César Chávez
By César Chávez
Hispanic Link
Week of Aug. 25, 1985
Some things change and some things never do.
It’s been 20 years since our United Farm Workers first touched the hearts and consciences of people across the nation by letting them know about the abuses suffered by those in California and their families.
Then they dramatically transformed the simple act of refusing to buy fresh grapes into a powerful statement against unfairness and injustice. The grape boycott was a hallmark of the 1960s and ’70s. It rallied millions of U.S. consumers to the cause of migrant farmworkers. And it worked!
A law was passed in California which was supposed to guarantee farmworkers the same rights as industrial workers. Farm workers voted in secret ballot elections for the UFW. We signed contracts with growers.
As a result, some farmworkers now earn fair pay and have family medical plans, protection from dangerous pesticides, and paid holidays and vacations. Their children attend school and they make enough to live in decent homes instead of wretched camps.
But this progress only highlights the miserable poverty too many others still suffer in our midst: child labor; sexual harassment of women workers; pesticide poisoning; high infant mortality; short life expectancy; illegally low wages, living out in the open canyons and under trees.
Take the K.K. Larson grape ranch near Coachella, only a short drive from the rich golf courses and luxurious swimming pools of Palm Springs.
Larson employs 500 to 600 farmworkers; 200 migrants are hired during the peak seasons. A few sleep in their cars. Most live in nearby grapefruit orchards under the trees in 110 degree heat. Some have rotten mattresses; others sleep on pesticide-treated dirt. Winters are even worse, said one worker who didn’t want to give his name. The valley gets really cold and rainy, especially at night. It’s so wet you can hardly keep a fire going.”
The workers use irrigation water for bathing, cooking and washing their clothes. They carry in drinking water with used pesticide containers. Some are just teenagers. Many do not have legal papers. Recently several workers overcame the fear of reprisal and asked the UFW for help. They had worked for more than three weeks without pay.
At least four pesticides used in California vineyards are as dangerous or more hazardous to workers than the insecticide Aldicarb, which caused hundred of illnesses among West Coast consumers in July. The same kind of illegal use of poisons that tainted watermelons is occurring in fresh grapes. Last June local agriculture officials quarantined a 26-square-block area at the A.Caratan, Inc. grape ranch near Delano because residues of the pesticide Orthene were found in the vineyard.
Thousands of other farmworkers live under savage conditions beneath brush and trees, amid stenchy garbage and human excrement in state-of-the-art tomato farms in northern San Diego Country. Vicious rats gnaw on them as they sleep. They walk miles to buy food at inflated prices and carry in water from irrigation ditches.
Child labor is common in many farm areas. As many as 30% of Northern California’s garlic harvesters are under-aged children. Kids as young as six years old voted in state-conducted union elections since they qualified as workers. “Without them we could not survive,” farmworker José Ruelas said of his four children (ages seven to14) who worked in the fields.
No one wanted to live like this. And farmworkers have worked for change. Many organized and voted in state-held elections under the 1975 California farm labor law.
But the law which protects their rights stopped working when Republican Gov. George Deukmejian took office in 1983. Deukmejian was elected in 1982 with $1 million in campaign gifts from corporate power. Since then he’s accepted hundreds of thousands more.
Instead of enforcing the law against those who break it, Deukemjian invites growers who break the law to seek relief from his political appointees. Under the Deukmejian regime:
*The issuance of complaints against growers who abuse farmworkers has come to a near standstill.
*The backlog of uninvestigated farmworker charges against growers has skyrocketed. Hundreds of worker-filed charges were dismissed without investigation so the governor could claim the backlog has been reduced.
*A massive 30% budget cut in enforcement of the farm labor law targeted investigators, prosecutors and hearing judges who protect farmworkers on a daily basic. State civil servants who insist on enforcing the law say they “risk punitive action for disloyalty” to a governor dominated by wealthy growers.
*The process of collecting millions of dollars in back pay which convicted growers owe farmworkers for breaking the law has been shut down. Many of these growers have close ties to Deukmejian. In the 2 ½ years since he’s been governor, Deukmejian has not processed a single case where courts have ruled growers must pay farmworkers their money.
*Where the courts have ordered growers to pay back farmworkers, Deukmejian has settled cases for as little as 10 cents on the dollar in violation of state and national labor law rules.
*Farmworkers who cooperated secretly with state prosecutors by informing on a grower who violated the law discovered Deukmejian’s men turned their names over to the grower… a grower already convicted of retaliating against employees.
The Deukmejian Administration even proposes renewed use of the backbreaking short-handled hoe – an infamous tool outlawed in 1975.
Farmworkers who are still abused saw their hopes for a better life shattered because Governor Deukmejian won’t enforce the law.
Now they’ve placed their hopes in the American people’s support for the boycott of California fresh grapes (except the 3% of grapes produced under UFW contract). And it is working!
Across America – in places like Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles… and Philadelphia – governors, legislators, and big city mayors are getting involved. The national AFL-CIO endorsed the boycott. Church, labor, student, consumer, and minority groups – the 17 million Americans who the Louis Harris poll says boycotted grapes in the ’70s – are responding again.
Exploitation of farmworkers and their children is just as real today as it was 20 years ago. The fight is not over – it’s just been renewed. You see, time does not heal injustice; only people do.
(Like other UFW leaders and staff, United Farm Workers of America president César Chávez lived in Keene, Calif., earning $10 a week plus minimum expenses.
(Editor’s note: César Chávez wrote this column for Hispanic Link News Service in August 1985 commemorating the 20th anniversary of the founding of the United Farm Workers, an organization which he headed until his death at age 66 on April 23, 1993.)
© 1985
