Aug.-Sept. 1973/VietVets on Tria-' ThFarmwor ers Fight to Survive;W t b..::-__-..._-

8Letters

12

Land Reform:Reclaiming Mother Earth

A progress report by Warren Weber

Land reform is surfacing as an impor­tant political issue in the United States,and, as if to mark the event, advocates ofland reform held a national conference inSan Francisco this spring.

16

George Seldes: Muckraker EmeritusA biographical essay by Derek Shearer

In the 1930's and 1940's George Seldeswas a leading figure in independent jour­nalism. His newsletter, In Fact, had amajor influence on such people as I. F.Stone, Howard Zinn and Daniel Ellsberg.

21Informers: The Enemy Within

An analytical survey by Paul JacobsBehind the glare of the Watergate

spectacle lies the murky netherworld ofextra-legal and quasi-legal police tech­niques: notably, the burgeoning use ofpolice informers, who often turn out toprovoke "crimes" they t'hen inform on.

25

The Gainesville Eight:Dirty Tricks on Trial

A report from Florida by Rob Elder

Eight members of the Vietnam Veter­ans Against the War are currently on trialin Gainesville, Florida for alleged plansto disrupt the GOP Miami convention.Now it turns out the Vets themselves werevictims of assorted informers and agentsprovocateurs, including the ubiquitousWhite House "plumbers unit."

4 RAMPARTS

28

Chavez and the Teamsters:Showdown in the Coachella Valley

An on-the-scene report byGeorge BakerThe United Farm Workers, who won

reluctant recognition from Californiagrape growers three years ago - after acrippling nationwide boycott - are backon the picket lines. This time they facenot only the growers but a well-paid goonsquad sponsored by the InternationalBrotherhood of Teamsters. Cesar Chavezhas won against long odds before, butthis battle is a critical one.

34

WatergateAn editorial essay

One common view holds that the Water­gate investigation represents the "longarm of the Founding Fathers reachingdown across two centuries to save us all."Not true, say the editors of Ramparts; ifanything, it merely uncovers the bank­ruptcy of the American system.

36

Historians and the Cold War:The Battle over America's Image

Analysis by David Horowitz

The cold war has had dozens of aca­demic apologists in the United States,and only a handful of the so-called "re­visionist" historians have bucked thetrend - often at considerable cost tothemselves. Now, when the Indochinadisaster has finally gained a hearing forthe revisionist view, the cold warriors ofacademe have launched their counterat­tack, with George Kennan and ArthurSchlesinger, Ir. leading the charge.

41The Second Frame-up ofJulius and Ethel Rosenberg

A review by Walter SchneirTwenty years after the Rosenberg

"atom spy" case ended with the defen­dants' execution, courtroom impresarioLouis Nizer has stepped forward with adramatic "final verdict" ,on the case.Walter Schneir examines Nizer's bookand delivers his own "final verdict": TheImplosion Conspiracy is a "fast brushshow" filled with inaccuracies and delib­erate misrepresentations.

45

Deja Vii:Which State? Which Seige?

Commentary by Andrew KopkindSlale of Seige, the controversial new

film by Costa-Gavras, raises timely is­sues about political crisis, "internal secu­rity," and revolution.

47

The AlmanacResources by Derek Shearer

COVER BY EDWARD SOREL

Chavez and the Teamsters:

SHOWDOWN IN THEW

illiam L. Kircher, the AFL-CIO national direc­tor of organizing, was only half-jesting whenhe said, "Maybe the Teamsters' best organiz­ing area would be to organize a prison union.';

But the union that gave America Dave Beck and James R.Hoffa, and that recently made the front pages for its tieswith Mafia figures anxious to get ahold of the $1.6 billionTeamsters Pension Fund, isn't organizing prisons yet.Instead they have 'strong-armed their way into California'sCentral Valley and turned their attention to the 250,000farrriworkers who have been struggling to organize for morethan half a century. Working with the growers to crushCesar Chavez' United Farm Workers, the Teamsters havebrought a new labor war to the California vineyards andeagle nags have appeared once again and cries of "Viva LaCausa" and "Viva La Huelga" are heard, as the Farmwork­ers' Union fights for its life.

