Opinion ID: 1281454
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Restrictions on Access in the Home

Text: (5) The fact that the employees live at the camp does not preclude the grower from making reasonable regulations governing access to a communal bunkhouse simply because the bunkhouse is the workers' home. The employees' statutory right of access, characterized in some cases as a right to be visited in the home, in fact refers to the right to communicate with union representatives where the employees live, i.e., at the labor camp, not necessarily in the communal bunkhouse. [15] Rather, a reasonable construction of the prior cases supports the view that workers in a labor camp have a right to be visited at the camp (the workers' home). Any rule to the contrary would most certainly impinge upon the rights, both statutory and constitutional, of employees residing in the communal bedroom not to suffer visits by unrestricted numbers of union representatives at any and all hours of the day and night and upon the grower's right to insure peace and quiet for the employees during normal sleeping hours. For example, Merzoian Brothers Farm Management Company, Inc., supra, 3 ALRB No. 62, involved the complete denial of access to the camp by locking the gates of the fenced camp compound at night. In finding such conduct to be an unfair labor practice the Board majority stated: The right of employees who are residents of a labor camp to receive visitors is akin to the rights of a person in his own home or apartment. The owner or operator of a labor camp cannot exercise for the worker his right not to receive visits from union organizers.... [A]ccommodation must be made for the rights of not just the owner and the organizer, but also for the tenant who has a basic right to control his own home life.  ( Id., at p. 4, italics added.) By a parity of reasoning, where the living situation is not akin to one's own home or apartment, and where exercise by one tenant of control over his or her home life by inviting visitors into the communal bunkhouse will inevitably impinge on the right of others in the group living situation to exercise control over their home life, reasonable time, place and manner restrictions may, where appropriate, exclude visitors from a communal bunkhouse. Indeed, a grower/labor camp operator charged with the duty to maintain order in its group housing facilities must of necessity make reasonable time, place and manner restrictions on visitation.