OXNARD : Chavez Urges Grape Boycott in County

United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez urged a packed auditorium of union members and workers Wednesday night to help bring his grape boycott to Ventura County.

“We have to win the grape strike,” UFW President Chavez said in Spanish to about 300 people at Juanita Elementary School in Oxnard. His appeal for support drew cheers.

Chavez gave an update on the latest boycott, which began in June as a protest over pesticide use on grapes. Since then, supporters have picketed Vons markets, primarily in Southern California, claiming the chain reneged on a pledge to stop selling the grapes.

In an interview before the meeting, Chavez said the boycott is working and growers are losing money. He claimed that sales have dropped by more than 6% since June. He would consider it a victory, he said, if sales dropped by 9%.

He said he expects to bring the boycott to Vons markets in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties soon, and he asked those in attendance to help pass out leaflets to shoppers urging them to shop elsewhere.

Chavez, who founded the UFW nearly 30 years ago to get higher wages and better working conditions for fieldworkers, got his political start in Oxnard by registering Latinos to vote.

At the meeting Wednesday, Chavez announced new pension benefits for UFW members and urged other workers to join the union. The union represents 30,000 workers, a large decrease since numbers peaked in 1979, he said.