The Crusades of Cesar Chavez

by Miriam Pawel

  Richard Chavez agreed. The Salinas workers were clear: they wanted to use the strike to negotiate a contract, not launch a boycott. “It’s our problem,” Richard said. “Not the people’s problem. Don’t blame the people for this one . . . We made a mistake.”

  Cesar grew more adamant about ending the strike, taking control, and proving his course of action correct. “I think we should just stop screwing around and double guessing and we should go on the boycott,” he said. “We’re not going to beat them on the strike.” He was convinced growers would not negotiate without a boycott. He pointed to his track record to bolster his case. “My gut feeling27 with me has been really good, most of the times in my life. My gut feeling is the employers don’t want to negotiate a contract.”

  The union’s semiannual convention approached. The board decided to hold a one-day meeting in Salinas on August 12 to show support for the strikers. Chavez proceeded as if the decision to boycott had been made. “On Aug. 13, 1979, hundreds of lettuce strikers will leave California and go to the cities of America to tell the story of their struggle and to seek support for the boycott of Chiquita bananas28 and non-union iceberg lettuce,” he wrote, soliciting ads for the convention booklet.

  The workers proceeded as if the convention would approve a resolution for a general strike against all the vegetable companies. Two marches began the week before the convention, heading toward Salinas from the north and south. They presaged the impending collision.

  Chavez began a twelve-day march from San Francisco south through San Jose, hoping to draw the union’s traditional supporters. On the sixth day, he began to fast. The walk only occasionally attracted more than a dozen marchers, including a handful of boycotters recruited for the exercise. At one point, on the outskirts of San Jose, they all suddenly fell down. A minor earthquake had rattled the ground. The others looked around in bewilderment; Chavez was already up and walking ahead, unfazed.

  The marchers29 neared Decoto, the town where Ross had sent Chavez in 1953 on his first organizing assignment. Chavez turned to Scott Washburn and sent him ahead to drum up a crowd. Chavez did not want to return to the scene of his first solo triumph and walk through empty streets with a half dozen people. Washburn turned out a good crowd, and Chavez spoke from the roof of a car, reminiscing about his first house meeting campaign more than twenty-five years earlier.

  The second march began in San Ardo, at the southern end of the Salinas Valley. Dozens, then hundreds of workers marched through the rich agricultural lands. As they passed fields, many workers walked out spontaneously and joined the march. “Esta huelga está ganada” (this strike is won), chanted Cleofas Guzman, a lechuguero from Sun Harvest who helped lead the march. The crowd swelled to thousands as they neared Salinas.

  On August 11, the marchers joined forces, ten thousand strong, and rallied outside Sherwood Elementary School, next door to the UFW office. Chavez entered the rally with Gov. Jerry Brown, now a national celebrity whose recent African safari with girlfriend Linda Ronstadt had landed the couple on the cover of Newsweek and People magazines. Speeches by labor leaders and political supporters ran so long that the governor missed his flight. He stayed to cheer on the strikers: “Viva la raza. Viva Cesar Chavez. Go out and win. The victory is yours.”

  Hours later, Chavez briefed the executive board, in preparation for a meeting with leaders of the strike. He intended to explain to workers that the union had run out of money and must switch to a boycott. He would ask the strike leaders to recruit members to send on the boycott. Rarely had he so misjudged his audience.

  In high spirits from the rally, the strike captains and members of the negotiating committee filed into the room and stood around the seated board members. Chavez updated them on negotiations with Meyer Tomatoes, which appeared close to agreement. His first surprise came when a worker asked who would sign off on the deal if members of the negotiating committee were all busy at the convention. Ganz explained the committee had agreed to review the first contracts, which would set precedents. Chavez made clear he felt the decision was his prerogative.

  Warning that the discussion they were about to have should be kept confidential, Chavez launched into his pitch: “The union is broke,”30 he told the two dozen workers. “We’ve spent $2.8 million. We’ve spent all our money on this strike. If we extend the strike and we don’t win soon, then we have a big problem for the union. It’s going to be hard. No, actually, it’s impossible.” They must go on the boycott, he said.

