July 15, 1969 —  Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, US Senate, Washington DC

 

Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee, we are again glad to be here and present our long, sad story of trying to organize the farmworkers.

We have had tremendous difficulties in trying to organize farmworkers. I don’t think, first of all, that we have to belabor the reason why farmworkers need a union. The horrible state in which farmworkers find themselves, faced with such extreme poverty and discrimination, has taught us that the only way we can change our situation is by organization of a union.

I don’t believe that it can be done any other way. Certainly, we can’t depend on Government to do it, nor can we expect them to take the responsibility.

On the other hand, our problem is the Government’s responsibility, I think, when they try to keep the farmworkers from being organized or actually take action that makes it difficult for farmworkers to organize.

I am going to read a prepared statement regarding our boycott, and then I would like to get into specifics and try to point out to the Senators why our work is so difficult.

As you know, UFWOC has undertaken an international boycott of all California-Arizona table grapes in order to gain union recognition for striking farmworkers. We did not take up the burden of the boycott willingly. It is expensive. It is a hardship on the farmworkers’ families who have left the small valley towns to travel across the country to boycott grapes.

But, because of the table grapes growers’ refusal to bargain with their workers, the boycott is our major weapon and I might say a nonviolent weapon, and our last line of defense against the growers who use foreign labor to break our strikes.

It is only through the pressure of the boycott that UFWOC has won contracts with major California wine grape growers. At this point, the major obstacles to our efforts to organize farmworkers are obstacles to our boycott.

Our boycott has been met with well-organized and well-financed opposition by the growers and their sympathizers. Most recently, several major California grape growers joined with other agribusiness interests and members of the John Birch Society to form an employer-dominated “union,” the Agricultural Workers Freedom To Work Association (AWFWA), for the sole purpose of destroying UFWOC. AWFWA’s activities have been described in a sworn statement to the U.S. Government, which I would like permission to place in the record at the close of my remarks.

In spite of this type of antiunion activity, our boycott of California-Arizona table grapes has been successful. It is being successful for the simple reason that millions of Americans are supporting the grape workers strike by not buying table grapes.

After 6 weeks of the 1969-70 table grape harvest, California table grape shipments to 36 major U.S. cities are down 20 percent from last year, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture reports. The price per lug for Thompson seedless grapes is at least $1 less than it was at this time of last year’s harvest. And I might add that that has dropped even more since this statement was written.

It is because of the successful boycott that, on Friday, June 13, 1969, 10 major California growers offered to meet with UFWOC under the auspices of the Federal Mediation Service. UFWOC representatives and ranch committee members met with the growers for 2 weeks. Progress is being made in these negotiations, which are presently recessed over the issue of pesticides.

However, the U.S. Department of Defense table grape purchases have been very detrimental to our effort.

Now that the boycott has brought us so close to a negotiated settlement of this 3-year-old dispute, we learn that the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has doubled its purchases of table grapes. We appear to be witnessing an all-out effort by the military to bail out the growers and break our boycott. Let me review the facts behind this imposing Federal obstacle to farmworker organizing.

The DOD is doubling its purchases of table grapes this year. DOD bought 6.9 million pounds of table grapes in fiscal year 1968, and 8 million pounds in the first half of fiscal year 1969, with an estimated “climb to over 16 million this year” — I am quoting here an article that appeared in the Fresno Bee, April 25, 1969, by Frank Mankiewicz and Tom Braden.

DOD table grape shipments to South Vietnam this year have increased by 400 percent. In fiscal year 1968, 550,000 pounds were shipped to South Vietnam. In the first half of fiscal year 1969 alone these shipments totaled 2,047,695 pounds. This data on completed fiscal year purchases of table grapes comes directly from a DOD fact sheet entitled “Use of Table Grapes,” dated March 28, 1969.

Commercial shipments of fresh table grapes to South Vietnam in 1968 have risen nine times since 1966, according to U.S. Department of Commerce statistics. In 1966 South Vietnam imported 331,662 pounds of U.S. grapes and was the world’s 23d largest importer of U.S. fresh table grapes. In 1967, when the UFWOC boycott of Giumarra table grapes began, South Vietnam’s imports of U.S. table grapes jumped to 1,194,988 pounds, making it the world’s ninth largest importer. Last year, 1968, South Vietnam became the world’s fifth largest importer of this luxury commodity, by buying 2,855,016 pounds of U.S. table grapes. “This could not have occurred,” states the AFL-CIO News of June 14, 1969, “without both DOD and Agriculture Department encouragement.”

