Hopes hang in balance at S.F. City Hall
Thousands attach holiday ‘wishes and prayers’ to tree
Not everyone who wishes for something at Christmas is wishing for world peace. Some people are wishing for something more useful.
“I wish it will snow in the morning so nobody does not have to go to school for two weeks,” wrote one wisher.
That wish and 17,000 others — the majority having to do with the people of the world coming to their senses — have been scribbled onto slips of paper, folded into the shape of birds and hung on San Francisco’s official holiday tree in City Hall.
Like the season itself, it’s a tree with a lot of hope and no guarantees. That’s how Christmas works.
“It’s powerful to put your wishes and prayers out there,” said Jeff Cotter, founder and executive director of the Rainbow World Fund, the humanitarian foundation in San Francisco that assembles the tree every year. “But we can’t promise they’re going to come true.”
It’s the 12th season for the majestic 23-foot-tall tree, which stands at the entrance to the Board of Supervisors chambers, a place where things sometimes happen that no one wishes for.
Anyone can write a wish and fold a bird. All you need is a square piece of Japanese origami paper and a lot of patience. The patience is necessary because the first dozen or so attempts will not look like birds, despite the wishes of most origami beginners.
You can also dash off a wish on the foundation’s website. Cotter and his staff will fold it into a bird for you, because Christmas is a time to do nice things for other people. The limit is 100 words per wish. More
to order a contract that would consider both sides’ needs and would be subject to farm labor board review.
The rational purpose of the law is “to promote collective bargaining and ensure stability in the agricultural labor force,” Justice Goodwin Liu said in the 7-0 decision. He said the law allows the opposing sides to agree on a mediator and appeal the mediator’s rulings, and contains safeguards to “prevent misconduct, favoritism, or abuse of power by the mediator.”
The grower in the case, Gerawan Farming, said it would seek review in the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Coerced contracts are constitutionally at odds with free choice,” said Gerawan, a tree and grapefruit grower with 3,000 employees in Fresno and Madera counties.
The United Farm Workers’ contract with Gerawan was ordered by a mediator and approved by the farm labor board in 2013 — 23 years after the union won an election to represent the company’s workers. After that election, the two sides held only one negotiating session, in 1995, and did not meet again until 2012, after Gerawan asked to reopen talks. The union requested mediation after further negotiations failed.
Union President Arturo Rodriguez said Monday that Gerawan owes the workers more than $10 million under the contract.
Gerawan countered that the farm labor board is violating its workers’ rights by refusing to count ballots from a November 2013 election on whether to decertify the union. The board held hearings and concluded the company had improperly interfered in the election by supporting and helping to fund the decertification campaign. Gerawan has challenged that ruling in a state appeals court in Fresno.
Monday’s ruling “creates the opportunity for new life” in the “moribund” farm labor law, said William Gould, a Stanford law professor and former chairman of both the state farm labor board and the National Labor Relations Board.
The case is Gerawan Farming vs. Agricultural Labor Relations Board, S227243.