  One by one, respectfully, workers disagreed. They told Chavez their colleagues expected a general strike. They repeated what Chavez had always said he wanted to hear: strikers were willing to sacrifice to win strong contracts for all workers, not just themselves, and they were committed to continue sacrificing for as long as it took. “We have to make a decision we will have to live with forever,” said Chava Bustamante, who took the lead in the discussion.

  “We’ve always gone to the boycott with the strikes we have lost,” Chavez said. “It takes more time but it is easier to win . . . it is a sure win.” The Gallo boycott had taken years, Bustamante pointed out. Boycotts cost money too, the workers said. They did not wish to give up jobs and travel across the country. With emotion, the strike leaders told Chavez that hundreds of workers were counting on them—and they believed the union could win.

  “A general strike is for everyone, not just you,” Chavez said. He could not in good conscience commit the resources of the union, he said. Then put the question to a vote at the convention, the workers urged.

  Chavez fell back on delaying tactics. He was tired. The decision was too important to make in haste. At the convention the next day, he said, delegates would endorse a three-pronged strategy—strike, boycott, and legal action. They would resume the debate at some future date. When? workers asked. He declined to say. Chava Bustamante’s older brother, Mario, a lechuguero who had been on the strike council since the start, had one parting comment: “If tomorrow there is a resolution from the Executive Board that there is going to be just a boycott, I’m going to oppose it,” Bustamante warned. Chavez assured him that would not be the case.

  The next morning, the Resolutions Committee took up Resolution 10, which proposed that the union commit its full resources to a boycott. Mario Bustamante was outraged. He rewrote the resolution to commit the union to expanding the strike. Hours later, Bustamante read the resolution on the convention floor, greeted by cheers. Chavez found himself chairing a runaway convention, unable to achieve the main goal he had come to Salinas to accomplish.

  Then came a breakthrough that further undermined Chavez’s strategy. The convention was winding down and delegates drifting out when Chavez took the microphone. “Fasten your seatbelts,”31 he said. “There is an important announcement to come.” Jerry Cohen and the negotiating committee from Meyer Tomatoes came conga-dancing down the middle aisle of the Hartnell College gym. They had reached agreement on a contract with a 43 percent raise over three years, increased medical and pension contributions, a cost-of-living increase, and a full-time union representative, paid by the company. “I think this is proof, proof of the kind of force we have when we use it,” Cohen told the cheering workers.

  Chavez never met again with the worker leadership. He called the executive board to a boycott-planning conference at La Paz. Ganz refused to leave Salinas. Workers at several companies that had been in “pre-huelga” mode staged wildcat walkouts. The weather cooperated: a heat wave caused ripe produce to rot in the fields. The Teamsters also helped, signing a contract at Bud Antle with starting wages of $5.00 an hour.

  Two weeks after Chavez had told workers they could not win the strike, the UFW signed a contract with West Coast Farms, a major lettuce grower, with record wages and benefits. The nonunion lettuce growers immediately increased wages to keep the union out. That gave the UFW greater leverage, which Cohen used to finalize a deal with Sun Harvest on August 31, 1979. The front-page story in the Los Angeles Times noted the contract
had been won through the strike, not the boycott. Strike leaders celebrated with drinks and then competed in sprints. Cohen pulled his Achilles tendon. He was so full of both alcohol and pain that he thought he had been shot.

  After six days of work stoppages at the height of the season cost Mann Packing tens of thousands of dollars, Bill Ramsey and Don Nucci decided they could not afford any more losses. When the other vegetable growers walked out of a negotiating session, Nucci turned around and walked back in. The largest broccoli grower signed a contract on September 10, 1979. “There is no question, based on governmental guidelines, that this is an inflationary increase,”32 Ramsey said. “We did the best we could.”

  Three days later, Cohen held court at the Towne House in Salinas, deliberately choosing the conference room where vegetable growers had cut deals with the Teamsters in 1970. “There was no negotiating,” Cohen boasted as he recounted the contract-signing session to the executive board. “It was, ‘There, this is what we want, and this is what we’ll settle for.’ And they settled . . . It was a run. They were lined up in the fucking parking lot like they were going to the dentist.”33

  Cohen had urged Chavez to come to Salinas to sign the contracts. He sent his brother Richard instead. This was not Cesar Chavez’s victory, and though no one would have pointed out that the union had won by defying his counsel, he had no wish to join the celebration.

