The Crusades of Cesar Chavez

by Miriam Pawel

  Richard was kindhearted, practical, and a natural entertainer. Where Cesar strained to tell jokes, Richard was genuinely funny and loved to tell stories. He shared his brother’s commitment to the movement, but Richard did not share the commitment to material sacrifice. He enjoyed playing golf, and his family was the first in the neighborhood to have a color television. Yet time after time, Richard gamely took on whatever task his older brother called on him to perform.

  With everyone else absorbed in the Salinas fight, Richard struggled to bring order to a tense and chaotic situation in Delano. Skeptical workers now had to pay monthly dues. Hostile foremen tried to sabotage the agreements, which deprived them of their power to hire and fire, practice favoritism, and demand bribes and sexual favors in exchange for employment. The union had not been terribly efficient at managing only a handful of wine grape contracts; now tens of thousands of members expected service and dozens of growers expected competent laborers. With a skeleton staff, Richard struggled to administer about two hundred contracts covering fifty-five thousand jobs. He kept appealing to his brother for help, to no avail.

  The centerpiece of the contracts was the hiring hall, designed to be the only source of job referrals and eliminate the labor contractors, who had so often cheated and exploited workers. Growers now requested workers and the union dispatched them in seniority order. This required the union to keep accurate seniority lists and to quickly muster workers to meet each grower’s demand. Both tasks proved difficult.

  On top of the normal growing pains, the union had adopted several policies that generated confusion and animosity. Rules crafted in La Paz by Cesar, in consultation with LeRoy Chatfield and Marshall Ganz, were intended to transfer the workers’ loyalty to the union. The plan backfired badly.

  No worker could be employed on a union ranch without an up-to-date membership card, and members were required to pay the monthly dues year-round, regardless of whether or where they worked. A migrant family returning to Coachella for the harvest season after eight months in Mexico or Texas or other parts of California might owe hundreds of dollars in back dues. To secure their experienced workers, employers often lent families money to pay the dues.

  The union’s seniority rule caused further outrage. In an attempt to reward longtime supporters, seniority was measured by number of years as a union member, rather than the length of time worked for a particular employer. That meant workers returning for the grape harvest might be denied jobs at a vineyard where they had worked for years. The seniority rule also affected families whose members had different tenures and found themselves split up. They often had only one car and no way to get to jobs on different ranches. “What a mess it was,” Richard said. “What a mess. I think about those times and I just . . . bad times.”

  By the second season of the contracts, in the summer of 1971, the hiring hall problems were well known. Jerry Cohen, who was resisting Chavez’s entreaties to move to La Paz, attributed some of the difficulty to the isolation of the new headquarters. Cohen explained to Jacques Levy during a break in the Salinas negotiations that everyone knew the hiring hall rules worked badly but were afraid to confront Chavez. Among the board members, only Huerta tried to argue with Chavez, and their fights became so personal that they produced only recriminations and hurt feelings. “Cesar is a gentle intimidator,”2 Cohen wrote in his diary. “He can change a man’s report for example with a slight change of expression. The man noting displeasure will anticipate what is wanted and deliver it. This is bad. Some do not like to be the bearers of bad news.”

  Chavez was stubborn about charging dues year-round. “We have a policy; we collect back dues,” he said flatly. He reminded those who complained that $3.50 a month was an arbitrary number adopted by the first convention in 1962, long before the union had contracts. Starting out the new contracts by raising dues would have been unpalatable, so the compromise was to charge dues year-round. “You have to understand, you cannot run a union on $3.50 a month,” Chavez said. “But politically, we were in a bind.”3

  Tension grew between the small band of longtime supporters in Delano and the bulk of workers who were new to the union. Each ranch elected a five-member ranch committee, which was to be the governing body and the intermediary with the union office. In a few places, strong ranch committee leaders helped coworkers understand how the contract should work and sold them on the benefits. But in most cases, the union’s policies generated so much hostility that the workers most loyal to the union failed to win election to the ranch committees. When they complained to Chavez, he voiced no sympathy. Their service on the strike and boycott did not entitle them to special privileges. “They consider themselves a step above4 the other workers because they struggled,” Chavez explained. “It’s the same problem that any revolution has anywhere. If you’ve read anything about revolutions you know that the guys that won are the guys who want a little extra. And we’re saying, ‘No, you’re no different.’”