The Teamsters' interest in farmworkers is a relatively

George Baker is a San Joaquin Valley (Calif) newsnum' and freelance who has been following the farm labor scene.

28 RAMPARTS

recent one. It is, in fact, one of the ironies of the currentsituation that organized labor paid slight attention to thispart of the work force until Cesar Chavez called a strikeagainst Delano, California table grape growers in September1965. At that time a farmworkers union, operating on ashoe-string budget and consisting mostly of Chicano andFilipino farmworkers, was given little chance against C-ali­fornia's multi-billion dollar agribusiness establishment thataccounts for one of every seven jobs in the state.

But Chavez and his farmworkers kept up the pressure.When growers imported strikebreakers (often Mexicanaliens who entered the country illegally), he began a nation­wide boycott of table grapes. It had a devastating affect onthe sale of grapes and the growers-whose economic sensi­bilities are more finely tuned than their social conscience­finally gave .in. On July 29, 1970, 26 Delano growers signedthree-year contracts with the United Farm Workers Union,AFL-CIO. Scores of other contracts with other grapegrowers followed, with many of them including an expira­tion date of April 14, 1973.

This should have meant that the UFW's long war was

by George Baker

I

I I

won: but it didn't. Over the past three years, the growershave mapped out a new strategy. When the contracts ex­pired this spring most growers did not renew with the UFW,but instead signed four-year pacts with the Western Con­ference of Teamsters which claimed that it had the alle­giance of a majority of the workers, particularly in theCoachella Valley of Southern California.

Chavez' union lost 150 of 182 contracts, with 30 moreup for renewal on July 29. The number of dues-payingunion members has dropped from 40,000 to 10,000. "Wefeel the growers came to them [The Teamsters] late lastyear and made an offer," Chavez says. "That way theycould kill two birds with one stone. They could kill thefarmworkers union and insulate themselves against a mean­ingful contract."

The growers deny this and insist they signed with theTeamsters only because it was the favored union among theworkers. To prove their point they cite signatures of over4,000 workers who allegedly signed petitions calling forTeamster representation. But the Rural Manpower Service,a state agency, has pointed out that only 1,800 workerswere in the vineyards at the time the signatures were col­lected, and the UFW contends that many of the signatureswere obtained by fraud or deceit. Chavez has said that thesituation can easily be decided-by elections to determinewhich union, if any, the workers want to join. But theTeamsters, with contracts in hand, have rejected this op­tion. Because farmworkers are excluded from the 1935National Labor Relations Act, there are no laws which com­pel representational elections.

[AGAINST LONG ODDS]

Chavez has faced long odds before, but this maywell be the final battle. Before he was confrontingonly the growers; this time he faces the growersand the Teamsters-with over 2 million members,

the largest union in the non-communist world. Moreover,the political clim~te has changed. The late 1960s were timesof great social ferment, when causes like the Farm Workers'had a large and sympathetic constituency. But now cha­risma such as that of Cesar Chavez is not as marketable acommodity as it once was, and the UFW finds that in itstime of need there is not only widespread apathy among itsformer allies but also a widespread misapprehension thatthe war was won three years ago.

The fact is that the plight of the farmworker remainsone of America's gravest social problems. An OEO study in1971 showed that the average annual per-family income ofa migrant was just over $2,000. Last year, 2.8 million farm­workers worked an average of 88 days and earned $1,160,according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Thehourly composite wage of farmworkers in 1970 was $1.42,42 percent of the average factory worker's wage.

The UFW had slowly begun to change all that. From theoutset it was more than a labor union; it was a political andsocial movement, dedicated to wrenching a measure of jus­tice from an oppressive industry that had dominated thelives of workers for longer than it cared to remember. Five­man ranch committees, elected by the workers themselves,were established at each farm under contract and growers

COACHELLA VALLEY

had to deal face-to-face with the farmworkers. It was one ofthe few "grass roots" successes in recent American history.

