UFW, Growers Compete for ‘Hearts and Minds’ of Illegals

Cesar Chavez and his United Farm Workers union are engaged in a fascinating new kind of struggle with California growers for the loyalty of farm workers.

The latest contest is taking place on the farms and in farming communities in western states and even in Mexico, where each side is offering to help illegal aliens legitimize their status as workers in this country.

Growers are hoping that the illegal aliens they assist will feel indebted and therefore be less likely to unionize. The growers also say they are sponsoring their program because most of their workers are illegals.

Likewise, aliens helped by Chavez’s UFW will presumably have an increased incentive to join the union. The UFW’s legalization effort is essential for the union because most of its members are undocumented aliens who could be shipped out of the country if they don’t win legal status.

In addition, the union’s members, leaders and most farm workers in California have strong cultural and ethnic ties with the foreign workers, who come mainly from Mexico.

The California growers’ campaign is being waged through their newly created Alien Legalization for Agriculture, with 19 offices around the state, plus one in Mexicali, Mexico. More than 100 staffers of the association are helping process foreign workers’ applications for legal status in this country.

The growers charge no fee, but collect the $185 charged by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The union is using its already established offices throughout the state to provide legal assistance to UFW members and to all illegals who ask for it or who respond to the union’s offer to help.

Millions of illegal aliens in and out of agriculture are now eligible to apply for documents that will allow them to work here legally--though not become citizens--under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

The “help legalize the illegals” contest going on between growers and the UFW is not the only one of its kind. Many other unions and employers in other industries have similar campaigns, each trying to win the “hearts and minds” of the illegals.

It is a strange phenomenon. Since the 1800s, many employers in several industries had treated illegal aliens cavalierly. Until the new law, only the illegals were punished when they were caught working in the United States. There was no law against the bosses employing them.

The once-unconcerned employers seem to be demonstrating great solicitude for the illegals’ welfare, especially for their legal right to work here, since now employers can be fined and even jailed if they knowingly hire illegals.

The phenomenon is most interesting in agriculture, perhaps, because the vast majority of farm workers are illegal aliens.

Historically, growers have exploited illegals as a source of cheap labor. After all, if some of the workers quit because the job was too difficult or the pay and living conditions intolerable, there always seemed to be an endless supply of other poverty-stricken people ready to come here illegally from Mexico or other underdeveloped countries to take the jobs.

Chavez and others are not convinced that the growers really have changed and that they will do what must be done to end their addictive dependence on illegals.

Employers will have to raise wages and improve working conditions to retain legal workers once they no longer face the threat of deportation. And similar or even greater incentives must be offered to attract U.S. workers to the jobs to make up for any labor shortages.

Chavez believes that the growers are engaged in a game of deception, pretending to really try to get enough workers to meet their planting and harvesting needs.

If that fails, as Chavez insists the growers expect, the growers would then demand that Congress enact a new bracero program under which the government would recruit foreign workers for U.S. employers. Such temporary workers rarely join unions.

Growers deny the charge emphatically. David Moore, president of the Western Growers Assn., in a message to his members, said: “Senior association staff members contributed a great deal of their time and energy to establish the legalization centers and communicating the opportunities available.

“Growers need to consider changing their recruiting and hiring practices for seasonal workers. . . . It promises to be a new ball game.”

But to win the game of getting enough farm workers, growers must improve the economic lives of their workers, not just the recruiting and hiring practices used to bring them to the farms.

Chavez’s union, still a small one, has provided the only significant help that farm workers, including illegals, have had in recent years, slightly improving their wages and job conditions.

But the illegals have been a challenge for both unions and U.S. workers.

As former Labor Secretary Ray Marshall once said, “the illegals work fast, cheap and scared,” and so make tough competitors for jobs.

For that reason, unions are particularly anxious to legalize foreign workers already here. The UFW has said that when it calls a strike, growers rarely have trouble getting illegals to work behind picket lines.

Also, while unions have tried organizing undocumented workers, they usually fail because of the illegals’ fear of deportation, in addition to the typical concerns most workers have when they challenge their employers by joining unions.

That fear of deportation could be eliminated by the new law, giving a boost to the membership drives of the UFW and other unions in industries heavily dominated by illegal aliens.

But in any case, the contest for the loyalty of illegal aliens going on between employers and unions, especially in agriculture, demonstrates the potential power and benefits of the immigration reform act that took so many years to win congressional approval.

Labor Leaders Deserve a Place at Universities

Leaders of many higher educational institutions have created “in residence” positions for poets, writers, scientists, politicians and even business executives.

And most of the nation’s larger universities have institutes of labor relations and offer courses in labor economics. But it seems that only Columbia University has created the prestigious post of “Labor Leader in Residence.”

Not surprisingly, it has been occupied by Douglas Fraser, who did many innovative things and attracted considerable public attention as one of America’s brightest labor leaders when he was president of the United Auto Workers.

Fraser drew widespread praise and harsh criticism in union and industry circles when he became a member of Chrysler’s board in 1980 in an unprecedented move to give the union some representation at the top of the corporation’s decision-making ladder.

After a few months as a director, he won praise from Chrysler officials as a reasonable board member and from unionists, who decided that they wrongly feared he might “sell out” to management.

Since Fraser did it with such style, the idea of a union leader on corporate boards no longer comes as a surprise, although, unfortunately, it is still uncommon.

Columbia’s Graduate School of Business has long had a business leader in residence program.

It is time for other universities to expose their graduate school students on a regular basis to the views of other labor leaders in residence.