  On other hand, he viewed workers who had not supported the union early on as ungrateful, taking for granted benefits of contracts that others had sacrificed to win. “If they want a union, goddamn it, they’ve got to do something for it,” Chavez told a meeting of boycotters. “We never educated them5 . . . they think the boycott is a gift from heaven.” Borrowing a concept from the Spanish cursillo, he asked farmworkers to offer a palanca—which he translated as “a small sacrifice”—for the success of the boycott. (“If I were making a palanca for New York so that New York can win its boycott,” Chavez explained, “I’d stop drinking Diet Rite. That’s a palanca.”)

  Chavez imposed more demands. To support the Salinas strike, the union created a voluntary $1-a-week strike fund assessment on members. “This will create more criticism but we must not be afraid6 of it,” Chavez said at a meeting of hiring hall administrators. “Workers have to handle their own problems—we have to organize, they have to put in their share of sacrifice.”

  Some, who looked to exculpate Chavez, attributed problems to his relative isolation at La Paz, where he made decisions insulated from workers who might have alerted him to the consequences. But Chavez had worked in the fields himself and knew the issues well. In large part, he insisted on the rules because he believed they would, over time, establish the union as the source of power and eradicate the labor contractors. He underestimated the workers’ response, and then angrily dismissed complaints when others tried to tell him—even his brother.

  “I started telling Cesar, ‘Look Cesar, this and this is happening in the office, you know. We do not have the qualified people to enforce those contracts,’” Richard recalled. “‘The membership is getting a little, ah, disturbed at us, you know. They’re starting to raise complaints, and we have to do something about it.’” Many farmworkers occasionally worked in packing houses under Teamster contracts; they saw the differences between the two unions. The Teamsters might be less interested in workers’ rights, but they did not demand that employees spend weekends on political campaigns or boycotts. The Teamsters were a business union, and for some workers that held appeal.

  While Cesar escaped to his retreat in the Tehachapi Mountains, the issue boiled over in Delano. In early 1972, Richard and Cesar had it out. Richard told his brother the union was antagonizing workers so badly and managing so poorly that they were sure to lose the contracts when they came up for renewal in a year unless they acted quickly. They shouted at each other. Cesar called Richard names and said he was a fatalist. From then on, they had shouting matches every few months. As the time to make amends to workers grew shorter, Richard became more upset. “I said, ‘Look we’re not doing the organizing that we have to do. We’re in right now, we can organize our people, but we need staff and we need this.’ Well, everything was denied. I was always being told that we had more staff than necessary, we couldn’t get cars, you know, all that, everything. So it was a constant fight, constant fight.”

  Richard told his brother he was losing touch with the union’
s members. They expected to see Cesar, and he was never around anymore. He was resting in La Paz, or fasting in Phoenix, or fund-raising in New York, but not talking to workers in Delano. Later, when the union was a full-fledged national organization, Richard said, other leaders would emerge and the workers would not expect to see Cesar. But now his presence mattered. “He was getting away from the people,” Richard said. “And I used to tell him, ‘Cesar, you know, we have contracts and everything but . . . you’re staying away from the people. They’re complaining. They want to see you.’ . . . Well, he’d make all kinds of excuses.”

  Cesar was focused on his latest project and the next fight. He wasn’t accustomed to having workers complain to him about the union. He had patience for their complaints about others—but not about his own operation. He rationalized their anger and set out to deflect it: “I was thinking this morning, I got up at 6 o’clock, it was colder then hell. Workers going to work at 7--no amount of money is going to make that worker feel good when the weather is very cold. Or very hot. So when they react, who do they react against? They don’t react against the employer. Many times they react against the union.7 When the union wasn’t there, they didn’t react. So our job is to make damn sure they know who to react against.”

