The title of a new proposal to allow predatory unions to force themselves on Washington’s farmworkers without a vote obscures the measure’s true motives.

Scott Dilley, spokesman for the Olympia-based Worker and Farmer Labor Association, joined Dillon Honcoop on the Jan. 25th episode of The Farming Show to explain that even the bill’s main sponsor, Rep. Lillian Ortiz-Self, D-Mukilteo, admits there’s a bigger plan than just unionizing cannabis workers, as the bill’s title claims.

“If you look at the comments that she made during the public hearing on the bill, and then also during the executive session, which happened just this past week, it’s very clear that her intent is not just cannabis workers, but the agricultural industry as a whole,” Dilley said.

“The ‘camel’s nose under the tent’ comes when the workers are described as ‘cannabis farmworkers.’ Perhaps this year, or in a future year, the legislature, if this bill passes, could simply strike the word ‘cannabis,’ and thereby grant collective bargaining rights to all farmworkers,” he said.

But some may ask, why would granting farmworkers collective bargaining rights be a bad thing?

Not only does agriculture work differently than other industries, like manufacturing, where collective bargaining has long been allowed by the National Labor Relations Act. Dilley said the new state proposal for collective bargaining for farmworkers also includes an important–and troubling–distinction from how most people understand unionization and collective bargaining.

The difference? The process Ortiz-Self’s measure calls for would allow labor groups to come in and force unionization and collective bargaining without farmworkers ever getting a vote. The scheme, known as “card check,” leaves workers exposed to outside forces that want to pressure them.

Most people think of unions forming collective bargaining efforts via a vote of workers, and those votes occurring by secret ballot. But card check doesn’t work that way, making it difficult for workers under pressure to say what they truly want, without fear of retaliation.

“People need to have the right to have freedom of conscience, and not be subject to coercion,” said Dilley.

The measure, HB 1141, moved out of the state House of Representatives’ Labor and Workplace committee Jan. 22nd on a 6-3 vote, and a companion bill in the state Senate has since been introduced.