The UFW was so involved in bettering the situation ofthe farmworkers that it never created the machinery todefend itself from attack. As a consequence, Chavez facesthe Teamsters with somewhat less public support than heonce enjoyed. There is a network of clergy of all faiths whohave stuck by him, however. And George 'Meany, althoughhe has never trusted Chavez and his non-traditional tradeunion tactics, and abhors the farmworkers' politics, wasappalled by what he describes as a "despicable" raid on theUFW-an AFL-CIO charter union. Thus Meany got theAFL-CIO Executive Council to grant $1.6 million to theUFW to help fund its strike this summer against growers inCalifornia's agricultural valleys.

Yet there is a disquieting aspect to all this as well. TheFarmworkers have been submerged-at least in the news­paper headlines and weekly magazine pieces-in the rhetoricof the labor giants-the AFL-CIO and the Teamsters. It issomething that Chavez says he doesn't sense, but he waswell aware of the meeting which Meany and Fitzsimmonsheld in Washington, D.C., during June"':'-ostensibly to settletheir differences.

And there are many who remember the departure ofLarry Itliong in the fall of 1971. Itliong, at the timenumber two man in the union, had headed the AFL-CIO'sAgricultural Workers Organizing Committee when it wasmerged with Chavez' National Farmworkers Association in1966. He quit because he was unhappy with what hetermed the "brain trust" surrounding Chavez. "All I can sayis that the thinking of the farmworkers and brother Chavezis influenced by their thinking," he said. His resignationcame after the union had abandoned its Delano headquar­ters and moved to a mountain sanitarium 30 miles east ofBakersfield. The appearance that the union was removingitself from farmworkers figuratively as well as literallycaused internal strife. There was fear that the movement, inits haste to consolidate its gains, was becoming a bureau­cracy and losing its distinctive humanitarian quality.

Be that as it may, the new UFW struggle brings with itan opportunity for revitalization. If it wins (and there isoptimism among union leaders) it will be a stronger force.With the Meany grant, the union has expanded its strikebeyond the Coachella Valley. The larger battle will come inthe San Joaquin Valley which has far greater grape produc­tion than Coachella and where the spark of·the movementwas ignited in 1965.

At the outset, the Teamsters were relatively peaceful,marshalling their forces more for show than brutality. Butin June it turned ugly. They began unleashing a reign ofterror in the state's agricultural valleys, indiscriminately at­tacking pickets, strike leaders and intimidating some news­men. Sheriffs deputies in both Riverside and KernCounties, no friends of the Chavez movement, were so out­raged they publicly called many of the attacks "unpro­voked" and "without reason." One of the most blatantexamples of this occurred near Bakersfield when 30 Team­sters waded into a group of UFW members with 2x2 grapestakes, fracturing the skull of a 60-year-old man. The 30were arrested on a variety of charges including conspiracy.

While all this went on, Meany and Fitzsimmons met

PHOTOGRAPHY BY BOB FITCH

behind the scenes in Washington trying to rid themselves ofwhat has turned out to be a rather untidy affair for the twolatter-day labor spokesmen. No doubt they would like toavert a situation that threatens to turn the vineyards into aburgundy red battleground. What each side will have to giveis unknown, but Chavez has seen too many Teamster agree­ments turn to dust to be impressed by this latest overture.

[AT STRIKE HEADQUARTERS]

The UFW's strike headquarters is housed in acramped room littered with legal files, accountingledgers, newspaper clippings and telephones thatring continually. It is near midnighJ when only a

few stragglers remain after a series of endless meetings,planning for the next day's strike activities. Chavez sits at adesk in the rear, his two German Shepard dogs, "Boycott"and "Huelga" stirring at his feet.

He is alternately tense and confident, relaxed and de­fiant. Perhaps it is because he has just spent another 18­hour day, engineering the strike, boosting morale, meetingwith families who were kicked out of labor camps for join­ing the strike, and talking to religious, political and laborleaders across the country. Or perhaps he realizes the "lifeand death" aspects of the struggle. After spending a decadedevoting this life to the struggle of the worker, it is all onthe line.

Physically Chavez has changed little in recent years. Vic­timized by repeated lengthy fasts, his small frame is stillfirm. He has presence, a sense of importance. Occasionallyhis tiny hands slash the air to make a point. And his straightblack hair, greying at the temples now, hangs over his col­lar. If anything, there is determination about him now thatonce was lacking. He is a leader of a union and movement,not simply a Chicano mystic leading his people out of thewilderness.