These are the facts as to how the grapes of wrath are being converted into the grapes of war by the world’s richest government in order to stop farmworkers from waging a successful boycott and organizing campaign against grape growers.

The DOD argues in its fact sheet that “The total Defense Supply Agency purchases of table grapes represent less than 1 percent of U.S. table grape production.” Data from the California Co-op and Livestock Reporting Service indicate, however, that “table” grapes may be utilized in three different ways: fresh for table use; crushed for wine; or dried as raisins. I refer to table I that is attached to this statement. Looking at table II, it is clear that DOD purchases of table grapes for fresh use represents nearly 2.5 percent of all U.S. fresh table grape production.

Table grape prices, like those of other fruits and vegetables, are extremely susceptible to minor fluctuations in supply. DOD purchases of some table grapes are probably shoring up the price of all table grapes and, at a critical point in the UFWOC boycott, are permitting many growers to stand firm in their refusal to negotiate with their workers.

It is obvious that the DOD is taking sides with the growers in this dispute. The DOD fact sheet states that “The basic policy of the DOD with regard to awarding defense contracts to contractors involved in labor disputes is to refrain from taking a position on the merits of any labor dispute. This policy is based on the premise that it is essential to DOD procurement need to maintain a sound working relationship with both labor and management.” Nevertheless, many unions in the United States are decrying this fantastic increase in DOD table grape purchases.
AFL-CIO News of June 14, 1969, notes that “union observers point out, however, that DOD does become involved in a labor dispute when it so greatly increases its purchase of boycotted grapes.” It seems that the DOD is violating its own policy and endangering its working relationship with labor, and we hope that the committee will explore this fully.

DOD table grape purchases are a national outrage. The history of our struggle against agribusiness is punctuated by the continued violations of health and safety codes by growers, including many table grape growers. Much of this documentation has already been submitted to the Senate Subcommittee on Migratory Labor. Such violations are so well documented that Superior Judge Irving Perluss, of California, recently ruled that a jobless worker was within his rights when he refused to accept farm labor work offered him through the California Department of Employment on grounds that most of such jobs are in violation of State health and sanitation codes. There is an attached Los Angeles Times article of July 4, 1969.

If the Federal Government and the DOD is not concerned about the welfare of farmworkers, they must be concerned with protecting our servicemen from contamination and disease carried by grapes picked in fields without toilets or washstands.

Recent laboratory tests have found DDT residues on California grapes. Economic poisons have killed and injured farmworkers. Will they also prove dangerous to U.S. military personnel?

Focusing on other forms of crime in the fields, we would finally ask if the DOD buys table grapes from the numerous growers who daily violate State and Federal minimum wage and child labor laws, who employ illegal foreign labor, and who do not deduct social security payments from farmworkers’ wages?

I would like to depart from the text for a second to read from the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act. There is a section here which talks about adulterated food, chapter 4. In this, we have “adulterated food will be considered adulterated if it has been prepared, packed, or held under unsanitary conditions where it may have been contaminated with filth or where it may have been rendered injurious to health.”

By this definition it is clear that DOD is buying adulterated food. For instance, one of the growers the Department of Defense lists as their No. 1 customer is the Giumarra Corp. The Giumarra Corp. was convicted of several counts of violation of law in Kern County. The violations were for not having toilets in the field, and working minors without due regard to the law.

What was the sentence when the Giumarra Corp. was guilty of violating these laws? For 23 counts of violations, they were fined $1,150, but this fine was suspended.

Of course, the Government subsidy that they later on received in that year, $274,000, not only paid for the fine, but offset any losses they may have suffered from the boycott.

The same grower, the Giumarra Corp., used DDT, Parathion, and so forth. All of these are known to have bad effects on the workers, and in accumulation, on the consumer that eats the grapes.

The same grower, the Giumarra Corp., which had 32 occupational injuries reported in 1 year, the majority of which were caused by pesticides in its fields.

Jack Pandol, another grower whom the Department of Defense purchases from, reported seven occupational injuries from pesticides. Another had even more. He had 48 injuries in 1967.

