Socialist Viewpoint

For ten sweltering days in August, union farm workers, their leaders and supporters marched the length California’s semi-arid San Joaquin Valley to the state’s Sacramento Capitol, hoping to influence, even embarrass, if necessary, Democrat Governor Gray Davis into signing a law that they said would at last force growers to negotiate in good faith, first contracts with the United Farm Workers Union (UFW). According to virtually the entire media, the farm workers couldn’t take Davis’ signature for granted, despite the farm workers’ long-time commitment to the Democratic Party and their many endorsements of Davis, as he climbed the political ladder.

The farm workers knew they had to overcome a formidable obstacle; namely, the state’s $27 billion agribusiness industry, which poured $150 thousand into Davis’ reelection campaign coffer just days before the farm workers began their march that retraced the footsteps of Cesar Chavez and the 1966 protest march that gained Chavez and the union national recognition.

Davis denies that there’s ever any connection between campaign contributions and his actions. Nevertheless, many corporations, says the August 4 Los Angeles Times, “are betting millions of dollars on his return to office.” Many unions are making the same bet, and while their stack of chips doesn’t match the bosses, it’s still a considerable wager. The SEIU, the Carpenters, the Teachers, the Laborers, the Electrical Workers, the Plumbers and other unions donated $7.3 million to Davis, as of May (S.F. Chronicle, May 19, 2002).

Undoubtedly, union members expect those millions of union dollars and unions’ political support to give their unions some juice with Davis; but clearly they don’t have the political juice to offset the agribusiness clout that has the UFW stymied. The farm workers say that a 1975 state law that gave farm workers the right to unionize and bargain collectively, also allows the state’s growers to stall negotiations indefinitely. Since 1975, the union says, workers at 428 agricultural companies have voted to join the union, but contracts were signed in only 185 cases; and many of those are no longer current. “What good is the right to organize if farm workers never get a contract,” a UFW spokesperson told the New York Times (8/9). “The right to organize is not supposed to be just an academic exercise.” The UFW that once claimed 100,000 members fell to 20,000, but now claims 27,000.

From the growers, the union is asking for simple justice, but the growers say they can’t afford it. They say if they gave in to the UFW they would have to raise their prices and if they did, the international competition would move in on them. True or not, that’s the growers’ story and they’re sticking to it.

From Davis, the UFW is asking that he sign a bill that would compel the growers who stall negotiations to submit to binding arbitration. That way, all organized farm workers would get a contact that, hopefully, would lift them above the $10,000 yearly wages the union says is now typical. Davis hasn’t publicly said that he opposes the bill; in fact, he hasn’t publicly said much about the situation. But press reports indicate that Davis’ aides have been lobbying both the union and state legislators to back off, attempting to end the governor’s embarrassment.

With or without the UFW’s agreement, legislator’s adopted a new bill that they call a “compromise with Davis.” UFW leaders have criticized the so-called compromise bill that they say replaces mandatory arbitration with mandatory mediation; but seemingly they’ll accept it. Still, Davis hasn’t said he will sign the new bill. In turn the union declared that it will permanently maintain a “farm workers’ vigil outside the state Capitol in Sacramento until Governor Davis signs legislation giving farm workers the legal tools they need to gain the union contracts for which they voted in state-conducted secret-ballot elections.”

Normally, a union that can’t get a first contract calls a strike or throws in the towel—but not the UFW. For example, 1400 unionized workers have been trying to get a contract with a major vegetable grower since 1975, when they won the right to collective bargaining. But that admirable determination means very little without the power to win strikes. And without meaningful labor solidarity, the farm workers cannot effectively strike the growers. That’s because a winning strike strategy would call for mass picketing to stop the growers from exploiting the despair of Mexican nationals they would recruit to scab.

While the UFW could strike a few growers, the others, if necessary, could subsidize the struck growers’ losses. What the UFW can’t do by itself is strike simultaneously enough growers to impose substantial losses on the state’s number one industry. If the gargantuan agribusiness’ super exploitation of farm workers is to be halted, only a united labor movement could hope to get the job done. A united labor movement not only could find ways to keep farm workers picket lines secure, but also, in case struck produce got through the lines, it could massively challenge the secondary boycott restrictions of the Taft-Hartley Act (the “Slave Labor Act”) on the highways, at the ports and the markets.

The UFW has received a lot of costly help and support from organized labor, but the business unionist strategies and hesitant tactics that long ago replaced militant strategies and bold actions by the American labor movement have tragically limited the usefulness of that help.

The farm workers’ plea for mandatory arbitration is a sign of profound weakness not strength. In the past, organized labor viewed mandatory arbitration with profound abhorrence, which traditionally has been a desperate bosses’ weapon. But in this case, the union’s desperation must be boundless, since the UFW is seeking relief from the same political sources that conned it in 1975 with a law that failed the farm workers, making their present plight virtually inevitable.