"When I was out on the picket line the other day, Iasked this lady what, besides the wages, she likes best aboutthe union," Chavez says. "Well, she thought for a minuteand then said, 'I think when it's hotter than hell out in thefields, the growers don't push us around any more, theydon't try to enslave us as before.' That's what we're proudof," he says, slapping the table with the palm of his hand."And that's what the growers don't want. We tell theworkers-they're not going to push you around any more."

When Chavez went' on strike in 1965 the base wage was$1.20 an hour. There were no toilets for workers in thefields, no rest periods, no ice water, no health benefits, nopension fund. Workers either accepted the employer's termsof employment or they didn't work. La Huelga changed allthat. Gone were the vicious labor contractors who importedlabor like latter-day slave traders. The two UFW contractsthat were signed this year have a base wage of $2.40 anhour, a 100 percent jump in eight years. The fringe benefitsthat workers only dreamed of a decade ago are now recog­nized.

The most dramatic break with the past involved themanner in which farm labor was recruited. Before, thegrowers used farm labor contractors or brought in 50

(Continued on page 55)

Cesar Chavez with striking farm workers.

enemy foreign governments.James McCord acted as he did

because he was convinced, by pasttraining, of the accuracy of the reportshe was given from what he describedas "sensitive· sources,": these reportsasserted that "violence-oriented"groups were threatening life and prop­erty. Probably he never knew that inone of these allegedly "violence-orient­ed" groups, the "sensitive source" wasa police informer, one of the menmost vociferous in promoting violencein the entire organization.

"I was not there to think. I wasthere to follow orders, not to think,"Bernard Barker, a committed anti­Communist, told the Senators to justi­fy his participation in the Ellsberg andWa terga te burglaries. But Barker didthink-he was and is still convincedthat what he did was "proper" to pro­tect his vision of "national security."

And so we return, full circle, allaround the mulberry bush, back towhere we started. FDR and JamesMcCord, both acting out of concernfor the "national interest," both be­come involved in illegal and unconsti­tutional acts. During the '30s, an ob­scure, miniscule Marxist group towhich I belonged was infiltrated by agovernment informer whose lies aboutthe organization contributed to thelater repressive atmosphere of thecountry. In the '70s, the same kind oflies were told by a government in­former about the Vietnam VeteransAgainst the War, lies which were be­lieved by James McCord.

Perhaps if Watergate does nothingelse, it will strip the rhetoric from thereality, will reduce the verbiage to theessence of the matter: each administra­tion in our government acts to protectitself from those it considers to be itsenemies; each administration identi­fied itself as the guardian of thenational interest and each administra­tion arrogates to itself the right to pro­tect that interest in the ways it deemsproper.

Yet, perhaps now the possibilityexists that many Americans, seeingand hearing Watergate in its true garbof sanctimonious, hypocritical patriot­ism, will conclude, even reluctantly,that the institutions of governmenthave become dysfunctional. If thathappens, if Americans shake, if theylose the past certainty of their govern-

ment's absolute moral superiority andrectitude, it's conceivable that theWatergate revelations may help bringabout a transformation of the samesocial system which produced theoperation. •

FARMWORKERS(From page 30)

workers to do the work of 20. Chavezinstituted a hiring hall where workerswere given jobs on the basis of senior­ity. Growers had to order laborthrough the hiring hall where theworker picked up his dispatch card.Without a dispatch card he couldn'twork. While it had the effect of tight­ening the union's control over itsmembers, the hiring hall also went along way toward stabilizing the laborforce. It was an essential and far-reach­ing change and as such was the pri­mary cause of friction between grow­ers and the union.

Growers usually cite two reasonsfor turning to the Teamsters. First,they claim that local UFW officialswere antagonistic, spiteful, abrasive.Second, they say the union was admin­istratively inept-an argument whicheven sympa thetic reporters have ac­cepted. Lionel Steinberg, the biggestgrower in the valley and one of thetwo who signed with the UFW, hasbeen widely quoted as saying that ifthe union had administered its affairsbetter, the growers would have rushedto sign new contracts.

