Gerawan Farming, Inc. v. Agricultural Labor Relations Board
Annotate this Case
The Court of Appeal denied the petition for review challenging the Board's finding that Gerawan committed unfair labor practices by (1) engaging in bad faith "surface bargaining," and (2) insisting on the exclusion of workers employed by farm labor contractors (FLC workers) from the core benefits of any collective bargaining agreement (CBA) reached between Gerawan and the union. The findings were based on Gerawan's bargaining conduct both before and after the Board ordered the parties to "mandatory mediation and conciliation" (MMC) under the MMC statutory scheme, Labor Code section 1164 et seq.
The court held that there is no conflict between the MMC statute and the Alatorre-Zenovich-Dunlap-Berman Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975 (ALRA) with respect to imposing unfair practice liability for acts arising from the parties' negotiation sessions held outside the mediator's presence; the Board's findings are supported by substantial evidence on the record considered as a whole; section 1160 empowers the Board to adjudicate unfair labor practice charges that arise from negotiations outside the mediator's presence during the MMC process, and this necessarily includes the power, should the Board find that a party has engaged in an unfair labor practice, to, among other things, make employees whole "for the loss of pay resulting from the employer’s refusal to bargain;" and because Gerawan has not shown that Board Member Hall had an actual bias or there was an unacceptable risk of bias, the Board did not err when it denied Gerawan's disqualification motion.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.