The California Agricultural Labor Relations Act (CALRA) is a landmark statute in United States labor law that was enacted by the state of California in 1975, establishing the right to collective bargaining for farmworkers in that state, a first in U.S. history.
The goal of the Act is to "ensure peace in the agricultural fields by guaranteeing justice for all agricultural workers and stability in labor relations." The Act, part of the California Labor Code, explicitly encourages and protects "the right of agricultural employees to full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, to negotiate the terms and conditions of their employment, and to be free from the interference, restraint, or coercion of employers of labor, or their agents, in the designation of such representatives or in self-organization or in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection."
The Act established rules and authorized regulations similar to those of National Labor Relations Act, a federal law which formally protected the collective bargaining rights of most American workers except farm and domestic workers. The California Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) administers the Act. The ALRB has two functions: To conduct, oversee, and certify representation elections, and to investigate unfair labor practice (ULP) charges and pursue remedies. Administrative law judges and agency staff adjudicate most cases, with the five-member Board serving as a final arbiter.
Background
Collective bargaining rights for most hourly workers in the United States were first given legal protection in 1933 by Section 7a of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA). Although NIRA did not specifically exempt agricultural laborers from the protection of the Act, the Roosevelt administration—eager to win over farm-state members of Congress—argued that farmworkers were excluded. When the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) was enacted in 1935, it, too, specifically exempted agricultural workers due to pressure from the "farm bloc" in Congress. Although a number of attempts were made in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s to organize farm laborers, these efforts were unsuccessful.
In August 1966, the National Farm Workers Association and Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, two unrecognized and relatively minor labor unions claiming to represent farm workers in California, merged to form the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (the predecessor organization to the United Farm Workers). Adopting the philosophy of pacifism in the face of often violent reaction to its organizing efforts and engaging in strikes, hunger strikes, boycotts and secondary boycotts (including the particularly successful Delano grape strike), marches, rallies, and cutting-edge public relations campaigns, the United Farm Workers (UFW) began organizing large numbers of agricultural laborers into unions. In some cases, the UFW even won recognition and negotiated contracts.
Impetus for legal action
The Salad Bowl strike
A series of violent strikes and inter-union jurisdictional battles set the political stage for passage of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act. By 1969, the UFW was on the verge of winning the four-year-old Delano grape strike. But as the Delano grape strike seemed to be ending, an attempt by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to organize farm laborers in the Salinas Valley in California led to the costly "Salad Bowl strike." Six thousand drivers and packing workers represented by the Teamsters struck on July 17, 1970, winning a contract on July 23 under which growers gave the Teamsters, not the UFW, access to farms and the right to organize workers into unions. Secret talks between the UFW and the Teamsters led to an agreement to return jurisdiction over the field workers to the farm union, but the agreement collapsed on August 23 and 7,000 UFW workers struck the Salinas Valley growers. Violence, sporadic at first but increasingly widespread, began to occur in the fields. On December 4, federal marshals arrested and jailed César Chávez. Two days later, an anti-union mob nearly rioted when former Olympic gold medal-winning decathlete Rafer Johnson and Ethel Kennedy, widow of slain Senator Robert F. Kennedy visited Chávez in jail. The two unions signed a new jurisdictional agreement reaffirming the UFW's right to organize field workers,