abuse Archives - Pick Justice

Court slaps another $770,000 judgment on UFW

Justice May 3, 2017 May 4, 2017abuse of power, exploitation, harassment, Legal, lost in court, overtime, The Californian, UFW, unfair labor practice, union infighting, wage theft, wasting workers' dues

A real California judge slapped the UFW with another $770,000 judgment, raising the total levied against the floundering union to $2 million. Monterey County Superior Court Judge Thomas Wills ordered the UFW to pay a law firm $770,000 in legal fees after finding the UFW guilty of defrauding its own workers. Earlier, the court ordered UFW to pay $1.2 million in damages to the UFW’s former employees whom it had cheated. In his ruling, Judge Wills said, “the Court has…

California govt pulls down 2015 audit that found ALRB chronic waste & abuse

Justice April 8, 2017 April 8, 2017Abuse, audit failure, Corruption, coverup, David Lanier, government secrecy

The California state government has pulled down electronic copies of a damning 2015 audit of the Agricultural Labor Relations Board. Like the Gerawan farmworkers ballots from the 2013 ALRB-supervised vote, the government has hidden the evidence. Pick Justice discovered the audit and published an article about it last year. We linked directly to the state website page that contained the audit. That page, http://www.dof.ca.gov/osae/audit_reports/documents/WEBFinalReport-AgriculturalLaborRelationsBoardPerformanceAudit.pdf, is dead. We also discovered that Labor Secretary David Lanier supported the findings of the audit in…

Isadore Hall unleashes ‘obscenity-laced tirade’ at critics & threatens to abuse his authority to ‘get’ them

Justice March 13, 2017 March 13, 2017Abuse, ALRB, bias, Corruption, ethics issues, Investigate ALRB, Isadore Hall, Isadore Hall III, Kevin de Leon, political cronyism, political establishment, protection racket, Threatened employees

ALRB board designate Isadore Hall unleashed an “obscenity-laced tirade” at his critics and threatened to abuse his authority to “get” them, a state senator said in an open letter. Hall made the threatening rant in the Hyatt hotel in Sacramento the night before his March 1 confirmation hearing. The threats underscore Pick Justice’s concerns that Hall, who led a UFW march opposing farmworkers who voted to de-certify the union, is incapable of serving as an impartial farmworker advocate. Senator sent…

Genevieve Shiroma, new ALRB chair, brings record of ethics problems & mismanagement

Justice January 17, 2017 January 17, 2017$10 million to deny voting rights, Abuse, ALRB, ALRB budget, audit failure, bias, conflicts of interest, ethics problems, Genevieve Shiroma, Investigate ALRB, Senate testimony, whistleblower

Instead of reaching outside ALRB for competent leadership, Governor Jerry Brown has promoted new mismanagement from within: Genevieve Shiroma. “I am absolutely an honorable person,” Shiroma insisted to the state Senate during her confirmation hearing for an unprecedented fourth term last summer. Not everybody agrees. Last spring, California Labor Secretary David Lanier agreed with a state audit that found the ALRB to be a wasteful, abusive, unaccountable organization. We reported that Lanier’s assessment was an indictment of scandal-plagued ALRB member Genevieve Shiroma.…

UFW takes 3% of members’ salaries so its leaders can ride in limos

Justice June 4, 2016 June 4, 2016abuse of power, Corruption, UFW, wasting workers' dues

Here’s a troubling picture: UFW leaders ride around in a stretch limousine while they push for the state to force workers to fork over 3% of their hard-earned income to the union. This is a real abuse of trust. The UFW leaders are so arrogant that they placed the union logo on the side. Pick Justice photographed the UFW limo on Truxtun Avenue in Bakersfield, California, on May 28, 2016.

What ALRB could have done to help (with the $10 million it spent to fight us)

Justice March 9, 2016 March 15, 2016Abuse, Budget, Corruption, Legal, Voting rights, William B. Gould IV

If the ALRB really wanted to help farmworkers, what could it have done with the $10.8 million it’s using to prevent our 2013 votes from being counted? Let’s take the farming community of Mecca, California, down in Riverside County. Instead of suppressing worker votes in the San Joaquin Valley, the ALRB could have spent the $10.8 million on any of the following in the Coachella Valley, around Mecca: Construction of more than 100 new homes (Approximate price of a construction of…

New report shows ALRB spending $10,000,000 to suppress Gerawan worker ballots

Justice March 9, 2016 March 9, 2016Abuse, Budget, Investigate ALRB, Voting rights

The ALRB is spending more than $10 million to suppress the ballots of 2,600 farmworkers who voted on whether to de-certify the United Farm Workers (UFW) as their representative. The workers at Gerawan Farming cast their ballots in 2013 in an ALRB-supervised election. ALRB immediately locked the ballots in a safe and has refused to count them. Word is that the ALRB is deciding to destroy the ballots in order to let the UFW save face. Here’s how a Sacramento…

Watch the video: Workers explain how ALRB exploits them

Justice January 27, 2016 January 27, 2016Abuse, bias, Corruption, Silvia Lopez, Voting rights, Workers speak out

California farmworkers explain why they think the ALRB is a corrupt, exploitative state agency that abuses them by trying to force them to join a politically-connected union. Many of the workers, who came to America as immigrants, express dismay that the type of political corruption in their native countries is alive and well in California. “Perhaps they think that we are ignorant,” says one worker. “Perhaps they think that we are worthless.”

Torres-Guillen in ‘lawless power grab’

Jesse Rojas April 16, 2014 May 20, 2015Abuse, ALRB, General Counsel, Sylvia Torres Guillen, UFW

ALRB General Counsel Sylvia Torres Guillen is making what critics see as a “lawless power grab” by filing a lawsuit to fight Central Valley fruit growers without having the legal authority. Torres Guillen and her Visalia regional director, Silas Shawver, are “claiming to invoke authority that they do not possess,” Agenda 21 Radio reports. The latest action is a legal move to break farm workers in the Central Valley who don’t want to pay a union that doesn’t represent them.…

Tag Archives: abuse