Los Angeles-based Wonderful Co. — the world’s largest pistachio and almond grower, the purveyor of Fiji Water, Pom pomegranate juice and Justin wines, and owner of the Teleflora flower service — wants you to know that it’s committed to “sustainable farming and business practices” and sees its employees as “a guiding force for good.”

Wonderful’s owners, the Beverly Hills billionaires Lynda and Stewart Resnick, say their “calling” is “to leave people and the planet better than we found them.”

Here’s another side of the company. Since February, it has been engaged in a ferocious battle with the United Farm Workers over the UFW’s campaign to unionize more than 600 Wonderful Nurseries workers in the Central Valley.

Having lost a series of motions before the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board to delay a mandate that it reach a contract with the UFW as soon as June 3 or have terms imposed by the board, Wonderful on Monday unleashed a nuclear attack: a lawsuit seeking to have the 2022 and 2023 state laws governing the unionization process declared unconstitutional.

If it succeeds, California’s legal protections for farmworkers could be rolled back to conditions that prevailed before César Chavez’s campaigns for farm unionization in the 1960s.

“This is an attack on farmworkers’ rights,” says Elizabeth Strater, the UFW’s director of strategic campaigns. Farm employers “will do everything they can to prevent workers from empowering themselves and lifting themselves out of poverty.”

The company disputes the claim and says its relationship with agricultural workers “is rooted in mutual trust, collaboration and respect,” in the words of Wonderful Nurseries President Rob Yraceburu.

Wonderful’s lawsuit takes a page from arguments made against the National Labor Relations Board by Trader Joe’s and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Both companies, facing NLRB regulatory actions, are contending that the NLRB, which Congress established in 1935, is unconstitutional.

Wonderful contends that provisions of the state’s agricultural labor code violate its rights of due process guaranteed by both the state and U.S. constitutions.

At issue is a UFW drive to represent more than 600 Wonderful Nurseries employees that began in early 2023. The UFW ultimately presented the labor board with signed cards from more than half the employees giving the UFW authority to represent them in collective bargaining on a contract, a process known as a “card check.”

The board certified the union as the workers’ representative on March 1, triggering a tight deadline aimed at prompting the union and the company to reach a contract.

As often happens in hard-fought union campaigns, this one has generated a cross fire of allegations of unfair labor practices from both sides — the company asserting that the union defrauded workers into signing the representation cards, the union asserting that the company browbeat more than 100 workers into revoking their authorizations to drive the approval rate below the required 50%.

Accounts from the workers themselves vary. As my colleagues Rebecca Plevin and Melissa Gomez have reported, there have been complaints about poor working conditions at Wonderful along with hope that a union would help upgrade standards. Other workers say they misunderstood that signing an authorization card was tantamount to joining the UFW.

Some workers said they had second thoughts about signing the cards after meetings with a company-hired union-buster, Raul Calvo, who told them the union would take 3% of their pay for dues. In late March, some 100 Wonderful workers staged an anti-union protest at the ALRB offices in Visalia, but the UFW has alleged that the rally was the product of company coercion. Wonderful said at the time that it had no involvement in the protest and didn’t pay the workers for their time.

“These workers are so vulnerable,” the UFW’s Strater says. Many are undocumented or have other reasons to worry about job security, arguably making them receptive to management directives.

In this case, another party has weighed in — the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, an independent state agency. After an investigation, the board’s general counsel, Julia Montgomery, alleged that Wonderful trampled its workers’ unionization rights through numerous anti-union actions, including coercing them to submit declarations rescinding their authorizations. Wonderful has denied most of the allegations.

Wonderful says that the workers submitted their declarations — nearly 150 of them — voluntarily, “without any request having been made” by the company. Montgomery’s allegations, however, are mighty specific. She cites a series of meetings that were overtly aimed at persuading the workers to back away from the union.

