The Wonderful Company’s effort to overturn a new farmworker unionization law was dealt a setback last Tuesday after a California appeals court dismissed the agribusiness giant’s lawsuit against state labor regulators.
A three-judge panel from the 5th District Court of Appeal in Fresno ruled the lawsuit was premature, allowing a contentious law backed by the United Farm Workers to remain in effect.
The backstory: The measure enables farmworkers to support unionization through signed cards, eliminating the need for traditional in-person, secret-ballot elections typically held at employers’ worksites.
- Wonderful Company, owner of Wonderful Pistachios, Fiji Water, Pom pomegranate juice and Halos oranges, filed suit against the Agricultural Labor Relations Board last year.
- The Los Angeles-based firm argued the law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023, is unconstitutional.
- The lawsuit followed a UFW petition — with enough signatures to represent about 600 employees at Wonderful’s grape nursery in Wasco.
- The company accused union organizers of misleading workers to sign union cards and submitted over 100 signatures from employees who claimed they had been deceived. The union, in turn, accused Wonderful of unlawfully intimidating workers to get them to rescind their support. State regulators opened an investigation into the accusations and filed charges against Wonderful.
ALRB and court battles: These allegations were being considered by the labor board last spring when Wonderful Company sought court intervention, arguing the new law violated its due process rights. A Kern County judge initially paused the board’s proceedings, but the Court of Appeal allowed them to resume last fall. Following weeks of hearings, the board has not yet ruled on whether the UFW can represent Wonderful employees.
- Meanwhile, the company closed the Wasco nursery and donated it to UC Davis, leaving the issue of union representation at that location unresolved.
- In its ruling, the appeals court criticized Wonderful Company for attempting a legal challenge before exhausting the process with the labor board.
What they’re saying: “Wonderful filed this petition notwithstanding approximately 50 years of unbroken precedent finding an employer may not directly challenge a union certification decision in court except in extraordinarily and exceedingly rare circumstances, which Wonderful does not meaningfully attempt to show are present here,” wrote Justice Rosendo Peña.
- Elizabeth Strater, a UFW vice president, said the ruling upholds farmworkers’ legal protections. “Every farm worker in California has rights under the law, and those rights need to be protected,” she said.
- Craig Cooper, Wonderful Company’s general counsel, called the ruling a matter of timing and said it does not address the merits of the company’s constitutional challenge.
