Grape Dispute Deadlock Broken

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32029, 2 July 1969, Page 7

Grape Dispute Deadlock Broken

(N.Z.P. A. -Reuter —Copyright) LOS ANGELES, June 30.

The deadlock has finally been broken in America’s most intractable labour dispute, the war between growers and union-minded pickers of Californian table grapes.

Federal mediators opened an initial bargaining session in Los Angeles last Friday to try to settle at least part of a dispute the origins of which were described by John Steinbeck in his novel, “Grapes of Wrath.”

The big break came earlier this month when 10 leading growers broke ranks with their colleagues and offered to talk with Mr Cesar Chaves, the little Mexican-American who is trying to win a union contract for thousands of grape-pickers. His efforts to organise into unions the field workers defy tradition. Despite the enormous strength of the American labour movement, it has never penetrated agriculture.

The 10 growers—representing up to 20 per cent of California’s slsom-a-year table grape business—were the first to succumb to pressure from Mr Chaves.

Until now, the growers had steadfastly refused to recognise his United Farm Workers’ Organising Committee.

a body that might, in time, become the union umbrella for farm labourers across the country.

Unable to make a dent in the solid growers’ front, Mr Chaves, a 41-year-old apostle of non-violence, called the predominantly Mexican • American pickers out on strike nearly four years ago.

But the strike was a failure —mainly because the growers had access to a steady flow of new immigrant labour from Mexico—and Mr Chaves had to seek a new means of making his point. The striking farm workers hit on the idea of a nationwide boycott of California table grapes. It was not long before cities and stores began honouring the boycott. The strategy paid off last week. The 10 growers condemned the boycott as “illegal and immoral" but conceded it was strangling the business.

The opening of negotiations was in itself a triumph for Mr Chaves because it meant that at least some of the growers had recognised bis fledgling union, but he soon realised it was no more than a start.

The majority of growers, mainly European in origin, quickly denounced the capitulating minority. “California table grapes growers, as an industry, will not sell out tbe American consumer or agricultural workers to the coercive pressures of Cesar Chaves,” they declared in a statement.

The unrelenting growers say the grape pickers are well paid as farm workers go. They

say picking is a seasonal sort of work that has nothing in common with industrial jobs already under union jurisdiction.

Observers believe that the talks now in progress might have a far-reaching Impact on the grape business but that solutions would be slow in coming. While Mr Chaves might easily halt the strike against the 10 growers, it would be far more difficult for him to lift the boycott—his most successful weapon—until the rest of the growers agreed to negotiate.

It would be a cumbersome task to differentiate in the market place between grapes from friendly growers and those from hostile growers.