significance for farm workers and will even the playing field in terms of available remedies that the (agriculture board) has at its disposal,” said Mark Schacht, deputy director of the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation.

The bill’s opponents, including the farm bureau and the California Chamber of Commerce, say the agricultural board thoroughly investigates all reports of employer misconduct and there’s no evidence large numbers of farmworkers are being blocked from joining unions.

“There is an option right now to pursue claims of unfair labor practice, and the unions have not availed themselves of that to a significant extent,” said Rich Matteis, administrator for the farm bureau.The Irvine-based Western Growers Association issued a statement Friday predicting the bill would result in unions bullying the agriculture board into setting aside results from valid secret-ballot elections.

The United Farm Workers said that won’t happen but acknowledged union membership was likely to grow if it became law.”We certainly hope this will lead to a system where farmworkers have the right to participate in a fair election and choose to join a union if that’s what they want,” said Merlyn Calderon, UFW’s national vice president.

First, however, Schwarzenegger would have to sign the bill – an outcome that is far from guaranteed.The Republican governor has vetoed four broader bills intended to offer alternatives to secret ballots, a system he has described as crucial to maintaining the integrity of the election process.(AP)

California proposes trading program to cut emissions

California officials on Tuesday issued the nation’s first blueprint for a broad-based cap-and-trade plan, an innovative and controversial effort to use market forces to control global warming.The ambitious program would cap most of the state’s greenhouse gases, including those from more than 600 power plants, refineries, cement plants and other big factories. It would allow companies to buy and sell emission allowances among themselves to reach an overall goal of cutting planet-warming pollutants 15% below today’s levels by 2020.

The state’s action comes as Congress wrestles with a cap-and-trade bill for planet-heating emissions. Legislation passed by the House is stalled in the Senate.”California is first out of the box,” California Air Resources Board Chairman Mary Nichols said.Regulators estimated that California’s program could cost industry as much as $8 billion a year by 2020 if carbon trades at its current price on the European market of $20 per ton. European nations have operated a cap-and-trade program for the last five years.

But industry groups warned that the state’s push to control greenhouse gases could cost more than twice as much, and burden consumers with more expensive electricity, gas, housing and consumer goods.The measure is a signature issue for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has pushed for flexible market-based solutions to environmental problems. He praised the proposal as a way to “drive innovation and generate green jobs.”The 135-page rule, designed with input from national academic, industry and environmental experts at 21 public workshops this year, is likely to influence the shape of eventual federal regulations.But the current draft leaves several controversial elements unresolved: how many emission allowances to auction off, rather than give away for free, and how to spend the revenue.

Those issues are being debated by a committee of experts headed by Stanford economist Lawrence Goulder, which is to report to the air board early next year.Environmental groups are divided over the virtues of carbon trading, with groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council supporting a market approach and others charging that it lets industries off the hook, especially in highly polluted areas such as Los Angeles.Greg Karras, senior scientist for Communities for a Better Environment, which has filed a suit to block the cap-and-trade option, called it “institutionalized environmental justice,” adding that it would encourage “the most entrenched polluters, including oil,” to continue emitting toxics and smog-forming pollutants, which are associated with carbon emissions.

California’s push comes amid growing alarm over the likely effects of global warming on the state, the nation and the planet. Sierra Nevada snowpacks are diminishing, sparking drought and water shortages. Central Valley orchards are suffering declines, and the habitats of local animals and birds are changing.In a report last April, “Indicators of Climate Change in California,” the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment found that the state’s higher temperatures, rising sea levels and increasing wildfires are consistent with climate changes occurring globally.The state’s proposed cap-and-trade program would take effect beginning in 2012, complementing other rules adopted under AB32, the state’s , to limit carbon dioxide from automobile tailpipes and the carbon content of fuels. The law requires greenhouse gases to drop to 1990 levels by 2020.

Nichols called the cap-and-trade draft a “milestone . . . to address our state’s contributions to climate change, as the eighth-largest economy in the world.” And she pointedly contrasted it with the upcoming gathering of 190 nations in Copenhagen next month “for another conference at which no international treaty will be signed.”But the plan could face further court challenges. “Serious legal questions about the Air Resources Board’s right to conduct an auction and spend the revenue have not been settled,” warned the AB32 Implementation Group, an industry coalition.Environmentalists want all permits to be auctioned, with the money spent on clean energy projects and on communities heavily affected by air pollution. Industry prefers that most allowances be given out for free. And the California Legislature, short on funds, may weigh in.

One controversial provision would allow industries to purchase “offsets,” such as contributing to the http:// preservation of a forest or the capture of methane from a landfill, to meet 49% of their obligations to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.Companies prize offsets as an alternative to installing often-expensive pollution controls, or, in the case of utilities, to building solar and wind farms to replace fossil fuel plants.

But Bill Magavern, California director for the Sierra Club, warned that the draft rule “allows polluters far too liberal use of offsets to buy their way out of reducing their emissions.”Six other Western states and four Canadian provinces have joined with California in a http:// Western Climate Initiative with an eye toward linking in a regional cap-and-trade program.Meanwhile, if a federal bill passes, California’s program, along with a cap-and-trade program in the northeastern U.S. that covers only power plants, would probably merge with a national program. But Nichols said the state could be free to require more emissions cuts in some cases.