Judge grants Wonderful's request to halt UFW effort to unionize company's workers

After more than a month of deliberation, a Kern County Superior Court judge has sided with Wonderful Co. and issued a preliminary injunction that will temporarily halt a contentious bargaining process between the agricultural giant and the state’s largest farmworker union.

In a ruling issued Thursday, Judge Bernard C. Barmann said Wonderful “was likely to prevail” in its legal challenge to the state’s relatively new system for organizing farmworkers and faced irreparable harm if the United Farm Workers union is allowed to pursue a bargaining agreement on behalf of the company’s nursery workers before the case is decided.

“The court finds that the public interest weighs in favor of preliminary injunctive relief given the constitutional rights at stake in this matter,” Barmann wrote in the 21-page decision. Wonderful “has met its burden that a preliminary injunction should issue until the matter may be heard fully on the merits.”

Wonderful, the $6-billion agricultural powerhouse owned by Stewart and Lynda Resnick, sued the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board in May, challenging the constitutionality of the state’s so-called card-check system, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law in 2022. Under its provisions, a union can organize farmworkers by inviting them to sign authorization cards at off-site meetings, without notifying an employer, rather than voting by secret ballot at a designated polling place.

Union organizers had pressed for the revised card-check law, contending the secret ballot process left workers fearful of retaliation from their employer.

But Wonderful, whose portfolio includes such well-known brands as FIJI Water and POM Wonderful, alleges in its lawsuit that the law deprives employers of due process on multiple fronts. Among them: forcing a company to enter a collective bargaining agreement even if it has formally appealed the ALRB’s certification of a union vote and presented what it believes is evidence that the voting process was fraudulent.

The temporary injunction marks the latest twist in a tumultuous dispute over the UFW’s unionization campaign at Wonderful Nurseries in Wasco, the nation’s largest grapevine nursery.

In late February, the UFW filed a petition with the labor relations board, asserting that a majority of the 600-plus farmworkers at the nursery had signed authorization cards and asking that the UFW be certified as their union representative.

Within days, Wonderful accused the UFW of having baited farmworkers into signing the authorization cards under the guise of helping them apply for $600 in federal relief for farmworkers who labored during the pandemic. And the company submitted nearly 150 signed declarations from nursery workers saying they had not understood that by signing the cards they were voting to unionize.

The UFW countered that Wonderful had intimidated workers into making false statements and had brought in a labor consultant with a reputation as a union buster to manipulate their emotions in the weeks that followed.

The ALRB acknowledged receiving the worker declarations from Wonderful; nonetheless, the regional director of the labor board moved forward three days later to certify the union’s petition. She has said in subsequent hearings that she felt she had to move quickly under the timeline laid out in the card-check law, and that at the time she did not think the statute authorized her to investigate allegations of misconduct.

Wonderful appealed the ALRB’s certification.

Under the provisions of the card-check law, the UFW’s efforts to bargain with the company on behalf of its nursery workers moved forward, even as Wonderful’s appeal of the certification was working its way through the ALRB’s administrative hearing process. The ALRB issued a ruling last week ordering Wonderful to enter into a mandatory mediation process with the union to establish a collective bargaining agreement.

In its lawsuit, filed in May, Wonderful challenges the constitutionality of the card-check system on multiple fronts. The lawsuit alleges that the company’s due process rights were violated when the labor board moved to certify the UFW’s petition before investigating the company’s allegations that the vote was fraudulent; and more broadly that the card-check system does not have adequate safeguards in place to ensure the veracity of the voting process.

The company asked the judge to halt the unionization effort at its nursery, as well as the ALRB’s administrative hearing process regarding the company’s appeal, while the lawsuit moved forward in Kern County court.

In a statement released Thursday evening, Rob Yraceburu, president of Wonderful Nurseries, said the company was “gratified” by the court’s decision to pause the certification process until the constitutionality of the card check law can be “fully and properly considered.”

“In addition,” Yraceburu said, “farmworkers had been wrongly barred from objecting to a union being forced on them, and this ruling states that Wonderful indeed has the standing to fight to ensure those constitutional rights of farmworkers, including their due process and First Amendment rights, are not violated.”

UFW spokesperson Elizabeth Strater countered that the ruling “ignores 89 years of labor law precedent” and indicated the decision to grant the preliminary injunction would be appealed.

“There is already a process to address wrongdoing in elections and Wonderful was in the middle of that process. Why does Wonderful want to halt that process and silence workers so their voices are not heard?” Strater said. “It’s very clear Wonderful is determined to use its considerable resources to deny farmworkers their rights.”

In a May 30 filing, the state had urged the court to deny Wonderful’s request for an injunction. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, arguing on behalf of the ALRB, said Wonderful had failed to demonstrate that the card-check law was causing “irreparable harm or any likelihood of deprivation of its rights.” Bonta also argued that the Superior Court lacked jurisdiction in the case.

Santiago Avila-Gomez, executive secretary with the ALRB, said Thursday evening the agency is “reviewing the ruling carefully and won’t have further comment at this time.”

The UFW, meanwhile, is pursuing its own legal action against Wonderful. The union has filed a formal complaint of unfair labor practices with the ALRB, accusing Wonderful of coercing workers into attending “captive audience” meetings to urge employees to reject UFW representation. ALRB General Counsel Julia Montgomery issued a complaint in April, similar to an indictment, alleging Wonderful committed unfair labor practices by unlawfully assisting them in drafting declarations to revoke their authorization cards.

The company has largely denied the allegations.

This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to address California’s economic divide.