Deterioration of Farm Law Led UFW Back to Boycott

A wise man taught us that “those who choose to ignore history are destined to relive it.” It’s a lesson that corporate growers in California should heed.

Eleven years ago, when confronted by the fact that 12% of the public was backing the United Farm Workers’ boycott of fresh grapes and other products, agribusiness agreed to support compromise farm-labor legislation that would give farm workers, for the first time, a legal mechanism to resolve grievances with growers.

Now, more than a decade later, agribusiness shows that it still hasn’t learned. Growers backed the passage of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act to get out of the boycott in 1975, but changed their minds after too many farm workers voted for the UFW, or after the growers were ordered to pay millions of dollars in back pay to workers after they were found to be in violation of the law.

They thought that the almost $1 million in campaign contributions that they made to George Deukmejian would kill off the union. It hasn’t, but the farm-labor law obviously is no longer working.

Under the Deukmejian Administration: --The number of investigators, prosecutors and hearing judges was reduced drastically by a 30% cut in the Agricultural Labor Relations Board’s enforcement budget.

--The backlog of uninvestigated farm-worker charges against growers mushroomed while prosecution of lawless employers almost ceased. Hundreds of charges were dismissed so that Deukmejian could deceptively claim a cut in the backlog.

--Civil servants who try to enforce the law have been subjected to a methodical purge by Deukmejian’s political appointees. Last April, nearly all of the ALRB’s Salinas staff signed a petition to legislators: “We know that every time we carry out our duties, we risk punitive action for disloyalty (to Deukmejian).”

--The process of collecting millions of dollars in back pay that growers owe for breaking the law has been shut down. Deukmejian has not processed a single case in which courts have ruled that convicted growers must pay farm workers their money.

--Farm workers who cooperated secretly with state prosecutors by informing on a grower who violated the law discovered that Deukmejian’s people had turned their names over to the company--one already convicted of retaliating against its workers.

Deukmejian and the growers claim that under the Administration of Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. the Agricultural Labor Relations Board became biased toward farm workers. Yet the state auditor general has testified that his investigation of the board’s 10-year tenure failed to expose “any evidence of intentional bias.”

Deukmejian’s legacy can be seen every day that farm workers face coercion and violence for exercising protected rights.

Meanwhile, growers have taken the Deukmejian Administration’s cavalier attitude toward the Agricultural Labor Relations Act as a signal to ignore other laws, particularly those governing the regulation of the thousands of pesticides sprayed each year on California fields.

The governor and his spokesmen like to boast about how California has the toughest pesticide laws in the nation. They won’t admit that the enforcement of many of these laws is a joke. Pesticides are especially dangerous when used recklessly. The hundreds of consumer illnesses last July that resulted from irresponsible use of the insecticide Aldicarb on watermelons revealed only the tip of the iceberg on pesticide contamination.

Since the 1960s, when we first raised the pesticide issue, growers have reacted indignantly to our warnings.

Last year we launched a new grape boycott to call attention to the unenforcement of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act. This year, as part of the boycott, we are adding a “Wrath of Grapes” campaign that will warn consumers of the problems associated with pesticide contamination of grapes. Together, our tactics are designed to get growers to sign contracts with the union and to assure that farm workers are not injured by pesticides that growers use.

When the boycott was renewed, our opponents said that it would surely fail.

Yet a California Poll released last September showed that 42% of the public will embrace this effort. Boycotts work when they enjoy 5% support; they’re devastating with 10%. Clearly, corporate growers and their champion, George Deukmejian, have placed themselves squarely on the wrong side of the issue.

History will repeat itself. The new grape boycott will succeed. And agribusiness will learn its lesson once more.