Let me add one other thing as long as we are talking about health. The health care of farmworkers is almost nonexistent, and the rate of tuberculosis is 200 percent above the national average. When you consider that many of the people now picking the grapes are being brought in from Mexico, that they are people without any type of legal residence papers, and therefore, have not been processed through the health regulations that usually apply to immigrants coming into this country, you can imagine what the contamination possibilities are, when the people are coming from a country with lower health standards than the United States.

There is one other thing I want to point out. When people pick table grapes, one of the things they are ordered to do is to be careful not to take off any of the “bloom.” The bloom is all the dust and filth on the grapes. If you wipe it off so the grapes are shiny then the grape will rot much faster. For the same reason, grapes are not washed by the picker or packer, and any of those pesticides or other things that may be on the grapes come straight to the consumer, and grapes are also very difficult to wash. Those grapes are picked and packed right in the field; they don’t go through any other kind of processing. They are taken off the vines, put in a box, lidded, taken into the cold storage, and shipped to the customers, and that is the way they come directly to the customers.

The Department of Defense increasing purchases of table grapes is nothing short of a national outrage. It is an outrage to the millions of American taxpayers who are supporting the farmworkers’ struggle for justice by boycotting table grapes. How can any American believe that the U.S. Government is sincere in its efforts to eradicate poverty when the military uses its immense purchasing power to subvert the farmworkers’ nonviolent struggle for a decent, living wage and a better future?

Many farmworkers are members of minority groups. They are Filipino and Mexican and black Americans. These same minority people are on the frontlines of battle in Vietnam. It is a cruel and ironic slap in the face to these men who have left the fields to fulfill their military obligation to find increasing amounts of boycotted grapes in their mess kits.
I would like to relate the story of a farm working family. I want to tell you the story of the Saladado family. They have been members of the farmworkers’ association since 1963. They were among the grape pickers that went on strike in 1965. They spent 5 months on the picket lines, which was especially hard in those days when we never had enough to eat, and they lost many of their personal belongings.
They went on a 300-mile pilgrimage to Sacramento. Then the brother went into the U.S. Army. His two sisters, who had never visited an eastern city in their lives, have been on the east coast working on the boycott. Maria went to Chicago for a year and a half. Antonia worked in New York for a year and a half and is now in Philadelphia. Their brother, Frank, has been in Vietnam¾you can imagine how he felt, when he knew his own personal sacrifice, and his mother’s and father’s, and the sacrifice of his two sisters, how he felt that he was continually served grapes in Vietnam, the disappointment of it.

This family has personally asked me to relate their experience to the committee today.

The Department of Defense makes a big deal about demand, claiming that they are buying grapes because there is troop acceptance and troop demand. We doubt this very much, and we doubt it because of the reports we are getting from the men in Vietnam.

The number of people with Spanish surnames in the service is close to 19 percent. We have close to 25 percent who are black. Neither of these groups want grapes to be used in Vietnam, and they have made this very vocal.

So, how can the Department of Defense explain or justify the intervention into the grape boycott, while we are supposedly fighting for freedom in Vietnam, and yet we are trying to destroy the farmworkers’ struggle for economic freedom m our own country.

While it seems like the Department of Defense is doing everything to break our boycott, the Congress voted a $3.9 billion subsidy for the growers of this country so that they can further fight the unions and use Government funds to help the farmer avoid improving conditions.

Our only weapon is the boycott. Just when our boycott is successful the U.S. military doubles its purchases of table grapes, creating a major obstacle to farmworker organizing and union recognition. The Department of Defense is obviously acting as a buyer of last resort for scab grapes and is, in effect, providing another form of Federal subsidy for antiunion growers who would destroy the efforts of the poor to build a union. UFWOC calls on all concerned Americans and on the members of the Senate Subcommittee on Migratory Labor to protest this antiunion policy of the military and the Nixon administration.

The amount of grapes that the Department of Defense has purchased equals about 2.4 percent of the total grape market. This would be about the same amount of grapes that a city like Detroit would use. The city of Detroit has about 2½ million people, and yet it seems that for our troops, the Department of Defense is buying enough grapes that would furnish grapes for a city like Detroit.

