There’s only one reason Gov. Gavin Newsom should sign the bill for California farmworkers

To us, it doesn’t matter why President Joe Biden is urging Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign a bill that would make it easier for farmworkers to organize.

A Republican consultant told The Bee that “there’s no other reason for the president to weigh in on this other than to put Gov. Newsom in his place.” Sure there is; the most cynical explanation is not always the correct one.

Maybe the president was thinking along the same lines that Kerry Kennedy was when she tweeted a photo of her father, Bobby Kennedy, with César Chávez. “Firmar la legislación,” she told Newsom. Sign the bill. In a second tweet, Kennedy told the governor, “Sí se puede.” Oh yes, it can be done, though Newsom has signaled that he’s not inclined to.

Close Newsom ally House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wasn’t putting the governor in his place when she likewise tweeted that “CA farmworkers provide for our families — but far too many can’t provide for theirs because they are exploited and don’t have a voice on the job. We can mend this injustice by expanding workers’ rights. I urge the governor to sign #AB2183 for the farmworkers and For The Children.”

So does Newsom’s friend Vice President Kamala Harris, who tweeted that, “California farm workers have gone above and beyond to provide food for people across our nation. It’s long past due that we create an easier path for these workers to organize a union.”

In a statement over Labor Day weekend, the president noted that “in the state with the largest population of farmworkers, the least we owe them is an easier path to make a free and fair choice to organize a union.”

“I am grateful to California’s elected officials and union leaders for leading the way,” Biden’s statement said.

Some officials, anyway.

Newsom’s fellow Democrats are just acknowledging the truth that it’s the labor of underpaid workers with few rights that has made Big Ag so big, and that has made our state so rich.

How much has our governor, the winery and vineyard owner who wore a cozy fleece jacket and cap in that Tuesday video asking the rest of us to turn our thermostats up, thought about what it feels like picking grapes in this record heat? Only he knows that.

And only he knows whether it was to avoid questions about farmworkers that he was standing out in a field all by himself on Labor Day when he announced his support for a bill that will improve pay and conditions for fast food workers.

It’s not news that the United Farm Workers doesn’t have the clout or membership it used to. Thirty years ago, on Feb. 23, 1992, The Bee reported that “for the last decade, Chávez and the once powerful UFW have taken a beating in the fields, at the bargaining tables and in the courts.” Disillusioned supporters complained that the union had all but stopped organizing, though the need had not lessened any.

But that’s not a good argument against letting the union try and regain its strength; in fact, if they’re such a nothing, then why the strong and stressed-out opposition from growers? If they are no longer relevant, what’s the governor afraid of?

Of course, Newsom shouldn’t sign the bill because it would look bad or hurt his presidential chances to do otherwise, though it would. And though Politico has reported that Newsom is “privately seething” over Biden’s pressure campaign, he shouldn’t sign because our pro-labor president wants him to, either.

There’s really only one reason he should sign it, and that’s because it’s the right thing to do. As Biden said, it’s the least we owe farmworkers.