The Law

Picketing Okay on Private Property by Ron Davis Union organizers should now have an easier time engaging customers at California shopping centers with pro-labor messages. That’s because a court ruling now gives wider latitude to picketers as they attempt to recruit advocates to unionizing efforts. The ruling results from a lawsuit that the owner of a Fresno grocery store filed against a labor union, United Food and Commercial Workers, Union Local 8. The store owner objected to the pressure that picketers supposedly used to win backing for their cause. The target of the picketing—a Foods Co store—is located at a Fresno shopping center. And when the picketing began, none of the employees of the store were affiliated with the union or its unionizing activities. The picketers explained at that time that the goal of their efforts was “informational.” That is, they said, they simply wanted to converse with shoppers to inform them that Foods Co employees do not receive the benefits they could get if unionized. The picketers were assisted in their objectives by distributing leaflets and displaying placards. Store management reported, however, that picketers confronted store employees and pressured Foods Co customers to take handbills. On occasion, management added, the confrontations resulted in near violence. Foods Co management therefore charged that the union had disobeyed rules of conduct that the company had set. Moreover, the company said, the local police department was unwilling to remove the picketers from the property. Foods Co therefore formally complained, seeking a restriction of the union’s activities while on the store’s leased property. The objective: “to prevent the union from directly or indirectly using Foods Co private property for any expressive activity at a time or place or in a manner prohibited by Foods Co’s rules.” A California court ruled that state laws prevented issuing any sort of constraints on the union’s activities. Foods Co appealed that ruling, and the California Supreme Court ultimately decided that the California laws are “components of a state statutory system for regulating labor relations” and that they neither restrict nor abridge speech. Explained the court, “It is well settled that statutory law—state and federal—may single out labor-related speech for particular protection or regulation, in the context of a statutory system of economic regulation of labor relations, without violating the federal Constitution.” (Ralphs Grocery Company v. United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 8, 2013 WL 1450925 [Cal.App. 5 Dist.]) Decision: April 2013 Published: May 2013