VLVL(6) - Ch 10 Notes & Questions 2

[Sebastian Dangerfield]

>195.27  ignoring the oppression of farm workers - farm workers are
>mentioned several times, how do the fare now, compared with the time of
>24fps? did "the revolution" help them?

No representation of the California radical milieu would be complete, I
suppose, without some mention of the farm workers, and the United Farm
Workers' efforts to organize them.  Cesar Chavez founded the UFW in 1962.
 Under Chavez's charismatic leadership the union brought some small "j"
justice to farm workers, one of the most truly oppressed groups of
workers in the US, largely through the use of secondary boycotts of
California grapes (an apparently perpetual boycott) and Red Coach
Lettuce.  

A little background helps here.  Agricultural workers are excluded from
the protections of most of the federal labor, employment, and even social
security laws.  This was of course no accident.  One of the great dirty
open secrets of the New Deal is that Roosevelt's crew sold out folks of
color shamelessly by bowing to the Southern Democrats' demand that
agricultural and domestic help be excluded form the New Deal.  (Needless
to say, workers in these two groups at the time of the New Deal were
overwhelmingly African American, and Messrs. Thurman et al. were not
about to sell the farm by giving them the minimum wage, social security
benefits, and federal protections in their efforts to organize and
bargain collectively).  Interestingly, the exclusion from the National
Labor Relations Act gave the farm workers one weapon that was denied to
those who are covered by the federal collective bargaining regime:  the
power to institute secondary boycotts (that is, boycotts of companies
other than the exact one that employs the union's membership). 
Therefore, farm workers can call for a boycott of, say, a supermarket
that buys from bad growers, or from wineries who buy grapes from growers
who won't allow unionization.  (Under the Taft-Hartley amendments to the
NLRA, unions that are protected under that law are not permitted to
institute such boycotts).  But, of course, farm workers don't have
federal protection for union activity, meaning for instance, that they
can be fired for, say talking to fellow workers about the possibility of
unionizing.  So, despite this weapon, farm workers remain workers without
much bargaining leverage.  Throughout the sixties and the early
seventies, though, the UFW successfully used this weapon to win a
substantial number of union contracts in the fields throughout California
(and in some other states as well).  They also succeeded in getting a
mini-NLRA for ag workers passed in California (but the law has been since
gutted).  

Unfortunately for the filed hands, the chic for farmworker solidarity,
and with it the Joan Baez appearances at strikes, etc.--faded, the
eventual reaganite/dukemeijanesque repression set in, and the growers
successfully beat back the tide of unionization in California. The union
went into a fairly sad desuetude through the 80s.  The leadership--ie
Chavez--decided to throw all resources at the boycott, which didn't
always play so well with a boycott-fatigued public (I was an organizer
for the union, an remember how many times people would express
astonishment and dismay that the grape boycott was still going, without
apparent success).  This meant that little to no resources went into
organizing, which a lot of folks connected with the union criticized,
which in turn brought out a rather defensive and vindictive streak in the
leadership--ie, Chavez and people closely related to him.  In short, the
union suffered from a rather extreme top-down management style and a cult
of personality that was damaging to its work and credibility.  Its
strengths--Chavez's charismatic leadership, eg--also turned out to be its
weaknesses.  Recently, since Chavez's passing, the union has, I have
heard, turned back toward organizing.  Perhaps it will be revitalized
under the leadership of Artie Rodriguez (who, if I remember right is
Chavez's brother-in-law).  But it's a tough row to hoe, and I'm not sure
that it can come back from its weakened state.  

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