To use another example, the amount of grapes purchased by the entire populations of Fort Worth, Providence, Milwaukee, Louisville, Ottawa, and Salt Lake City combined equals the amount of grapes being purchased for Vietnam.

I don’t believe the people in Vietnam are eating that many grapes. So where are the grapes going?

I don’t know if the Senators realize the amount of work that it takes to have a boycott. And just this amount of grapes being purchased, this 2.5 percent, can make a tremendous amount of difference on whether the grape boycott is successful or not. If one of the grape markets is closed and another is opened, it would yield the employer from 50 to 75 cents a box. With a yield of 500 boxes an acre, approximately, this would be an additional yield of $200 an acre. If the grower has 1,000 acres, that would means $200,000 additional income.

The 2 percent could be the make-or-break point in terms of the boycott.

I would like to indicate to you how difficult it is to organize the grape boycott. It is not a very easy thing, you know. I will take the city of Detroit for example. Let me give you an idea of the amount of work it has taken there.

In 1967 two farmworkers went to Detroit. After they had spent many, many months informing organizations, (church groups, student groups), and spent a lot of money on leaflets to inform the public — this is when we were boycotting a single producer of table grapes — then the grower started switching labels, and all the work they had done had to be redone. We had been successful in boycotting his grapes, so he began using the labels of all the other companies.

They were joined by a former nun, who worked during the year 1968 organizing the picket lines and informing the consumers of the injustices against the farmworkers, and finally, in the winter of 1968, we started having success in the new boycott against all the table grapes.

This year we have another farmworker family there, a man, his wife, and 11 children. Just recently, State Senator Roger Craig and the Reverend Baldwin conducted a 20-day fast to try to win sympathy for the grape boycott.

You can see the tremendous amount of work and suffering it takes to try to establish the boycott. I think some of you understand this. It takes on some of the ramifications of a political campaign, because you have to inform the consumers and tell them the facts, but its like working in a political campaign where nobody knows when the election will be.

Now, the reason why we have to use the boycott is that our other weapons have been rendered ineffective.

In the Coachella Valley, before we ever had any kind of a strike, we had voluntary elections among the workers, and these were ignored by the employers. We then proceeded to the strike. The workers in large numbers went out on strike. Immediately after, thousands of illegal workers were brought in to take their place. Right now, while I am sitting here talking to you, thousands of the people work in California, and they are being brought in to break the strike.

The Immigration Service turned its head. In one area, the workers are taken from the detention area right to the fields.

Workers’ transportation is paid for when the workers come from Mexico.

This would more than pay for any increase in wages if they recognize the union.

I should also mention that one of the reasons why it is so easy for them to bring people from Mexico is because people are very, very poor. They recruit the workers, they bring them in, and then they withhold 3 or 4 days’ wages. If a worker works a week, they only pay him for 3 or 4 days. If a worker wants to leave, he can’t, because he has no money to leave with once he has been brought in the country.

We have an additional problem, because even after we report to the Immigration Service, and do all the investigation for them, they still refuse to move. There is one Delano grower who has a foreman who has a false compartment in his truck in which he smuggles in aliens, and though all the facts have been given to the Immigration Service, they have refused to jail this person for a Federal offense.

In addition to the thousands of illegals and green carders being brought in to break the strike in Delano, there are many wetbacks that are being brought to other parts of the State to work, and other parts of the country.

Just recently a crew of farmworkers went to Oregon and found when they got there that their jobs were no longer there. The employer had hired illegal workers, and was paying them $1.25 an hour. So, they had to come back to Delano.

The police harassment against the strikers is unbelievable. We have to say that the police departments and sheriffs departments are in most cases direct agents of the employers. We have had several hundred arrests. We had one conviction, which was for resisting arrest. All the hundreds of arrests have cost the union a tremendous amount of money in bail and attorneys’ fees.

Forty-four people were charged with unlawful assembly. Many people were arrested because they accidentally went on a private road. They were arrested for trying to talk to workers in camp. I was one of them.

Cesar, a priest, a minister, and nine farmworkers were arrested for going into a camp in Borrego Springs, just to get the workers’ clothes after the workers were fired for union activity. They were arrested, stripped naked, and chained by the officers.