That process began with employee meetings addressed by Calvo and proceeded to sessions in which workers met with Wonderful human resources personnel, Montgomery alleged. At those meetings, the company representatives read from a Spanish-language script stating that the union could have obtained workers’ signatures without their knowledge, that they would be deprived of the opportunity for a secret vote on unionization and encouraging them to sign a declaration revoking their authorization cards.

“We ask each of you firmly not to sign an authorization card,” the script read. In a line that sounds as if it came fresh out of the playbook of anti-union companies such as Starbucks, the script stated that the company wants “to be able to work one on one with you without the interference of a union.”

Some workers were led into a large conference room, where company representatives were assigned “to help the worker draft the declaration” revoking the authorization cards, Montgomery asserted. Some agents typed up declarations for the workers and handed them to the workers to sign.

A few words about the plaintiffs in this lawsuit:

The Resnicks are prominent philanthropists and political donors (mostly to Democrats). Their companies’ effects on the environment and California agriculture generally are checkered. Indeed, their most eye-catching charitable donation, a record-breaking $750-million pledge to Caltech in 2019 for research into climate change and “environmental sustainability,” isn’t inconsistent with a desire to “greenwash” some of their other activities.

As I previously wrote, while it might be churlish to suggest that the gift was devoid of genuine altruistic impulses, it would be naive to assume that altruism is the whole story.

A few years earlier, the Resnicks’ Justin Vineyards had been caught clear-cutting an oak forest near Paso Robles to make room for new grape plantings. The work was halted by San Luis Obispo County authorities, and the firm eventually agreed to donate the 380-acre parcel to a land conservancy.

Although the Resnicks say they are “dedicated to our role as environmental stewards,” their Fiji Water subsidiary looks like the antithesis of environmental sustainability. It profits from transporting water in plastic bottles more than 5,500 miles from the island nation to California and beyond, places that already have abundant water.

Wonderful’s pistachio and almond orchards have complicated efforts to apportion water among the state’s competing stakeholders. Because the trees require watering in wet years or dry, their acreage can’t be fallowed during dry spells.

That has made the water demand of the agricultural sector less flexible, and arguably has contributed to the devastating decline of the state’s salmon fishery and the drying out of rivers and streams that once supported a diverse population of fish and birds.

This isn’t the first time that the Resnicks have wrapped themselves in the U.S. Constitution to fend off a regulatory agency. In 2010, they asserted that the Federal Trade Commission infringed their 1st Amendment rights by holding that they made “false and misleading” and “unsubstantiated” representations about the health benefits of their Pom pomegranate juice, which amounted to unlawful marketing.

The company pitched the juice as “health in a bottle.” Wonderful put up billboards with the words “Cheat Death” next to a picture of the bottle. Its ads claimed Pom has beneficial effects on prostate cancer (“Drink to prostate health”), cardiovascular health and even erectile dysfunction — all of which claims were judged scientifically dubious by regulators. The company fought the FTC up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which rejected its appeal.

The 2022 and 2023 laws that Wonderful is challenging — indeed, the very creation of the ALRB in 1975 — reflect a reality known in California for more than a century: Bringing labor rights to farmworkers is notoriously difficult.

The first major farm union organizing drive in the state, among hops pickers in Wheatland, north of Sacramento, was broken up by four companies of the National Guard called out by Gov. Hiram Johnson in 1913. A statewide dragnet for organizers from the Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies, ensued, followed by hundreds of arrests. No further significant farm organizing took place for 16 years.

In 1975, a state law passed at the urging of César Chavez’s UFW gave union organizers the right to meet with workers on the farms where they toiled. But the Supreme Court, voting on partisan lines, struck it down in 2021—the law allowed organizers to “invade the growers’ property,” as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote.

To address the heightened difficulty agricultural unions faced, the state Legislature established the card check process in 2022 and 2023. The laws incorporated a tight timeline governing certification and contract bargaining, and stipulated mandatory mediation if no contract is reached with a set period.

The goal was to address “the basic failing of labor law both at the federal and state level, which is delay,” said William B. Gould IV, professor emeritus of law at Stanford and a former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board and the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board.

