Pick Justice Action, an organization of concerned citizens who support the rights of farmworkers, launched a six-figure ad buy highlighting what they view as the anti-farmworker record of Assemblywoman Lorena-Gonzalez Fletcher.
In Pick Justice Action’s press release, their spokesperson Jesse Rojas stated, “for far too long Democrat Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher has prioritized labor union bosses over the workers she pretends to represent. In one instance, she sided with the United Farm Worker union leaders who disappeared from a farm for two decades and came back demanding three percent of the workers’ weekly pay. She also opposed commonsense legislation in the Assembly that would have provided farm workers with the same rights as the staffers at the Agricultural Labor Relations Board and most every other worker in the state.”
The ad campaign specifically focuses on Lorena Gonzalez-Fletcher’s decision to vote to kill legislation designed to secure farmworker rights, particularly their freedom of assembly and right to not be represented by a union.
The bills that Gonzalez-Fletcher opposed were AB 3092, AB 3093, and AB 3094, which were introduced by Rep. Jim Patterson in 2018. Specifically, these bills would decertify unions that disappear from a farm for a period longer than 3 years, classifying this as an unfair labor practice. If this legislative package would have become law, it would have also required a judicial review before farmworker union election votes could be thrown out or cast aside. Despite these bills giving more power to workers, Gonzalez-Fletcher came out in strong opposition to them.
The Pick Justice Action ad buy campaign will use a mix of television, radio, digital, and print to blanket the state. In addition, they have launched a website championing their efforts: www.farmworkersrights.com.
These ads also focus on Lorena Gonzalez-Fletcher’s unwavering support for the United Farm Workers (UFW) union, especially during the Gerawan Farming incident. In that case, the UFW disappeared after one session of negotiation with the farmworkers back in the early 90s, and reappeared over two decades later demanding 3 percent of the workers weekly paychecks and attempting to enforce a contract that the workers didn’t want and didn’t vote for. Despite these actions, Gonzalez-Fletcher continued to stand behind the UFW.
Spokesman Jesse Rojas closed the Pick Justice Action ad buy press release by explaining, “our efforts will provide transparency about Assemblywoman Gonzalez Fletcher’s record of hypocrisy, lack of support for farm workers, and will serve as a warning to other members of the legislature that hard-working immigrant workers will not settle for all talk and no action.”