Chavez doesn't think so. "Theproblem is we signed a damned con­tract and found the growers couldn'tlive up to the damned thing," he saysheatedly. "We enforce our contracts.They know it. We came here inDecember for pre-negotiating sessionsand they were ready to stab us in theback. They'd come up to me and say,'Cesar, I have this little problem: I'vegot a foreman whose brother-in-lawneeds a job. Can you help us out?' Itold them no, the seniority systemdoesn't work that way. Or they'd say,'It's only a minor thing but do we haveto have all those toilets out there inthe fields?' The little things we didn'tgive in on. If we sign a contract wehave to live up to it. They tried to fireunion men without cause and we said,'Shit no. "

"We have over 500 grievances that

were never acted upon; that's theproblem. The growers didn't want tohandle any grievances. They justsigned the contracts to get away fromthe boycott. They no more wantedthose contracts than the man in themoon."

Chavez and other union officialsconcede that the union had growingpains. To expect a union of untrained,unskilled farmworkers to be trans­formed into a smooth-running organi­zation overnight is too much toexpect. As he says, "You know, 9,000different people work in the CoachellaValley-some of them do thinning,pruning or picking. It's a damnedmess, it's a shame how this industryworks. We have to refashion the wholehiring pattern. It's going to change andmaybe Coachella Valley will be theplace."

One thing is certain: if the Team­sters win there won't be any changes.They epitomize a labor movement thathas gone flabby from success and toooften works for employers and notunion members. Yet this has come tobe taken for granted. In this case,moreover, the Teamsters are breakingup another union in their attempt tocapitalize on the fears of the reaction­ary growers. The best example of thiscame in the early days of the Coa­chella strike when Teamster membersshoved farmworkers back into thefields after they had heeded UFW callsto join the strike. It was a tragic scenethat summed up not only the natureof the alliance between Teamsters andgrowers, but also the powerful forcesChavez faces.

A comparison of the UFW andTeamster contracts reveals minor dif­ferences in the basic wages and fringebenefits. The Teamster pacts have abase wage of $2.30 for pickers, a ten­cent-an-hour employer contribution tothe pension fund, employer-fundedunemployment compensation and ahealth and welfare plan. The UFW hasa base of $2.40 an hour with higherwages for irrigators and tractor drivers,a smaller pension contribution andsimilar unemployment compensationand health plans.

It is on the question of control ofthe workforce that the real differencesappear between the Teamsters andFarmworkers. The labor contractingsystem is not only countenanced but

RAMPARTS 55

encouraged by the Teamsters. They al­low what has been shown to be an ex­ploitive system to continue intact.

There is also a difference in attitudetoward the health of workers and therisks of pesticide poisoning. Accordingto a proviso in the Teamster pacts,"The company agrees to strictly abideand strictly comply with all applicablefederal and state laws, rules and regu­lations promulgated for the health andsafety of the employees." Having thesanction of such laws would seem tobe a reasonable approach except whenone realizes that according to theDepartment of Health, Education andWelfare, several hundred farmworkersdie of pesticide poisonings each year.The UFW contracts, on the otherhand, specifically limit the extent ofpesticide use and establish a health andsafety committee at each ranch to dealwith the problem. Such chlorinatedhydrocarbons as DDT, DOD and 2,4-0 are banned and more lethalorgano-phosphates such as parathionor malathion can be used only undercarefully prescribed rules. Moreover,each grower must keep extensiverecords on each application of anyeconomic poison.

[ON THE PICKET LINE]

A6:30 a.m. the sun begins tosneak over the Orocopia Moun­tains that wall in the Coachella

Valley. For more than an hour and ahalf the pickets have been at the HarryCarian Ranch, waving their bannersand yelling to workers to come out ofthe fields. The day begins at 4:30 a.m.when the farmworkers gather in dark­ness at the Coachella City Park. Theunion's system of infiltration has told·them which places are being workedtoday and picket captains lead an auto­mobile convoy to those ranches.