Just Saturday, when 60 melonpickers went out on strike in Lost Hills, there was a picket line, and the sheriff’s deputies, David Kaylor and R. M. Osborn, refused to protect our picket line, dragged a striker on the ground and arrested him. We had this picket line; across the street from our picket line was a counterpicket line, which was being conducted by the reactionary groups in Delano. They were shouting things like “Go home, Spic,” and saying a lot of four-letter words to the women on the picket line. In fact, the officers went over and shook hands with them, and were conversing with them. The counterpickets opened up a tank of ammonia, and the strikers were getting gagged from ammonia.

When our attorney went up and asked them to close the ammonia, they refused to do so. Our attorney finally had to go over to the tank himself and turn it off.

Later on in the day, one of our strikers tried to get out of the way of a truck, he fell down, and the sheriff went over and arrested him.
David Averbuck, who was on our line, is crippled. He walks on crutches all the time. He had polio. David was talking to some people, and a truck came up and backed right into David and knocked him unconscious, and the supervisor kept flagging the truck on to keep on going. Finally, someone reached into the cab of the truck and yanked the driver out. Otherwise, it would have crushed David.

These things happened Saturday. They happen all the time on our picket lines. The police really work against the strikers. When a melon truck came to the picket line, the driver said that he didn’t want to go through the picket line, and the police ordered him through the picket line anyway. This is a common practice with the police.

Regardless of what may happen to the strikers, they never arrest those who harass strikers and pickets. You have to go to the district attorney’s office to try to get a complaint, and the chances of getting complaints are very few and far between.

Then we go to the courts, and we try to get some relief from the courts, but there, again, we find that we have none. The courts, on the other hand, issue injunctions against the strikers. We now have an injunction in the Coachella Valley which prohibits us from speaking to the workers. You cannot get into the camps or fields, you cannot follow them and try to talk to them in their cars.

So, it really seems that all our constitutional rights have been removed from us by the court injunction.

In terms of trying to get the courts to do anything about the illegal recruitment of workers, again, we have no recourse. In fact, in the Los Angeles Federal court, Judge Pearson Hall issued an injunction on June 20, 1968, which prohibited enforcement of the Federal law on the green carders, which meant that even though all the growers were bringing in green carders to break the strike, this order issued by the judge in Los Angeles prohibited the Immigration Service from enforcing the law. After the harvest was over, then, you know, the judge changed his mind and said they could enforce the law, but by that time, it was too late.

Just recently, in Coachella Valley, when a group of farmworkers in one camp went on a strike, there, the judge in that court issued an order for the immediate eviction of the workers. This was their home and where they were living but for staying there several of the workers were arrested just because they went on strike.

So, regardless of where we go, what courts we go to, it is very difficult to try to get any kind of relief. Just recently the growers tried to get a $75 million injunction against the union to break the boycott filed in Federal court in Fresno. The growers know they cannot win the suit, because they are trying to allege that we do not represent the farmworkers. Well, it has been proved that we do, but they are trying to use this suit to tape depositions of the chainstores and thereby scare the chainstores into buying grapes.

When the Giumarra Corp. used the labels of other growers on their own boxes we went to the Federal Government to try to get relief. They gave them a slap on the hand and said, “You shouldn’t do this,” and the same year we found many instances of mislabeled grapes.

I don’t see that we are going to get any kind of a relief from the courts at all. Even under the national labor relations law, even though we are not covered by the law, the growers are constantly filing unfair labor practices against us, and although they know they can’t win them, this takes up the time of our attorneys.

When we try to go to the Government for any kind of help, even for the enforcement of the sanitation laws. the Government turns its head. When we went to a local agent of the Agriculture Department to get information on DDT, our attorney went to the office at 11 o’clock, and by 1 o’clock the growers had an injunction prohibiting us from seeing the records on DDT.

This is all the way from the Governor down to the local agencies.

The Table Grape Commission of the State of California, which is a quasi-official organization, which receives State money, is fighting the grape workers openly.

The State department of employment has refused to certify our strikes this year so that even though we call on them to try to come and interview the workers, they refuse to do so, and even in some instances where our strike had been certified, they still referred workers to places where people were on strike.

In addition to all of this lack of protection from the police, in addition to the lack of protection from the courts, we also have all of the attempts to break the union. They have formed at least six different — I might say so-called company unions — in an attempt to break our union: Kern-Tulare County Independent Farmworkers Citizens for Facts, from Delano, then Men Against Chavez, Women Against Chavez, and other groups, and most recently, the Agricultural Workers Freedom To Work Association.

