THE CONFLUENCE OF LABOR ACTIVISM AND RISK AVOIDANCE By Matthew Allen, Vice President, State Government Affairs
I have written many times about union and labor activism in California and how their advocacy efforts have a very strong impact on legislative and regulatory activity.
Likewise, I have also called out the tendency of our state government, especially at the agency level, to default to a risk avoidance strategy when dealing with everyday activities that play a critical role in helping us all live within a productive, safe and healthy environment. The most common examples tend to occur within the California Environmental Protection Agency and the evaluations for new pesticide registrations as well as the routine reevaluations that are required by law. Another key example is the strict air emissions mandates that are promulgated by the California Air Resources Board. Too often, economic realities and other practical effects are ignored for the sake of some arbitrarily defined safety factor. Overly aggressive labor activism that both treats and assumes the employer as the bad guy is terrible enough on its own. However, when you couple that sentiment with a strategy of strict avoidance, you end up with a recipe for lopsided decision-making that often disregards important data and facts. Nowhere is this philosophical confluence more pronounced than at the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board (Board). This board is charged with maintaining and adopting regulations to ensure the safety of California’s workplaces. Western Growers doesn’t have any beef with the goal. We do, however, raise concerns with how the Board views employers and how they ignore scientific facts and data if that data in any way supports an employer’s claim. They almost always side with labor activists, even when the science and data warrant otherwise. A case in point is the ongoing conversations at the Board regarding the use of autonomous tractors in farm fields. Under existing law, this equipment is not able to be operated unless you have a human operator stationed at the vehicular controls. This essentially bars the use of new driverless technology in California’s farm fields. There have been two unsuccessful attempts to change this law via a petition process to the Board. In both instances, the petitions were summarily denied and even the creation of an advisory committee to review the regulation and identify options to potentially move forward was also denied. Why? Because labor requested that the petition not be approved and that safety of this equipment cannot be guaranteed. More unsettling, the safety data provided by a tractor manufacturer was
called into question by one Board member claiming it to be essentially insufficient because it wasn’t collected at the site of a unionized employer. If you are stupefied by the logic, you should be.
"Too often, economic realities and other practical effects are ignored for the sake of some arbitrarily defined safety factor." That said, I firmly believe that the use of fully autonomous tractors will be made lawful for operation in California’s farm fields in the future. The real question is how long this should take in reaching a successful outcome. While the technology we are discussing is highly complex, amending the regulation needn’t be. Western Growers will continue to work with our allied organizations to determine the best pathways forward. I’m optimistic that we’ll get there sooner rather than later. California is known as a technology leader. We should continue to live up to that name. Risk avoidance gets nothing done. Progress doesn’t happen and you get left behind. We cannot afford that to happen to California agriculture. The more we can encourage the usefulness of risk mitigation and trusting data, the better off we’ll be.
Image Provided as Courtesy of John Deere
9 Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com July | August 2024
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