“Delay works against the interests of workers and unions, because employers hope that they’ll grow weary,” Gould told me. The tight deadlines were designed to place the burden of delay on the employers.

Wonderful maintains in its lawsuit, filed in Kern County state court, that the accelerated process has deprived employers of constitutionally protected due process rights by allowing a union to be certified by card check before the employers have a chance to object — effectively rendering the certification and the negotiating deadline faits accomplis.

That’s not quite true, however. The law allows anyone to file objections within five days of certification. After that, any certification can be revoked if the employers’ objections are later upheld at a hearing, and any mandated contract can be invalidated. Indeed, Wonderful filed its objections in time, citing the workers’ declarations; an ALRB hearing on its objections has been underway for weeks.

What appears especially to irk Wonderful is that the board has twice rejected its motions to suspend, or stay, the certification and negotiation procedure until after it rules on the company’s objections. The board responded that the law doesn’t provide for such a stay.

The company’s lawsuit thus amounts to an end run around the law. Gould is skeptical that Wonderful’s constitutionality claims will win much favor from California judges, but the case may be aimed at the notoriously anti-union U.S. Supreme Court majority.

“This Supreme Court has indicated that they want to reverse much of what was done in the 1930s,” a high-water mark for progressive labor and public interest laws, he said. In its lawsuit, Wonderful “has thrown buckets of paint against the wall in the hope that something will stick. Maybe they’ll be right on some of it.”

Disneyland Resort employees who portray costumed characters such as Mickey Mouse or Cinderella have voted to unionize under the Actors’ Equity Assn.

The unit, which consists of 1,700 people, voted 953 in favor of unionization and 258 against, Actors’ Equity said Saturday night on the social media platform X. Of the votes tallied, 79% were pro-union.

The results of the vote, overseen by the National Labor Relations Board, come after a three-day election period in which employees, known as “cast members” in Disney parlance, placed their votes at three polling sites in Disneyland. The employees announced their intent to unionize in February.

“This is an incredible victory, and we appreciate all the support over the past several weeks. We’re excited about the next phase,” said Actors’ Equity Assn. President Kate Shindle in a statement. “These cast members are both pro-union and pro-Disney, and they’re looking forward to meeting with their employer across the bargaining table in a good faith effort to make both the work experience and the guest experience better.”

The workers regularly don full-body costumes of well-known animated Disney characters. They also portray so-called lookalike characters, such as the Disney princesses, in which the actors’ faces are exposed while performing. These employees work at meet-and-greets in the parks, perform in parades and are part of dining experiences in the Disneyland Resort hotels.

“While voting is complete, there are still steps in the process prior to the election being certified, so it is premature for the company to comment on the results,” said Disneyland spokesperson Jessica Good in a statement. “Whatever the outcome, we respect that our cast members had the opportunity to have their voices heard.”

Organizers said prior to the election that a top priority was creating a healthier and safer working environment for these workers, who often endure injury and discomfort due to the physical nature of their jobs.

Employees can get accidentally injured during guest interactions, such as when a child jumps on a costumed character out of excitement, or intentionally hurt. A recent social media trend emerged in which guests distract employees wearing full-body costumes, then try to twist or aggressively move their heads around.

The Disneyland Resort employees in the characters and parades departments now join their counterparts in Walt Disney World in Florida in being part of a union. Most of the rest of the Disneyland Resort workforce, including custodians, ride operators and merchandise clerks, among others, are already unionized.

The organizing effort comes as the Walt Disney Co. plans to invest $60 billion over 10 years into its “experiences” division, which includes the theme parks, resorts, cruise line and merchandise. That division has proved to be a cash cow for the company; last year, it brought in about 70% of Disney’s operating income.

At Disneyland Resort, that investment will result in what company Chief Executive Bob Iger called the biggest expansion of the parks since the addition of Disney’s California Adventure, which opened in 2001. The plan, known as DisneylandForward, will result in at least $1.9 billion in development and could include new attractions alongside restaurant, retail and hotel space.