Harry Carian, who grows 300 acresof grapes, is standing at the edge of hisvineyard with his Filipino crewboss,looking at the 250 UFW pickets andmuttering to himself. He is almost acartoon of the grower. Dressed in ablue shirt, white patent leather boots,powder blue pants, and a white belt,he occasionally puffs a six-inch-Iongcigar and stands looking at the scenelike a patron. A visitor asks if he fearsthe kind of boycott that bankruptedseveral of his friends. "We'd have to be

56 RAMPARTS

fools to go through this again inten­tionally," he says grandly. "There hadto be a reason, and it's right out here."He sweeps his hand across the fields."We just felt the workers wanted theTeamsters more than Chavez."

"Hey Harry," shouted a picket,"You think you got problems withyour wife now, wait until we getthrough with you. You won't even beable to afford to go to that fancy hair­dresser of yours." Carian ignores him."A lot of the workers were just plaindisgruntled," he said. "The union triedto run their personal lives. They'd getfined for missing a meeting or not go­ing to picketing duty. You know wewanted elections back in 1969 and1970 and Chavez didn't feel it wasnecessary. We wanted very seriously torenegotiate a contract this year, butwe couldn't get him to sit down."

The sights, the sounds, the smellsare out of the past. Sheriff's carspatrol up and down the road, deputiesoccasionally getting out of their carsto watch. The loudspeakers blare out aSpanish message to the workers insideto come out of the fields and join thestrike. The UFW women with their redbandanas and straw hats carry UFWbanners. The men, their wrinkled facesreflecting years of backbreaking toil,yell at the workers in the field.

Sixty feet away (a court ordereddistance) are Teamster "guards," asthey call themselves. A past era oflabor would have called them "strike­breaking goons," for they are thereonly to intimidate. "I feel sorry forthese people," one of them wearing ahard hat said. "You know they'vebeen brainwashed. They don't knowanything about the Teamsters' con­tracts. If they did they wouldn't beout here. I think I've got an openmind. When I first came out here I feltsorry for these people. I thoughtChavez was right. These people justdon't understand that we've got agood union and that we can helpthem. Nobody told me to come outhere. Hell, they pay me $50 a day plus$17.50 for expenses, but I could netmore money driving a truck. I'm hereto help my brothers, not to starttrouble. "

These truck drivers are sometimesjoined by a fearsome group of freighthandlers from Los Angeles who arecalled "the animals" by their fellow

Teamsters, and whose demeanor iscloser to a Hells' Angel Chapter thanto the blue collar worker. They havebulging biceps and bellies, and oftenstart swigging beer by 7 a.m. Onemorning a group of about ten ofthem walked into a restaurant andspotted a UFW supporter who hap­pened to be a priest without his cloth.Father John Bank of Youngstown,Ohio was having breakfast with WallStreet Journal reporter William Wongof San Francisco. Two of the Team­sters began taunting Bank and afterten minutes Bank suggested in classicunderstatement that they would bewell cast in a B-grade movie. Where­upon a 6'4", 300-pounder named MikeFalco smashed Bank in the face, break­ing his nose, and then turned to askthe terrified Wong if he had anythingto say. Fitzsimmons' rationale for theappearance of these men is that theyare "guarding their Mexican-Americanfellow members because the minutethey turn their backs the Chavistas areentering the fields and beating up thegrape workers."

Whenever the UFW loudspeakersbegin blaring, Ray Griego, a San DiegoTeamster, wheels up in his blue Dodge,equipped with its own speaker system.Griego, wearing a Spanish picador'shat, struts in front of the pickets like arooster preening himself for a cock­fight. He likes to taunt the picketsabout the "easy virtues" of UFWwomen. But his favorite device is acassette tape recording of the song,"Bye, Bye Blackbird" that he insertsin the tape recorder on the hood of hiscar. [t is an oblique reference to theunion's Aztec eagle symbol. "Pack upall your cares and woe, here I go wing­ing low.... Bye, Bye Blackbird.

[UNION BUSTING)

The history of Teamster unionbusting can be traced back tothe summer of 1970 when

Chavez had just finished signing hishistoric agreements with the Delanogrowers. For several months his organ­izers had been working the lettucefields of Salinas, preparing to take onthose growers when the grape con­tracts were concluded. Naturally, thelettuce growers were apprehensive. Inlate July the growers approached theTeamsters, who represent their truck

drivers and equipment operators, andfelt them out about representing thefield hands. Working swiftly, the twosides concluded recognition agree­ments and more than 200 contractswere signed. When Chavez signed upthe Delano growers he was presentedwith a fait accompli in Salinas.

