The top attorney at California’s Agricultural Labor Relations Board has a new job. On Wednesday Governor Jerry Brown appointed Sylvia Torres-Guillen to a new job as special counsel in his office.
Torres-Guillen had served as general counsel for the ALRB since 2011. In recent years the board has been at the center of controversy over a case involving Fresno’s Gerawan Farming and the United Farm Workers union, including a disputed 2013 decertification election.
The ballots in that vote have yet to be counted and could be destroyed, thanks to claims by the union and the ALRB’s prosecutor that the company violated labor laws ahead of the vote. The company denies those claims.
The on-going dispute was recently the subject of an appellate court ruling, which found the state's mandatory mediation law for ag labor disputes unconstitutional.