Gavin Newsom walked outside the front steps of the state Capitol and signed the farmworker bill in front of a small gathering organized by the United Farm Workers | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

Gavin Newsom signed legislation Wednesday making it easier for farmworkers to unionize in California — a reversal from earlier threats to veto the bill that came after President Joe Biden and other Democratic heavyweights threw their support behind it.

Newsom walked outside the sunbaked front steps of the state Capitol and signed the bill in front of a small gathering organized by the United Farm Workers, the iconic union founded by the late Cesar Chavez whose members had kept up a monthslong vigil in Sacramento in support of the bill.

The agreement with the governor’s office eliminates a provision of the bill that would allow mail-in union elections.

Newsom had previously said he opposed mail-in voting because of security concerns, though California uses it to allow the public to vote in statewide elections.

That wave of support came after a spokesperson for Newsom’s office issued a statement last month that the governor couldn’t “support an untested mail-in election process that lacks critical provisions to protect the integrity of the election.” His office issued that message the night before thousands of marchers organized by the United Farm Workers reached the Capitol.

“The California Farm Bureau is deeply disappointed in Gov

Newsom’s decision to sign the misguided union organizing legislation,” California Farm Bureau President Jamie Johansson said in a statement

AB 2183, as currently written, will give agricultural businesses the option to sign an agreement to not interfere with a union’s attempt to organize and allow mail-in elections, or be subject to a process in which workers could vote simply by signing a union representation card