The plan calls for changes to the park’s zoning, allowing the company more freedom to mix attractions, theme parks, shopping, dining and parking. While the plan doesn’t specify which attractions will be added to the resort, company officials have floated ideas including immersive “Avatar,” “Frozen” and “Tron” experiences.

Times staff writers Christi Carras and Ryan Faughnder contributed to this report.

Last summer, when the Hollywood writers’ strike had shut down film and television production, a crew of scenic painters at the legendary Fox Studio Lot took advantage of the lull to mess up New York City.

Work had recently been completed on a new set of façades meant to mimic Manhattan streets, but the result was too pretty and clean. Even the smooth gray concrete curbs looked suspiciously fresh.

“After the curbs were perfectly poured, we had a gentleman with a jackhammer come in here and chip away at them,” said Gary Ehrlich, president of studio operations. “It was slightly heartbreaking to see.”

Today, the curbs are suitably beaten up, with dings and black smears as if tires had been rubbing against them for decades. Fire escapes look corroded and other metal fixtures such as banisters have been coated to look old or rusty, while walls appear water-stained. A patina of age has settled over this faux city.

The painstaking besmirchment of New York Street was one more twist in the long saga of one of filmdom’s most famous outdoor sets. Looming near the front gate like an adult-sized playhouse, an earlier version of the set and now the new one have long served notice to visitors that they have arrived at a movie studio that is itself a leading character in Hollywood lore.

Its lineage is suitably rich in Hollywood flavor: In 1967 Fox was preparing to shoot the film version of “Hello, Dolly!,” a Tony-award winning musical set in 1890s New York City that ran for years on Broadway. The script included a spectacular outdoor parade with thousands of extras, and studio executives determined that it would be impossible to shoot on location in New York because the city had changed too much.

Fox production designer John DeCuir, who had already won Academy Awards for his design of “The King and I” and “Cleopatra,” came up with a streetscape that required more than 500 workers to labor for four months to build. The $2.25-million price tag made it the most costly movie set built to date, the UPI news service reported at the time.

It required more than 300,000 feet of board lumber and 22 miles of telephone wire strung between poles, the way it was in old New York. A painted 11-story office building façade obscured the view of the Century Plaza Hotel looming next to the lot, according to Barbra Archives, which chronicles the career of “Hello, Dolly!” star Barbra Streisand.

Barbra Streisand marches with a band in a scene from the 1969 romantic comedy “Hello, Dolly!” filmed on Fox’s New York set in Century City.

(John Springer Collection / Getty Images)

Dominating the street was a replica of an elevated train station and a steam locomotive acquired from a sugar plantation in Hawaii, where it had been used to transport workers.

On July 16, 1968, the Valley Times reported, “The parade stretching one-fifth of a mile and comprised of 675 persons in 16 units passed through a crowd of 3,108 film extras” in period costumes. Among the performers were the UCLA marching band and the Budweiser Clydesdales. The director was actor-dancer Gene Kelly.

As impressive as the set was, it was intended to be temporary, said Michael Whetstone, a production designer who worked on building the new version of New York Street.

“It was supposed to be torn down but wasn’t because it was too expensive” to remove, he said. At the time the studio was reeling from financial setbacks including a $30-million loss on “Hello, Dolly!,” according to the New York Times.

Maintenance and prop makers James Scobie, left, and Norm Greene, work on the façade of the new New York set at Fox Studios .

The set enjoyed a second, money-making act in the years that followed as Fox rented it out for use on pictures that included Warner Bros.’ comedy “Up the Sandbox,” starring Streisand, and MGM’s musical “New York, New York,” starring Liza Minnelli and Robert De Niro. Among the television shows that used it were “Charlie’s Angels” and “Moonlighting,” while Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga and other musicians used it for music videos.