That August he called the most suc­cessful strike in U.S. farm history,pulling more than 5,000 workers outof the fields and paralyzing the"nation's salad bowl" at the peak ofharvest: He went to jail to protest arestrictive Monterey County courtorder that prohibited strike activitiesbecause of an alleged jurisdictional dis­pute. Last December the CaliforniaSupreme Court voided that injunctionand found there was no jurisdictionaldispute because the growers had madeno attempt to find out what theirworkers wanted.

Out of the lettuce dispute emergedan agreement that left field hands tothe UFW and food handlers and pro­cessors to the Teamsters. Additionally,those growers who had signed with theTeamsters were invited to give up theircontracts and execute new ones withChavez. Only five did. The jurisdic­tional agreement, which does not ex­pire until next year, was repeatedlyviolated by the Teamsters and long agofell into disuse.

At that point-late 1970-Chavezappeared to be on an inexorable marchtoward unionizing all of Californiaagriculture, but in the next year theUFW ran into serious difficulties. Inearly 1971 he began negotiating withthe remaining lettuce growers in an ef­fort to reach an accord. The negotia­tions, which apparently never got offdead center, were called off ninemonths later. According to insiders,the Teamsters Director of Organizing,William Grami, was telling the lettucegrowers to hold out as long as theycould because the Teamsters would bereentering the farm labor field soon.

By late 1971 Chavez was deter­mined to move against the lettucegrowers with a nationwide boycott.But in California he was severely ham­pered by the Monterey Court' order,still on appeal. Just as the boycott wasto be started in the rest of thecountry, the National Labor RelationsBoard, in a politically inspired move,sued the union, charging that it was

covered by the National Labor Rela­tions Act and that therefore any boy­cotting would be illegal. The unionhad acquired some winery workers inthe Napa Valley and the NLRB wasnow saying that a law that had notapplied to farmworkers for 37 yearswas now in force. In the end, the UFWdropped the winery workers and theNLRB dropped the suit.

Then the union launched its boy­cott on national television at theNational Democratic Convention,where delegation after delegationpitched in with shouts of "boycottlettuce." But just as the boycott waspicking up strength, the growers onceagain forced the union into a criticaltest. Using what were later found to befraudulent methods, the growers' rep­resentatives solicited enough signaturesto put Proposition 22 on California'sNovember ballot. It was labelled the"Farm Labor Relations Initiative," butin reality it was a Farm Bureau­sponsored measure that would havemade it impossible to unionize thestate's farmworkers. The boycott wasshunted aside while all available man­power was thrown into defeating theproposition-a successful but costlyeffort.

At the same time it was fighting theproposition, the union was strikingWhite River Farms near Delano, thesuccessor to Schenley Industries whichhad signed the union's first contract in1966. White River, owned by ButtesGas & Oil Co., refused to negotiate anew contract. It lost $1 million in theharvest but succeeded in beating backa bitter and sometimes violent strike.So here it was, November 1972, and

oo«

>­u

~c..

~

'-'Teamster President Frank Fitzsimmons

the union, confronted at every turn bygrower and government opposition,had not moved much farther from theposition it had occupied in July 1970.

What happened in the next fewmonths can best be described in retro­spect as the "Nixon connection." Forthe sequence of events shows that thegrowers were already looking towardthe Teamsters and that further, theNixon Administration was all too will­ing to help consummate this marriageof convenience.

In early December of last year,Fitzsimmons went to Los Angeles toaddress the annual convention of theAmerican Farm Bureau Federation. Itwas astonishing enough that Fitz­simmons would talk to these disciplesof William McKinley and RutherfordB. Hayes. But when he suggested analliance of agribusiness and the Team­sters to put Chavez out of business itwas clear he was no ordinary laborleader.

How did Fitzsimmons happen to goto the convention? Laurence H. Silber­man, the undersecretary of labor, hasacknowledged he called Fitzsimmonslast fall and told him the Farm Bureauwould be interested in hearing hisviews on a number of subjects­including farm labor. This is the sameSilberman who dropped the Adminis­tration's support of compulsory arbi­tration legislation in transportationstrikes after the Teamsters dumped asuitcase full of money in Nixon's elec­tion kitty.