If we look at the customers that the Department of Defense has been buying grapes from, we will find that these growers are the ones who have been involved in antiunion activities. These are the same growers who have contributed money to try to break the union.

The growers are willing to spend tremendous amounts of money to try to represent the fact that farmworkers don’t want a union, by hiring people like Jose Mendoza, who took a picture with Senator Dirksen to try to prove that the farmworkers don’t want a union. They could very easily have paid the workers decent wages with the money they are spending.

They have hired public relations firms to try to prove that we are a violent union, which I think everyone knows we are not.

They are spending an awful lot of money on this campaign. I have heard reports of as high as $5 million a year, they are going throughout the country, buying television and radio time, printing up brochures by the hundreds of thousands, and I want to express something here.
I think we are very, very concerned. We have seen reports of recent incidents of violence that we know are being perpetrated by someone other than ourselves, and these instances of violence make us believe that there is going to be a concerted effort by individuals to create violence either in some of the boycott cities or in some of the areas of California where the strike is now in progress.

Let me give you a specific instance. In Coachella one of the growers that negotiated with the union had 35,000 boxes burned 2 days after he made the announcement.

Another grower who was negotiating with the union was attacked and almost had his eyes torn out. He was assaulted from behind. He had scratch marks all over his eves. He was able to beat off the assailant. He knows it was no one from the union who did this.

Several of the growers who are now in negotiations have been threatened with death threats.

So, you can see that the situation is very, very serious. Now, if we look at some of the noises that some of the people that are fighting the union are making, they are talking about violence.

We look at Mr. Barr, who is one of the members of the California Grape & Tree Fruit League, and he is talking about violence.

Mr. Allen Grant, one of Reagan’s top men in agriculture in California, is talking about violence. They are trying to create a climate of fear and violence.

We are going to do everything we can to create just the opposite kind of a climate, but I want you to be aware of this, because I think that all of these aspects should be investigated.

We think that this is a deliberate effort to bring violence into the farm labor scene which we know has not been there.

There have been incidents of violence against the union, many of them, and it has taken all that Cesar can do and the rest of the people can do to keep workers nonviolent.

You know, we have had acts of violence at some stores. One of the people on the picket line was shot at with a gun. Another worker, another striker, was beaten. Mark Silverman, a worker on a boycott in New York City, was beaten in front of D’Agostina’s chainstore.

We can prove these things have happened, but our people have never reacted with violence.

On the other hand, at the Giumarra Corp., we even have one suit where violence is being perpetrated against our people, and we have filed suits and have won these.

Some of these people that the employers have used to create violence are still on their payroll. One of the men, Stanley Jacobs, who kidnaped one man and beat him up, and fired a rifle at some of the people in Delano, is still on the payroll.

We are fearful of the paid professional strikebreakers. We are fearful of the type of climate that they are trying to create, and we hope that the committee here will do everything within its power that it can to prevent some of this.

If, somehow, we can give the workers some protection in organizing, some protection on the boycott, we can do it ourselves. We will be able to take care of the problems.

One of the things I would like to mention again, because Senator Murphy is here, and he wasn’t here the last time we testified, is that the growers don’t have any heart at all. They have all the economic power, the power in hiring and firing. There have been entire crews of workers fired because one person in the crew said something favorable about the union. There are entire crews of workers who were fired because they had Kennedy stickers on the bumpers of their cars.

One woman was fired, along with her whole family, because she objected to being hit on the head by Mr. Giumarra.

I don’t believe anyone sitting on the committee would support that kind of activities by the growers, or support many kinds of things they are doing.
The people in the union have to take a tremendous amount of harassment, such as the materials of State Senator Hugh Burns’ Committee on Un-American Activities in California. The man who made up that committee report was sitting in his home in Three Rivers. He never once went to Delano. Yet, he wrote a report which has been used all over the country in which he tried to redbait the members of the union.
Among other mistruths, he says 3 years of Cesar Chavez’ life are missing, and suggests he was getting some kind of subversive training. Those are the 3 years he spent in the U.S. Navy. That should be put in the record.

Gunmen have gone to our offices, taken canceled checks, membership files, and some of these membership files have been used in blacklisting for jobs.

