UFW wins key battle against Gallo

Nearly two years after it was voted out of E&J Gallo’s Sonoma County vineyards, the United Farm Workers union has won a key battle in its fight to continue representing nearly 300 vineyard workers.

An administrative law judge ruled last month that the July 2007 vote ousting the union from Gallo’s vineyards was unfair because Gallo failed to provide the union with an accurate list of its workers.

The case isn’t quite over. The veteran Gallo employee who has twice petitioned to oust the union, Roberto Parra, plans to appeal the decision by Monday’s deadline, said Will Collins, spokesman for the nonprofit group handling his case, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.

But the state’s Agricultural Labor Relations Board rarely overturns decisions by its administrative law judges, said Joe Wender, senior board counsel for the ALRB. It is unlikely to take any additional testimony or argument from attorneys in the case, he said.

Gallo does not plan to appeal the decision, spokeswoman Loree Stroup said.

If the decision stands, the vote to decertify the UFW would be thrown out and the union would continue to represent the Gallo workers, the largest block of workers it represents on the North Coast.

It would be a big boost for the UFW, which has seen its influence in the region wane in recent years.

It would also be a second embarrassing loss for Gallo, which saw a similar 2003 vote overturned after the state ruled Gallo’s labor contractors had illegally helped the campaign to oust the union.

In the latest case, workers gathered at Gallo’s sprawling Dry Creek Valley estate and voted 125 to 95 to reject the union that has represented the winery’s vineyard workers since 1994. Twelve contested votes went uncounted.

But the UFW claimed the vote was unfair, and quickly asked the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board to invalidate it.

All but one of the union’s allegations — including the claim that Gallo allowed workers to campaign against the union on company time — were ultimately thrown out.

Last month, however, a state administrative law judge sided with the UFW on its sole remaining allegation, agreeing that Gallo failed to give the union a complete list of its vineyard workers and accurate contact information, as the law requires.

Judge Douglas Gallop ruled that Gallo officials gave the union a list so flawed that it “substantially interfered with” the union’s right to contact workers to discuss the vote.

The list contained 82 errors, including non-current addresses, no addresses at all, post office boxes, addresses with non-existent streets and missing apartment numbers, Gallop found.

Many of Gallo’s vineyard workers are temporary employees hired through labor contractors. The list contained 282 names, 217 who worked for labor contractors and 65 employed directly by Gallo.

Testimony at a hearing in Santa Rosa in November illustrated the challenges union organizers faced in tracking down Gallo’s temporary workers.

Many traveled from their Central Valley homes to work in Gallo’s Sonoma County vineyards and lived in rental housing with multiple other workers.

One worker on the list with a Fresno address, Matias Flores Maya, testified that he lived in a home on Grand Avenue in Santa Rosa with 12 other workers at the time of the election.

Another contract employee, Adolfo Rivera Navarette, was listed with a Patterson, Calif., address, but testified he lived with seven other contract employees on Debmar Lane in Cloverdale.

Despite the challenges the union faced, the winery argued that the errors on the list were not its fault and were not significant enough to sway the vote. It also pointed out that despite the flaws, union organizers were able to ultimately contact many of the workers in the vineyards or by visiting homes they shared with other workers.

Collins said that whatever mistakes the company made, they shouldn’t trump the will of workers who clearly don’t want union representation.

“Given how significant the margin was in favor of ousting the union, we don’t think a clerical error on the part of the company should nullify a 30-vote margin,” Collins said.

The winery says it supports the workers’ right to choose a union.

“Regardless of the decision, our company will continue to support our workers’ right to choose whether or not they want to be represented by the UFW,” the winery said in a statement.

But the judge found the winery impeded its workers’ rights by putting union organizers at a disadvantage.

The judge noted a shift of 22 votes could have changed the outcome of the vote. The list contained nearly four times that many errors, causing the judge to conclude that the list was “so defective as to require the election be set aside.”

He called it “egregious” for Gallo to provide a list with so many errors, especially given the company’s experience with such votes. Gallo vineyard manager Jim Collins had experience submitting such lists and should have known better, the judge noted.

“It has been found that the employer’s chief representative knew that the voting list contained 75 obviously invalid addresses, and did nothing to remedy this prior to the preelection conference,” the judge ruled.

The judge said he had “substantial sympathy” for the winery’s position, but noted that “the duty to compile and correct the list lies solely on the employer.”

“Excusing the distribution of highly inaccurate lists in all but the clearest cases will only serve to encourage employers to promulgate such lists,” he wrote.

UFW representatives did not return telephone calls seeking comment.