In early 2024, the United Farmworkers of America (UFW) sought to be certified as the exclusive bargaining representative for the employees of Wonderful Nurseries, LLC (Wonderful), an agricultural company involved in the grape industry in the Central Valley. The UFW utilized a new statutory procedure contained in Labor Code section 1156.37 in order to seek certification by filing with the Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB or Board) what is referred to as a “Majority Support Petition” (sometimes referred to by the parties as an MSP), demonstrating that a majority of Wonderful’s employees supported unionizing with the UFW as their bargaining representative.
Wonderful vigorously opposes this unionization effort. It filed objections in front of the ALRB as part of the statutory procedure under section 1156.37, making a plethora of claims of impropriety by the UFW in its unionization efforts. Wonderful claims to have submitted a large number of declarations to the ALRB disputing whether various workers were misinformed or misled, and contesting whether the workers actually support the UFW acting as their bargaining representative. The UFW, for its part, allegedly contested the veracity of those declarations, suggesting they were coerced from workers by management.
We use the words “claims” and “allegedly” here because the administrative proceeding in which such contested issues are being raised with the ALRB is not yet before us for review, and, thus, we know neither what the factual findings will be nor what information will be found in the fully developed record. Instead of waiting for the statutorily prescribed time for seeking judicial review—or even waiting for the evidentiary hearings it sought in front of the ALRB to conclude—Wonderful filed a petition in the superior court contesting the validity of the certification decision. Wonderful asked the superior court to enjoin the certification proceedings, prevent the ALRB from continuing with any administrative proceedings regarding certification of the UFW as the representative for Wonderful’s workers, and declare the underlying statute—section 1156.37—unconstitutional.
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. Rather, if the employer believes a union has been inappropriately certified as a bargaining representative, its remedy is to refuse to bargain with it. In the normal course of business, claims are then brought against the employer for unfair labor practices. In the context of an unfair labor practice proceeding, the employer can contest the validity of the certification. This procedure has been upheld not only by the courts of this state interpreting California’s Alatorre-Zenovich-Dunlap-Berman Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975 (§ 1140 et seq.; ALRA or the Act), but by federal courts interpreting the National Labor Relations Act (29 U.S.C. § 151 et seq.; NLRA) on which the ALRA is modeled. This delayed review procedure was created intentionally to avoid labor strikes caused when employers sought to delay union recognition.
Thus, the question we face in this opinion is a preliminary one: whether the trial court had jurisdiction to even consider this challenge at this time, despite statutory mandates funneling judicial review of certification decisions to a later point in time, and even then, to the Court of Appeal in the first instance. Despite apparently recognizing both the statutory mandate and the precedent upholding it, the trial court concluded it did have jurisdiction, and proceeded to issue a preliminary injunction staying the ALRB’s ongoing administrative hearings. We previously issued writs of supersedeas staying enforcement of that preliminary injunction. We now conclude, in line with both our Legislature’s command and a long judicial history supporting it, that the trial court lacked jurisdiction to consider this case. We will therefore remand these matters to the trial court with directions to dismiss Wonderful’s case.
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