Our insurance has been canceled for our cars and we would like to have the committee investigate this. We would like to have the committee investigate the Aetna Insurance Co. and ask them why it is they canceled our insurance. Our record has been good.

At one point, the Texaco Co. refused to sell gas to our gas station. There are many types of harassment which can be used against an organization. Our telephone lines are tapped. Many times, when we are in an extremely important conversation, you don’t complete the call, because something interferes with the wires. This happens all the time.

We are not afraid, and we will continue, but we do need some help, and we hope that the committee here will be able to furnish some of it.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to insert my printed statement in the record at this point.

Prepared Statement of Mrs. Dolores Huerta, Vice-President, United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO.

My name is Dolores Huerta. I am the Vice-President of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC), AFL-CIO. It is a pleasure to come before your committee to discuss a very serious matter for our union and for all farm workers¾obstacles to farm worker organizing.
As you know, UFWOC has undertaken an international boycott of all California-Arizona table grapes in order to gain union recognition tor striking farm workers. We did not take up the burden of the boycott willingly. It is expensive. It is a hardship on the farm worker families who have left the small valley towns to travel across the country to boycott grapes. But; because of the table grape growers’ refusal to bargain with their workers, the boycott is our major weapon and our last line of defense against the growers who use foreign labor to break our strikes. It is only through the pressure of the boycott that UFWOC has won contracts with major California wine grape growers. At this point, the major obstacles to our efforts to organize farm workers are obstacles to our boycott.

Our boycott has been met with well-organized and well-financed opposition by the growers and their sympathizers. Most recently, several major California grape growers joined with other agribusiness interests and members of the John Birch Society to form an employer-dominated “union”, the Agricultural Workers Freedom to Work Association (AWFWA), tor the sole purpose of destroying UFWOC. AWFWA’s activities have been described in a sworn statement to the U.S. Government, which Senator Mondale has placed in the Congressional Record.

In spite of this type of anti-union activity, our boycott of California-Arizona table grapes is successful. It is being successful tor the simple reason that millions of Americans are supporting the grape workers strike by not buying table grapes.

After six weeks of the 1969-1970 table grape harvest, California table grape shipments to 36 major United States cities are down 20 percent from last year, according to United States Department of Agriculture reports. The price per lug for Thompson Seedless grapes is at least $1.00 less than it was at this time of last year’s harvest.

It is because of the successful boycott that, on Friday, June 13, 1969, ten major California growers offered to meet with UFWOC under the auspices of the Federal Mediation Service. UFWOC representatives and ranch committee members met with the growers for two weeks. Progress is being made in these negotiations, which are presently recessed over the issue of pesticides.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE TABLE GRAPE PURCHASES

Now that the boycott has brought us so close to a negotiated settlement of this three-year old dispute, we learn that the United States Department of Defense (DOD) has doubled its purchases of table grapes. We appear to be witnessing an all out effort by the military to bail out the growers and break our boycott. Let me review the facts behind this imposing federal obstacle to farm worker organizing.

*The DOD is doubling its purchases of table grapes this year. — DOD bought 6.9 million pounds of table grapes in FY 1968, and 8 million pounds in the first half of FY 1969, with an estimated “climb to over 16 million this year” (according to an article in THE FRESNO BEE, 4/25/69 by Frank Mankiewicz and Tom Braden).

*DOD table grape shipments to South Vietnam this year have increased this year by 400 percent.¾In FY 1968, 550,000 pounds were shipped to S. Vietnam. In the first half of FY 1969 alone, these shipments totaled 2,047,695 pounds. This data on completed FY year purchases of table grapes come directly from a DOD Fact Sheet entitled “Use of Table Grapes”, dated March 28, 1969.

*Commercial shipments of fresh table grapes to South Vietnam in 1968 have risen nine times since 1966, according to U.S. Department of Commerce statistics. — In 1966, S. Vietnam imported 331,662 pounds of U.S. grapes and was the world’s 23rd largest importer of U.S. fresh table grapes. In 1967, when the UFWOC boycott of Giumarra table grapes began, S. Vietnam’s imports of U.S. table grapes jumped to 1,194,988 pounds, making it the world’s 9th largest importer. Last year, 1968, S. Vietnam became the world’s 5th largest importer of this luxury commodity, by buying 2,855,016 pounds of U.S. table grapes. “This could not have occurred,” states the AFL-CIO News of June 14, 1969, “without both DOD and Agriculture Dept. encouragement.”