  Nor did he join another celebration two months later in the Imperial Valley, when the union took over El Hoyo (the Hole). Before the UFW contracts, El Hoyo was the Calexico parking lot along the border where workers waited in the early morning, hoping labor contractors would pick them for jobs. When Ganz had mentioned the possibility of renting the building in El Hoyo for the union office, Chavez had reacted with enthusiasm34 to the symbolic importance. That would signify the union had won, he said, directing Ganz to do whatever he could to procure the property. But when mariachis played and workers marched triumphantly to El Hoyo for the opening party in November 1979, Chavez stayed at La Paz.

  At the executive board meeting a few weeks later, an atypical air of desperation35 permeated Chavez’s reports. The union was broke from the strike. A number of significant vegetable growers still had not signed contracts. The computer system kept breaking down. His financial wizard was so frustrated by the lack of trained staff that she threatened to quit. A year after the negotiating class graduated, the union had only a handful of negotiators. After decades of denouncing scabs, Chavez argued against disciplining strikebreakers too harshly because the punishment might tarnish the union’s image among outside financial supporters and trigger costly legal fights.

  Badly in need of staff, he proposed recruiting alcoholics from cities and relocating them on farms, helping them dry out, and using them for the boycott. “I think that’s the best, easiest and long-term way we should be moving,” he told the board. “Who else is going to work for us? And stay, you know? These guys are forgotten.36 I really think we can get them. I really think we can build a strong base with them.”

  Only Ortiz and Martinez, the newest members, voiced support. Padilla, Ganz, Govea and Richard Chavez were incredulous. “We need to do a boycott. I don’t know where we’re going to get the people to do it,” Chavez said irritably. “A shitload of people are alcoholics in this country. And nobody wants them.” He rejected without explanation the suggestion they recruit help from the fields.

  “Where we could pull people from is our membership, and the children,” Govea said. “There’s a tremendous amount of potential there.”

  The future leadership was not among the alcoholics, Richard scolded his brother: “I can tell you where the leadership is: The leadership is out there packing lettuce and carrots. We should invest some time and try to organize those people.”

  Discordant notes crept even into Chavez’s sanctuary. Several dozen farmworkers finished a ten-week English class at La Paz. The advanced class prepared a slide show for the graduation ceremony. Their presentation concluded with a simple message: The union is not La Paz. The union is not Cesar Chavez. The union is the workers. The graduates gathered in the communal dining hall for a celebratory lunch with friends and family. Huerta rose and demanded to know who had put the workers up to that subversive message. Lunch went uneaten, and the crowd dispersed in confusion. Chavez fired two teachers. He sent a dual message that would grow more insistent in coming months: He did not believe farmworkers would articulate a challenge he viewed as treason; they must have been manipulated by someone else. And the union was Cesar Chavez.

  Chapter 35

  Una Sola Union

  Our most serious and important internal struggle is over—at least for now . . . It is a great relief to me.

  Twenty-one farmworkers sat around a table listening intently as Cesar Chavez explained MBO, management by objective—in Spanish, APO, administración por objetivos. He told them about a soda-bottling plant that had hired management guru Peter Drucker, whose work Chavez greatly admired. Drucker asked the company to define its business. Bottling soda, the executives replied. He corrected them: You produce bottles. Your business is bottling. The company expanded, bottled various drinks, and made millions. We must decide what our business is, Chavez told the farmworkers.

  The twenty men and one woman were ranch committee leaders from Salinas vegetable companies, elected to serve as union representatives under an innovative provision in the new contracts. Employers paid the farmworkers’ salaries while they worked to resolve grievances and ensure smooth contract enforcement. Most of the newly elected representatives had been leaders in the strike. The paid reps, as they became known, were the first generation of farmworkers to earn full-time salaries to work on union business.

