Supreme Court rules against union access
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with California agriculture businesses that objected to a state regulation giving unions access to farm property in order to organize workers.
As a result of the ruling, the businesses’ attorney said, California will have to modify or abandon the regulation put in place in 1975 after the efforts of labor leader Cesar Chavez.
The justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines for the agriculture businesses. It’s another potential setback for unions as a result of a high court decision.
“The access regulation amounts to simple appropriation of private property,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the conservative members of the court. Roberts said the regulation “grants labor organizations a right to invade the growers’ property.”
At issue was a California regulation that allows unions access to farms and other agriculture businesses for up to three hours per day, 120 days per year, in order to organize workers. Businesses are supposed to be notified before organizers arrive, and organizers are supposed to come during nonwork times such as lunch and before and after work.
Two agriculture businesses had challenged the regulation, saying it had the effect of taking their property without compensation in violation of the Constitution. The businesses also said the regulation was outdated and unnecessary given that unions can reach workers many ways, including via smartphone and radio.
Writing for the majority, Roberts rejected the suggestion that the ruling would “endanger a host of state and federal government activities involving entry onto private property.”
But writing for the three-justice liberal minority, Justice Stephen Breyer said “the majority’s conclusion threatens to make many ordinary forms of regulation unusually complex or impractical.”Breyer wrote that he would have concluded that California’s regulation did not take anything but instead “regulates the employers’ right to exclude others.”
Breyer noted the “large numbers of ordinary regulations” that permit the temporary entry onto a property owner’s land. That includes entry for inspections ranging from food product safety like meat and dairy facility inspections to the inspections of nursing homes, preschools and foster care facilities.
Buffet resigns from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
NEW YORK – Warren Buffett resigned Wednesday as trustee of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which says it will announce plans in July to answer questions raised about its leadership structure as it deals with the divorce of its two founders.
The announcement from Buffett comes weeks after Bill and Melinda Gates revealed that they were divorcing after 27 years of marriage but would continue to jointly run one of the largest charitable foundations in the world.
Buffett was one of three members of the foundation’s board – the other two are Bill and Melinda Gates.
“For years I have been a trustee – an inactive trustee at that – of only one recipient of my funds, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMG). I am now resigning from that post, just as I have done at all corporate boards other than Berkshire’s,” Buffett said in a prepared statement Wednesday.
Buffett, the chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, also said that he is halfway to reaching his goal of giving away the entirety of his shares in the conglomerate and that he’s donating another $4.1 billion in shares to five foundations, though the lion’s share went to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
In Buffett’s donation announced Wednesday, it received more than $3.2 billion, bringing his total giving to the foundation to nearly $33 billion, Suzman said in a statement.
“I know Warren’s departure raises questions about the foundation’s governance,” Suzman said, adding he has been “actively discussing with him, Bill, and Melinda approaches to strengthen our governance to provide long-term stability and sustainability for the foundation’s governance and decision-making in light of the recent announcement of Bill and Melinda’s divorce. I plan to share additional information in July.”
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has a trust endowment of about $50 billion and around 1,600 employees, having funded work in 135 countries.
From wire reportsThere have been calls in philanthropy circles to diversify the foundation’s board, and critics have long pointed out that decision-making is concentrated in very few hands at the foundation, which they say has outsized influence in public health and other fields.
“Big foundations need strong oversight. The Gates Foundation has a lot of power, and to have so few people who are playing a governance role is just problematic,” said David Callahan, the founder of the Inside Philanthropy website and author of “The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age.”