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ALRB. California's Agricultural Labor Relations Act in 1975 granted the state's hired workers the right to form or join unions and required farm employers to bargain with certified farm worker unions. The ALRA was widely seen as a self-help tool that would to determine wages and working conditions for farm workers via collective bargaining.

There are fewer California farm workers working under the terms of collective bargaining in 2009 than there were in the early 1970s, before the ALRA was enacted. The state agency that administers the ALRA, the ALRB, has shrunk to a fraction of its size in the late 1970s. The ALRB has offices in Salinas, El Centro and Visalia.

Workers can file charges alleging that their rights under the ALRA were violated. The General Counsel can turn these charges into complaints and explain to an Administrative Law Judge why worker rights were violated. The ALJ hears the evidence provided by the General Counsel, and the evidence provided by employers (90 percent of complaints are against employers), and prepares a decision that includes a remedy aimed at restoring the worker to the economic position she would have had if there had been no violation.

Many ALJ decisions are appealed to what is currently a three-member board, which reviews and upholds or modifies the ALJ. In recent years the Board has been issuing an average six decisions a year.

In Frank Pinheiro Dairy 35 ALRB No 5 (2009), the ALRB ordered Pinheiro Dairy to engage in mandatory mediation, which has been available since 2003 to achieve first contracts if the parties cannot negotiate one. Mediators help the parties to reach agreement and, if their efforts fail, the mediator can impose a contract on the parties.

Mandatory mediation may be requested for employers who employ at least 25 workers during the previous calendar year. Pinheiro argued that it employed a maximum 24 workers, during the previous year, but the Board found that Pinheiro employed 25 workers during several pay periods in May 2009 and ordered mandatory mediation.

In Tule River Dairy, 35 ALRB 4 (2009), the Board reversed an ALJ decision finding that Tule River fired milker Miguel Lopez in 2005 in retaliation for his union activities. The ALJ reached the decision that Tule River committed 1153 (a) and (c) ULPs when firing Lopez by showing that Lopez discussed UFCW representation with fellow workers, the employer knew of his union activities via hearsay evidence, and that there was a causal relationship between Lopez's activities and the employer decision to fire him.

Tule River said that Lopez was fired for failing to follow sanitary procedures.

The dairy was small and Lopez was fired after soliciting an authorization signature from a relative of the supervisor who rebuffed him, but there was no direct evidence that the dairy owner knew of Lopez's union activities. The ALJ accepted hearsay evidence that another fired worker heard that the firings were retaliation for union activities; the Board rejected this evidence, and thus dismissed the charge because Lopez failed to show the employer knew of his union activities.

Between 2000 and 2008, the ALRB certified the results of 68 elections.

The federal minimum wage rose from $6.55 to $7.25 an hour on July 24, 2009. Some three to five million workers were paid the federal minimum wage in 2008, and up to 15 million were paid under $9 an hour. The most populous states, except for Florida and Texas, have minimum wages higher than $7.25.

EFCA. President Obama met with the National Labor Coordinating Committee in July 2009 to discuss health care reform and the Employee Free Choice Act (HR 1409, S560). The NLCC includes leaders of the AFL-CIO, Change to Win, and the National Education Association plus presidents of the ten largest US unions. The EFCA, approved by the House in March 2007 and reintroduced in March 2009, is the top priority of US unions.

The EFCA has three key elements: card-check recognition, stiffer penalties for employers who commit unfair labor practices (ULPs), and binding arbitration for first contracts if the parties cannot agree.

The EFCA would allow unions to be recognized as the bargaining agent for the workers in a workplace without secret ballot elections if more than 50 percent of the workers signed union-authorization cards. The EFCA would also require the National Labor Relations Board to give top priority to ULP charges filed during pre-election campaigning and allow workers who are fired unlawfully to receive triple back pay. Employers could be fined $20,000 for willfully or repeatedly violating employees' rights during an organizing campaign or while bargaining for a first contract.

Typically, two-thirds of the ULP charges filed with the NLRB are not turned into complaints by the NLRB General Counsel, and 90 percent of the remaining one-third of charges that become complaints are settled rather than going before an administrative law judge for a formal decision.

Binding arbitration could be used after the parties failed to reach agreement on a first contract after 90 days of bargaining. After 90 days, either party could refer the dispute to the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, which would have 30 days to persuade the parties to agree, after which FMCS could refer the dispute to a federal arbitrator who could impose a first contract. One study found that unions reached collective bargaining agreements within a year in only 56 percent of the bargaining units for which they were certified by the NLRB.

In July 2009 Senate Democrats considered dropping the card-check provision of the EFCA in favor of shorter unionization campaigns and faster elections, within five or 10 days of unions submitting authorization cards from at least 30 percent of affected workers. In exchange for agreeing to speedy elections rather than a card check procedure to win recognition, unions want access to employees on company property and an end to captive-audience speeches--when employers require employees to come to anti-union sessions.

Currently, the average time between union requests and elections is 38 days.

Richard Trumka, who headed the United Mine Workers, replaced John Sweeney as president of the AFL-CIO in September 2009; Sweeney took over in 1995. A the National Coordinating Committee is aiming to bring the AFL-CIO, Change to Win, and the National Education Association into one organization; Change to Win is a federation of unions with about 4.5 million members that left the AFL-CIO in 2005.

The AFL-CIO includes 57 national unions with 8.4 million members. In addition, there are three million members of Working America, the affiliate program for workers who do not have a union where they work, so the AFL-CIO often says it represents 11.5 million workers. The largest AFL-CIO unions include the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, 1.4 million members and the American Federation of Teachers, 1.1 million members; the largest AFL-CIO union representing mostly private sector workers is the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers with 620,000 members.