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From Socialist Worker, No. 101, 14 December 1968, pp. 2 & 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
THE END OF ANOTHER harvest of California grapes means the fourth year of continuous efforts by the United Farm Workers Organising Committee (UFWOC) to gain union recognition for the more than one million farm workers of America.
Under the leadership of Mr. Cesar Chavez, himself a migrant farm worker and with the complete support of the AFL-CIO (the American TUC), they are seeking the dignity and economic freedom of a union contract.
At the present time there is no established national union for farm workers. This is because the National Labor Relations Act (NRA), the federal law which guarantees the right to unionise to every other American worker, specifically excludes agricultural labourers.
Because of the large rural representation in Congress, farm workers have been excluded from this law since its passage in 1935. They subsequently have been excluded from all major pieces of labour legislation, including health and pension plans, unemployment insurance, workman’s compensation for injury on the job, and most minimum wage and child labour laws.
Without the advantage of a union,farm workers are subject to the arbitrary exploitation of their employers.
This has become increasingly true as the agricultural industry has evolved from small and medium-sized farms employing a small number of workers to the present huge 'agribusinesses’, operating on multi-million dollar budgets, occupying thousands of acres of farmlands, and employing thousands of workers at peak season.
It is these 'factories in the fields’, located mainly in the southwest of the United States, which maintain the social and economic bondage of the farm worker.
Farm workers earn a yearly wage which falls well below the national minimum poverty level income. Most farm workers live,at best, in prison-like compounds and at worst, in crumbling rural shanties, and have little voice in community affairs.
They may work 10 to 12 hours a day, six and seven days a week, in the scorching fields, often without the simple amenities of toilets and drinking water. Their children are forced to drop out of school to supplement the family income by working in the fields.
The UFWOC fight for union recognition has been twofold:
The effort of the past two years to persuade Congress finally to cover the agricultural labourer has been met with widespread support.
But a Bill in Congress is blocked in the rules committee by the filibuster techniques of Senator George Murphy, the show business senator from California. Richard Nixon has spoken out against the efforts of the union and has declared his solidarity with the California growers.
It seems that counterpressures from the White House, now that Mr. Nixon has been elected, will probably be strong enough to keep Congress from acting, at least in the near future.
Early in the struggle, the union sought direct meeting with the growers. Their request for union representation elections were flatly refused, and often completely ignored.
Therefore, in 1965, the workers went on strike. Because of opposition on the state government level, however, the strike effort has met with varying success.
The farm workers have had many of their strikes ‘decertified’ by the State Department of Employment apparently through the direct intervention of reactionary Governor Ronald Reagan.
The companies have been able to recruit, thousands of Mexican workers to come in and break the strike. They do so by driving down to Mexico and hiring workers, not informing them of the strike.
When the workers arrive in California, learn of the strike, and perhaps decide not to work at the farm they are told that they must work for they owe the company for transportation.
When this initial debt has been worked off, they find they now owe the company for room and board and the vicious cycle continues. And often the Mexican workers' need the work they are offered by the American companies.
After all, an American dollar is worth 12 Mexican pesos. This process has been described as ‘using the poorest of the poor of another country to defeat the poorest of the poor of this country ...’
These actions. coupled with injunctions drastically limiting the right to picket, have left the workers with no recourse but to seek public support for a boycott of the growers’ produce.
Though complete support and extensive funds (such as $5,000 per month from the United Auto workers) have been provided by the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters, and the Union of Stevedores and Longshoremen, these unions are forced to transport the grapes or risk the penalty of violating an unfair labour practice legislation.
In New York, a $25million suit was filed against unions of butchers and retail clerks who refused to work in stores which carried California table grapes. Individual lorry drivers and dockers who have refused to cross UFWOC picket lines, have been fired for breach of contract.
UFWOC therefore has had to rely on the American consumer for the success of the boycott.
The first boycott was directed against the wine grape growers of California. In 1966,the union put out publicity asking stores and consumers to buy other brands of wines, and farm workers travelled from California to leaflet and picket at wineshops all over the nation.
These efforts were not without success. At present, there are 10 very solid fair contracts with companies that grow wine grapes.
The national boycott is presently directed against California table grape growers, the largest agribusiness in the state. Originally the boycott was only of grapes of the Giumarra Corporation, a huge California farm covering 12,000 acres.
Sales at Giumarra dipped sharply after the start of the boycott,but rather than recognise and bargain with the union, they chose to retaliate with illegal measures. Giumarra grapes began to be shipped with the labels of a hundred other grape companies pasted on the crates.
This dodge was confirmed and criticised by the National Food and Drug Administration, but not stopped. The industry also guaranteed Giumarra economic protection against the strike loss.
As a result of this collusion, the union had to take on the entire California table grape industry at once.
This has led to the present activity: a nation-wide consumer boycott of all California fresh table grapes, until the growers negotiate.
The boycott has met with widespread success. Major cities such as Boston, New York and Kansas City are almost completely clear of the grapes. Many major national chainstores have cancelled their orders for table grapes this year.
Again the growers are attempting to wipe out the efforts of the union. Last year, almost one-third of the grapes were sold on the export market. This year, more have been put in cold storage, presumably for the same fate.
England is the largest importer of American table grapes in Europe, having imported about 3,000,000 pounds in 1967. Efforts are presently being made to see what role English trade unions, political leaders and the public might play in internationalising the boycott.
American unions cannot detain the grape cargo as they are bound by strict federal law. Therefore, UFWOC is calling on brother English trade unions, who are not bound by such severe limitations, to support the strike and boycott by not handling scab grapes.
A refusal to handle these shipments would be quite valuable in strengthening the union’s position, in bringing the growers to the bargaining table, and in ending once and for all the injustice which for decades has made the farm worker the symbol of the forgotten man in America.
Elaine Elinson is in Britain to organise the UFWOC European campaign.
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