Plight of Lettuce Eaters

At the Democratic National Convention in July, the phrase "boycott lettuce" became almost a password. It fell fervently from the lips of any number of heads of delegations, and it was finally consummated as a cause when Ted Kennedy, at the peak of convention excitement, began his speech: "Greetings, fellow lettuce boycotters!"

The idea was to spark a boycott of iceberg lettuce--the kind that looks like a head of cabbage--in support of Cesar Chavez's two-year-old strike against growers in California. Chavez, grateful for the Democratic boost, believes that the boycott is beginning to take hold and in fact is doing as well as the grape boycott did at a comparable time in its history. But the evidence is not so reassuring. For a while after the convention, many sympathizers gave up lettuce. The growers were shipping only 300,000 cartons a day out of Salinas Valley instead of the normal 400,000.

In time, however, passions were spent, appetites increased and people started munching the greenery again. The wilting lettuce cause pointed up a dilemma larger than lettuce: in the current climate, it is hard to turn a labor issue into a liberal cause. Labor is in bad odor with liberals these days, and even a Chavez suffers from the apathy.

After a five-year battle supported by sympathetic liberals round the country, Chavez in 1970 won a stunning victory over the grape growers, who were forced to recognize his United Farm Workers Union. From there, Chavez looked for new fields of crops to conquer. He chose lettuce. At once, the panicky growers signed up with the Teamsters Union, hoping that it would prove more malleable than the militant U.F.W. Chavez, who felt that he had been betrayed by a brother union, was able to organize only a few growers. Many court battles and union confrontations later, the dust has still not settled. The Teamsters have agreed to turn the lettuce pickers over to the U.F.W. if the growers are willing. But the growers balk at the hiring halls that Chavez insists on; they want to keep the right to choose their own workers.

This puts the consumer in a quandary if he is of a mind to support the boycott. He cannot boycott the lettuce on the grounds that it is nonunion, since most of it comes courtesy of the Teamsters. If he wants to determine whether it is picked by the U.F.W., he has to examine the carton it came in to see if it bears Chavez's black eagle emblem. On the shelf, one head of lettuce looks much like another. While most shoppers go on blissfully buying lettuce with no idea that a boycott is under way, those who care are treated to conflicting advice. Some militants instruct them to keep things simple and not buy lettuce at all. Others tell them to try to discriminate: avoid iceberg lettuce but purchase romaine, most of which is not grown in California. "I couldn't figure out which lettuce was O.K. and which wasn't," says Connie Zonka, who works for Columbia College in Chicago. "So I just quit buying it--and we like lettuce a lot. I get out of it by substituting a whole lot of cabbage."

But even if the issue were clearly understood, people might not act much differently when it comes to the crunch. A grape is one thing; it has a kind of bacchanalian image, succulent and superfluous. It is a luxury. But plebian iceberg lettuce that makes a harsh noise when you munch it is a humble staple. People are not so willing to give it up.

The boycott has pitted the supermarket chains against the smaller independents. Only a small amount of U.F.W. lettuce is shipped out, and most of it goes to the chains, which can then sell their lettuce with a clear conscience and no fear of boycott. The smaller stores, on the other hand, are stuck with Teamster lettuce, and they must either sell it at the risk of boycott or give up moving lettuce altogether. Obviously, they are at a competitive disadvantage. 'This is immoral," complains Harold Slawsby, president of a modest chain of stores in Massachusetts. "We're not going to allow the large chains who contract directly with the growers to obtain the bulk of the U.F.W.-picked lettuce, while leaving only scraps that can't come close to filling the demand for the independent chains."

On top of all its other troubles, the U.F.W. finds its very existence under attack. In Arizona, Kansas and Idaho, laws have been passed that would cripple Chavez's organizing activities; they prohibit boycotts by farm workers, require farm-union elections before strikes can be called and hinder strikes at harvest time. Similar measures are included in an initiative that has been put on the California ballot by a combination of growers, shippers and the California Farm Bureau Federation. If a lettuce boycott can succeed under these circumstances, it may be that only Cesar Chavez can bring it off.

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