But a few years ago, with the set showing its age, the studio started considering its replacement, Ehrlich said. “It had been exposed to the elements for five decades and was past its useful life.”

Fox tapped Culver City architect Nathan Moore of House & Robertson Architects to design something sturdier.

Construction required 49 tons of rebar and more than 1,000 cubic feet of concrete. The set is held up by 260 tons of structural steel and backed inside with 4,400 square feet of catwalks. Lighting and other electrical functions are supported with 21,000 square feet of conduit and wire, allowing productions to hook up to house power instead of rolling in generators. The set also had to comply with building codes and be tracked by city building inspectors.

The new New York Street was made to look like the city in the mid 20th century, a decision that required detailed craftsmanship such as window heads and sills that would have been carved out of wood in years past but were instead fabricated out of plastic foam and finished with plaster. Windows were installed to be easily replaced so productions can break them when scenes call for it.

Whetstone oversaw the project and, as part of his research, made several trips to New York, spending long hours on foot trying to get a sense of how light plays on buildings at night.

“I was literally walking Lower Manhattan from 10 p.m. to 4 in the morning taking pictures,” he said.

Where the original “Hello, Dolly!” set was based on a commercial section of 1890s New York suitable for a parade, Fox elected to make the new set feel like a neighborhood from a later era.

“It’s more Lower Manhattan, more Bowery,” Whetstone said. “Definitely the Lower East Side.”

A film crew member waits to set up for a shoot at the new New York set.

While the set is “a default vision of New York City,” said Whetstone, it also is intended to stand in for any major city. Through the years, Fox’s New York Street has subbed for Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Pasadena.

Even though improving camera technology through the years has made it easier to shoot on location, there are reasons filmmakers keep shooting on studio lots, said Jason E. Squire, entertainment podcaster and professor emeritus at USC School of Cinematic Arts.

As filming equipment and cameras got lighter and more portable, the more free-flowing New Wave cinema that emerged in the late 1950s and ’60s employed provocative camerawork.

“This liberation led to people shooting off the studio lot,” Squire said. “Filmmakers wanted to get away from the studio.”

But it has remained expensive to shoot a large-scale production in the real world with all the vehicles, equipment and personnel required to be transported and managed on-site.

“One of the key decisions early in any production is whether to build sets on a lot or shoot in a real location,” Squire said. “That depends on how intricate the sequences are going to be, how intimate. It’s a judgment call and a money call, and the money usually wins.”

Shooting behind studio gates also prevents uncomfortable collisions between fantasy and reality.

“On the lot you don’t have interference from civilians,” Squire said. “You can control traffic, you can control lighting. All of the equipment is at your beck and call.”

Whetstone recalled having to flee location shooting in downtown L.A.’s Arts District when working on Season 1 of “New Girl,” a Fox television comedy starring Zooey Deschanel that premiered in 2011.

“We started out shooting in downtown Los Angeles, and by the end of our fifth night shoot we had angered so many of the neighbors around in the community that we ended up building downtown L.A. on the Fox lot,” Whetstone said.

Gary Ehrlich, president and general manager of studio operations at Fox Studio Lot, shows off the scaffolding for lighting inside one of the buildings in Fox’s new New York Street set.

The makeover of New York Street is in addition to a planned $1.5-billion upgrade of the Fox Studio Lot announced last year by Fox Corp. that is to include more soundstages and offices. Fox Corp. retained ownership of the lot when Walt Disney Co. bought most of 21st Century Fox’s entertainment assets in 2019.

The upgrades come as the real New York mounts an aggressive effort to lure TV and movie producers from L.A. by building new studios and soundstages.

On New York Street in Los Angeles, Fox also was able to transform the set behind the façades, adding 4,000 square feet of interior space that makes it easier to meld outdoor and indoor action. The studio declined to reveal exactly how much the new multimillion-dollar set cost, but Fox wants it to stand for another half-century at least.

“This project was approached not just as temp architecture but as something more permanent,” Whetstone said. “We want this to last a long time.”