  Frustrated with the Delano workers, Chavez found enlightenment in Salinas, at the “liberated ranches” where workers had taken matters into their own hands with the tortuga. More militant from the start, the vegetable workers had embraced the power of the ranch committees and needed no encouragement to turn their anger against the employer. They willfully violated the contract to show the foremen they no longer could exert the kind of unilateral power they had enjoyed in the past. “Finally, the vegetable people began to make us understand8 what the hell was going on!” Chavez exclaimed, recounting with delight to a group of boycotters the experience of the union in Salinas.

  Richard, the practical builder, saw the need to adapt to peacetime, to stop demonizing the growers, and to live by the contracts. “I said, ‘Cesar, that tortuga is going to come back and kick us right in the teeth, you know.’ And they thought it was very funny. Because they had the growers by the balls. A little slowdown and the grower goes berserk, he doesn’t know what to do.” The union should let growers fire the workers who willfully violated the contract, Richard said.

  He warned his brother the grape workers did not believe in la causa the way Cesar thought they did. The union was turning them off. In the Delano hiring hall, Richard bent the rules. While he was in charge of the other field offices, he encouraged others to follow suit. Cesar responded by moving Richard out of Delano.

  The Filipino workers were even unhappier than the Mexicans; they resented the hiring halls and felt they were treated like second-class citizens. Larry Itliong, who had launched the grape strike and hung in despite his ongoing differences with Chavez, finally resigned in frustration in October 1971. He was no longer willing to put up with the treatment he had suffered for several years, and he denounced the “brain trust” that surrounded Chavez.

  Others warned Chavez as well, and he greeted their critiques with equal disdain. Monsignor Roger Mahony, who had played a key role in the negotiations with both the grape and vegetable growers, traveled throughout the San Joaquin Valley and became concerned. “I thought you should be aware of the increasing animosity towards the UFWOC9 efforts, in particular by many Mexican-American groups in our parishes,” he wrote Chavez. The ratification votes had been rammed through, workers did not understand how the union operated, and the hiring halls were staffed largely by young, inexperienced volunteers. “I am bringing this to your attention because of the very wide-spread resentment. In all honesty, I can say that we never came across one single parish in the Diocese in which any group of Mexican-Americans voiced support for the unionization efforts.”

  Chavez’s response was curt: “I have your letter.10 I was very surprised at the contents. You must know things that I don’t.”

  He dismissed the complaints as grower propaganda, feeding on the bad attitude of a small group of ungrateful workers. There was no shortage of people eager to deliver an upbeat message and assure Chavez that workers loved the union. In fact, many workers angry with the union policies still worshipped Cesar and believed the problems stemmed from inept staff. If only Cesar knew, they said, he would fix the problems.

  The young Anglo volunteers running the hiring halls often had little if any experience in the fields or knowledge of agriculture. Chavez moved his staff around often, and each new person felt the need to “rewrite the contract,” Mahony reported to the bishops’ committee. Growers had long lists of complaints11 about the staff’s attitude, lack of experience, and lack of authority. When problems arose, “no one at the local level has the authority to make decisions; in all cases, Cesar or Richard must be contacted.”

  Compounding the problem, the union operated like a fire department: whenever a new alarm went off, Chavez shifted everyone to help with the latest crisis. In the spring of 1972, between the Phoenix fast, the lettuce strike and boycott, and the presidential primary in California, “it was almost impossible to locate any top union leader,” Mahony wrote. “Local union operations were virtually abandoned.” He wrote to Chavez again with growing alarm about arrogant and inept young personnel in the hiring halls.

  Chavez responded12 this time at greater length. Growers were not complaining to the union, Chavez said, but only to the bishops. He dismissed the grievances as a strategy to strengthen the growers’ negotiating position when the contracts came up for renewal. Mahony was so concerned by this response that he appealed immediately to Bill Kircher: “Something has to be done13 at the local hiring hall level to get this union functioning, or I am afraid they are all finished. There are so many problems at the local level you cannot believe it.”

  Despite Chavez’s claim, growers did complain to the union. In Salinas, Andy D’Arrigo, one of only four vegetable growers who had signed a UFWOC contract, wrote in frustration when he could not reach Richard in June 1972 after repeated calls. The union had been unable to provide D’Arrigo with enough workers, so he was allowed to bring in labor contractors. The union workers harassed the labor contractors. The contractors now refused to work for him, and he was losing crops. He had scrapped plans to expand and would instead plant fewer fields next season. “Why is there such hostility14 on the part of this local office to the extent that without even taking the time to seek out the existing facts that hell is being raised first?” D’Arrigo wrote to Richard. “What are you trying to prove?”

