California Compromise

When Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal pushed through the nation's labor legislation in the '30s, one group of workers remained conspicuously unprotected: the farm workers. Last week California's Governor Edmund Brown Jr. won initial legislative approval for a bill that would finally give farm workers in one of the nation's richest agricultural states the protective legal umbrella they have long sought.

The difficulties go back to 1962, when Cesar Chavez, the union leader, started organizing farm workers; his grape boycott compelled many California growers to bargain with his United Farm Workers. Only a few years after Chavez had won that victory, however, the Teamsters Union moved into the California fields, using greater resources and occasionally bullyboy harassment. Often without the approval of their employees, many of the growers who had signed with Chavez jumped over to the Teamsters; that union seemed to offer them less trouble. At the same time, many workers also turned to the Teamsters, who ran a more efficient organization.

Free Choice. Chavez was better at leading strikes than at administering union services or parceling out jobs equitably. Membership in Chavez's union plunged from 55,000 in 1972 to as low as 6,000 today; by contrast, the Teamsters now have 55,000 members. Bloody organizational fights between the two unions have become almost routine, and Chavez has maintained boycotts of lettuce not picked by his workers, and of table grapes and all wines produced by the E. & J. Gallo Winery. Gallo's workers in 1973 switched from the Chavez union to the Teamsters, but only in an unsupervised vote.

In a 60-hour session early this month with representatives of Chavez and 17 growers--the Teamsters would not join in--the Governor produced a compromise bill. Under the measure, the farm workers, beginning next January, will be able to vote with secret ballots in state-supervised elections for any union they want. Secondary boycotts--picketing liquor stores that carry Gallo wines, for example--will be restricted, limiting Chavez's use of one of his most effective weapons.

Chavez supports the bill because he says that he can depose the Teamsters in almost all the elections. Gallo backs the bill and so do the growers. The Teamsters are opposed to it. The bill's chances in the California legislature are good nonetheless; a state senate committee has approved it by a 5-to-l margin. There will probably not be an immediate end to the labor conflicts even if the bill is passed, but it is at least a move toward peace--and the legally protected free choice of unions for farm workers.

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