These are the facts as to how the Grapes of Wrath are being converted into the Grapes of War by the world’s richest government in order to stop farm workers from waging a successful boycott and organizing campaign against grape growers.

The DOD argues in its Fact Sheet that “The total Defense Supply Agency purchases of table grapes represent less than one percent of U.S. table grape production.” Data from the California Crop and Livestock Reporting Service indicate, however, that table grapes may be utilized in three different ways: fresh for table use; crushed for wine; or dried as raisins (see Table I. attached to this statement). Looking at Table II, it is clear that DOD purchases of table grapes for fresh use represents nearly 2.5% of all U.S. fresh table grape production!

Table grape prices, like those of other fruits and vegetables, are extremely susceptible to minor fluctuations in supply. DOD purchases of table grapes are probably shoring up the price of all grapes and, at a critical point in the UFWOC boycott, are permitting many growers to stand firm in their refusal to negotiate with their workers.

It is obvious that the DOD is taking sides with the growers in this dispute. The DOD Fact Sheet states that “The basic policy of the DOD with regard to awarding defense contracts to contractors involved in labor disputes is to refrain from taking a position on the merits of any labor dispute. This policy is based on the premise that it is essential to DoD procurement needs to maintain a sound working relationship with both labor and management.” Nevertheless, many unions in the United States are decrying this fantastic increase in DOD table grape purchases. AFL-CIO News of June 14, 1969, notes that “union observers point out, however, that DoD does become involved in a labor dispute when it so greatly increases its purchase of boycotted grapes.” It seems that the DOD is violating its own policy and endangering its working relationship with labor, and we hope that the committee will explore this fully.

DOD TABLE GRAPE PURCHASES: A NATIONAL OUTRAGE

The history of our struggle against agribusiness is punctuated by the continued violations of health and safety codes by growers, including many table grape growers. Much of this documentation has already been submitted to the Senate Subcommittee on Migratory Labor. Such violations are so well documented that Superior Judge Irving Perluss recently ruled that a jobless worker was within his rights when he refused to accept farm labor work offered him through the California Department of Employment on grounds that most of such jobs are in violation of state health and sanitation codes (see attached LOS ANGELES TIMES article, July 4, 1969).

If the federal government and the DOD is not concerned about the welfare of farm workers, they must be concerned with protecting our servicemen from contamination and disease carried by grapes picked in fields without toilets or washstands. Recent laboratory tests have found DDT residues on California grapes. Economic poisons have killed and injured farm workers. Will they also prove dangerous to U.S. military personnel? Focusing on other forms of crime in the fields, we would finally ask if the DOD buys table grapes from the numerous growers who daily violate state and federal minimum wage and child labor laws, who employ illegal foreign labor, and who do not deduct social security payments from farm worker wages?

The DOD increasing purchase of table grapes is nothing short of a national outrage. It is an outrage to the million of American taxpayers who are supporting the farm workers struggle for justice by boycotting table grapes. How can any American believe that the U.S. Government is sincere in its efforts to eradicate poverty when the military uses its immense purchasing power to subvert the farm workers non-violent struggle for a descent, living wage and a better future?

Many farm workers are members of minority groups. They are Filipino- and Mexican-Americans and black Americans. These same farm workers are on the front lines of battle in Vietnam. It is a cruel and ironic slap in the face to these men who have left the fields to fulfill their military obligation to find increasing amounts of non-union grapes in their mess kits.

In conclusion let me say that our only weapon is the boycott. Just when our boycott is successful the U.S. military doubles its purchases of table grapes, creating a major obstacle to farm worker organization and union recognition. The DOD is obviously acting as a buyer of last resort for scab grapes and is, in effect, providing another form of federal subsidy for anti-union growers who would destroy the efforts of the poor to build a union. UFWOC calls on all concerned Americans and on the members of the Senate Subcommittee on Migratory Labor to protest this anti-union policy of the military and the Nixon administration.

 

 

Source: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Migratory Labor of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, US Senate, Ninety-First Congress, First Session on “Efforts to Organize,” July 15, 1969, Part 3-A (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office) 1970, pp. 551-564.