  In Coachella, grape grower Keene Larson wrote to Chavez in bewilderment. The first two years, he had enjoyed a good relationship with the union office. The union raised valid complaints, like the lack of clean toilets, and he took corrective action. Larson could live with the frustrations of the hiring hall, but not with the constant harassment. He had even been ordered out of his own vineyard by a UFWOC volunteer. His time in the fields was what made his grapes so sweet, said Larson. “It is as if the union were at war with me. This kind of action has been unreasonable, capricious, and hostile,”15 he wrote to Chavez, appealing for help. “The worker, the union and management are like a troika . . . in the final sense, we all 3 must live off the vine.”

  Lionel Steinberg was among the union’s biggest supporters, and his large ranch attracted some of the union’s strongest worker-leaders. Because he had signed first, his wages went up to $1.90 an hour while his competitors were paying only $1.75. He, too, encountered endless frustration dealing with the local union office. “There is not one grower that I know who would have a good word to say for the Coachella Valley UFWOC organization,” Steinberg wrote to Chavez. He copied the letter to Mahony, adding: “While Cesar is busy elsewhere in the nation, he has several on-the-ground organizers who are destroying all the good work16 that we all did together.”

  Howard Marguleas, head of the large Tenneco ranch, had been an early supporter of the union. “I’ve never bee
n so disgusted,”17 Marguleas said about the union’s operation. Families returned to Coachella for the grape season and had to pay eight months’ back dues, more than $100 per family, before they could start work. His company policy was that no one worked in the fields over age sixty-five; the union grieved the rule and he had to hire Filipinos in their eighties, despite medical exams that suggested the work could be dangerous for their health. He put in an order for eighty people, and only fourteen showed up.

  The final straw came in the fall of 1972. Contracts gave the union the unilateral right to decide who was a member in good standing. Only members could work on union ranches. If the union required members to skip work to attend a Sacramento rally or a Salinas picket line, anyone who refused lost union seniority and faced fines and even expulsion. Negotiations with the new owners of the Schenley ranch, site of the union’s first contract, had broken down. The union called a strike at what was now called the White River Ranch and ordered workers under contract at other vineyards to take time off from work and to join the strike lines at White River. Hollis Roberts discovered one morning that he had no crews18 because 657 of his workers had been ordered to picket at White River. The work stoppage cost Roberts $200,000 a day. Marguleas faced a similar situation, a walkout that shut down his Ducor Ranch with no warning.

  Chavez stubbornly tuned out the increasing chorus of complaints. Once he took a position, he rarely if ever backed down.

  Word of problems trickled down to the boycott staff in California. In anticipation of a conference at La Paz, the San Francisco boycott office staff sent Chavez a letter that enumerated complaints they had heard and asked him to address each one. Chavez responded by opening the conference with a withering, personal attack on the principal author of the letter, a passionate twenty-six-year-old volunteer named Kit Bricca.

  Bricca had been teaching third grade to Mexican American kids in East Los Angeles in the late 1960s and watching their older brothers come home from Vietnam in body bags. In 1969, Bricca went to a Joan Baez concert where Baez’s husband, David Harris, talked about draft resistance. Bricca went home and tore up his draft card. He moved to the Institute for the Study of Non-Violence in the Bay Area, founded by Baez and Harris, and worked with a group of draft resistors to prepare their appeals. One by one, his friends ended up in jail. Bricca volunteered to help on the grape boycott while he waited. His case was never called. He rose within the boycott ranks to run the Bay Area boycott, supervising twenty full-time staff. He had made frequent trips to Delano and was at Forty Acres when the contracts were signed in July 1970. At that moment all things seemed possible; a national union no longer seemed a dream. Farmworkers from around the world came to visit for inspiration. Then the union moved to La Paz, and Bricca began to see problems. He felt the union leaders were losing touch, far from the fields.