  Chavez had lobbied for the new position, saying the union lacked sufficient staff to administer contracts without help among the crews. He brought the ranch leaders to La Paz for a five-day training session in May 1980. “Always ask questions,1 because this is how you learn; you learn more by participating,” he told the paid reps. He tutored them on the history of the ALRA, the difficulties in administering the medical plan, and the importance of defining their mission. After a spirited give-and-take, Chavez guided them to the answer he sought: the union’s mission was to give people quality.

  When Chavez asked how they would explain to fellow workers the importance of delivering a quality product, the farmworkers turned to Cleofas Guzman. Guzman had emerged during the strike as a fearless, shrewd leader, with a keen mind and warm disposition. The lechuguero had easily won election as ranch committee president at Sun Harvest, the largest lettuce company, with 76 percent of the vote2 in a four-way race. If we pack the highest-quality vegetables, Guzman answered Chavez, “we’ll have more work, a better future for our families, better benefits.” The eagle, Guzman said, should symbolize the highest-quality produce. Everyone applauded.

  On the surface, the scene resembled one of Chavez’s long-held dreams: farmworker leaders, studying at La Paz, shaping the policies and future of their union. Their motivation, focus, and spirit invigorated Chavez—and stood in stark contrast to his own staff, increasingly tired, overworked, and directionless. “That week really charged me up,” Chavez told the board members two weeks later. “I was on cloud nine3 because we were doing, I thought, some really effective work.”

  But these were the workers who had politely but firmly refused to give up their strike and go on the boycott. Now they had official titles, responsibilities, and power. Chavez’s love-hate relationship with the vegetable workers shifted into a new phase.

  The paid reps were a far cry from the sons and daughters of movement leaders whom Chavez had groomed at La Paz and tapped for training programs like the negotiations school. Mario Bustamante had worked odd jobs as a child in Mexico City to support his family, then crossed the border at fifteen to find his father, Salvador. Mario became a lechuguero like his father, who was buried in the UFW flag. Six feet tall, outspoken, and impetuous, Bustamante embraced
the union first as a social club and then as a way to change his life. He was thirty-one when he became a paid rep. Sabino Lopez was the same age. He had come to Salinas as a sixteen-year-old with his father, an irrigator, and the teenager became an irrigator too, a steady job that suited his personality. For Lopez, the daily strike council meetings with Ganz became the classroom that Lopez had never attended. Both Bustamante and Lopez looked up to Guzman, a decade older. He lived across the border in Mexicali, like many of the vegetable workers. He was a champion runner, renowned for his speed as well as his strategic thinking. Guzman’s clout was such that he could enforce discipline among workers without losing his popularity.

  “Since this union was founded, it has been the dream of the leadership to build an organization led by farmworkers,”4 Chavez had said at the 1977 UFW convention. Bustamante, Lopez, and Guzman took the union’s founder at his word.

  Ganz had become their mentor during the strike. At the beginning of 1980, he went on loan to Jerry Brown’s short-lived presidential campaign. (“The governor wants Marshall Ganz more than Linda Ronstadt,”5 Chavez told the board, relaying Brown’s request for Ganz’s help.) When he returned, Ganz considered leaving the union, baffled by his growing distance from Chavez. Ganz convinced himself that the chance to work with the paid reps and shape their new jobs was too important. They met each Saturday morning, along with Jose Renteria, a young farmworker who ran the Salinas field office. Ganz coached the paid reps on how to negotiate grievances, enforce discipline, promote quality, and iron out problems.

  As Ganz built the paid reps into a force, his painful estrangement from Chavez widened. Ganz became more convinced the model he had developed in Salinas represented the only viable future for the union. He boasted to Chris Hartmire that if the minister wanted to see a real union, he should visit Salinas. Ganz also grew concerned the UFW needed to win more elections in the vegetable industry. The contracts put union companies at a financial disadvantage, which endangered the members’ jobs. The paid reps could help organize the competition. Union growers would be helpful, too. Ganz wrote Chavez a memo urging an organizing campaign. He ended with a short reference to their increasingly tattered relationship: “The current situation is ridiculous and untenable.6 If you want my resignation—although I believe I can continue to make a valuable contribution to organize the UFW into a real national union and want to do so—just tell me.”