The Administration proved obligingin other ways. The Justice Department,for example, delayed a San FranciscoGrand Jury investigation of payoffs by

RAMPARTS 57

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BEYONDWORDS

by Kurt W. Back

A candid report on rhe sensi­tivity-encounter movement,from its beginnings to itscurrent popularity. "An im­peccable source for reliable,up-to-date information" ­Kirkus. At bookstores, $1.75

PENGUIN BOOKS INC

58 RAMPARTS

the growers to Teamsters during the1970 lettuce strike in Salinas, in whichwitnesses testified that $5,000 bundleswere handed over to the Teamsters topay for protection; in addition, it calledoff FBl agents who were watchingclosely the budding friendship ofFitzsimmons and Mafia members whohave moved into Southern California.

The day following the Farm Bureauspeech, Fitzsimmons flew to San Fran­cisco where he and Western Con­ference head Einar Molm, once one ofDave Beck's most trusted assistants,announced they would renegotiate thelettuce contracts two years beforethey expired.

But before doing that the Team­sters offered Chavez a deal, relayingthe message through the NationalCatholic Bishops Committee on FarmLabor: the Teamsters would not goafter the grape growers if Chavezwould give up his efforts to sign up thelettuce growers. According to UFWattorney Jerry Cohen, the deal wasrejected out of hand. In January, thenew lettuce contracts were announcedand the Teamsters went after thegrapes.

Can Chavez prevail against theseforces? Before he received the AFL­CIO grant there were grave doubts.Now there is greater optimism. Thestrike underway in Coachella is takinghold. One grower said the growers willbe lucky to get half the crop picked.Another said much of it will be "gar­bage" because of the untrainedworkers in the vineyards and coolweather. The Teamsters and growerstalk of importing Mexican nationalswith temporary visas if, as it appears,there are not enough workers to pickthe crop. But Coachella will be onlyone phase of the struggle. As theweather turns warmer, the strike willmove into the San Joaquin Valley,where the most recalcitrant growersoperate.

Public opinion will playa great partin determining the ultimate winner.Once again Chavez is counting on aboycott of non-UFW grapes to bringthe growers to their senses. But is thepublic so mesmerized by otherevents-Watergate and inflation, toname two-that the boycott will gounnoticed? It is an open question. Atleast one historian of the farm labormovement and one of its leaders in the

1950s, Ernesto Galarza, believes that amovement built on boycotts cannotsustain itself. "This strategy dependsentirely on the union's ability to mobi­lize, on a national scale, people whoare not in day-to-day contact with theunion. I don't think the machinery forthat kind of thing has been built byChavez." Another unknown factor isthe reported meetings between FrankFitzsimmons and George Meany aboutthe situation. No one knows whetherany settlement between the two labormoguls will be satisfactory to the UFW.

But Chavez has the farmworkerswith whom he has fought and wondubious battles in the past. "1 don'tthink the growers know what they'vegotten themselves into," he said. "Wemay not know how to organizegrowers, but we can organize farm­workers. That's our stock-in-trade." •

COLD WAR(From page 40)

In this way, the revisionist casesoon became a basic text not only forstudents, but for a growing number ofjunior faculty, and a second generationof revisionist books and monographsbegan to make their appearance. Thecold war critics had ceased to be intel­lectual pariahs, and it was no longerpossible to simply ignore their argu­ments, nor to dismiss them out ofhand, as had previously been the rule.The new reality was quickly impressedon Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., when he in­temperately remarked in a letter to theNew York Review of Books (October1966), that it was time to "blow thewhistle" on cold war revisionism. Thefollowing autumn, seven years afterthe first major revisionist works of Wil­liams and Fleming, the first substantialconfrontation with the revisionist caseappeared in an article in ForeignAffairs, written by Schlesinger, Jr.himself.

[ORTHODOX CHAMPION]

Schlesinger, Jr. was in many waysan ideal candidate for the task ofreasserting an orthodox stance

towards the revisionist critique. Amember of the Council on ForeignRelations, a former White House ad­visor, and one of the outspoken criticsof Beard's book on Roosevelt when it