A proposed law would give Washington’s agricultural workers a formal process to engage in collective bargaining with their employers, extending an advantage that many private-sector workers have. The federal National Labor Relations Act, which grants collective bargaining rights to private-sector workers, does not cover agricultural workers. In Washington, agricultural workers can unionize, but the bill’s advocates point out that the law does not have a mechanism to enforce that ability. SB 6045 would put agricultural workers’ collective bargaining under the purview of the state Public Employment Relations Commission, which already covers agricultural cannabis workers. — Erick Bengel, Murrow News Fellowship and Washington State StandardRepublished under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.