A dissident’s
view of the rise and the fall of the United Farm Workers union.
By Duane Campbell
Frank Bardacke’s Trampling Out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and
the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers. (2011, Verso). is the view of a
well- informed observer who worked in the lettuce fields near
Salinas for six seasons, then
spent another 25 years teaching English to farm workers in the Watsonville, Cal. area. His views on the growth and decline of the United Farm
Workers union – some of which I do not share– offer important
points of history and reflection
for unionists today, particularly those working with the Occupy Wall
Street movement.
Trampling Out the Vintage, provides several insights
not previously developed in well informed books on the UFW including important
differences between grape workers and workers in row crops such as lettuce; the length of time
workers were in the UFW, the more
settled family nature of grape workers, the strength of each type of ranch committees, the leadership of ranch crews ( and thus the potential differences in
creating democratic accountability), and the differing histories of worker
militancy in different crops. The author correctly argues that each of these led to
somewhat different organizing environment in building the union. He also details problems of
administrative mismanagement in the hiring halls in the grape areas and
alleged mismanagement of organizing
within the union sponsored health care insurance and clinic systems .
Based upon his own experiences and
the histories of workers in
the Salinas valley, Bardacke makes
the case that farm workers- not
Cesar Chavez – created the union.
They built their union on a long history of previous collective work
stoppages and strikes. The union
was created on the ground in Delano, Salinas, Watsonville, and surrounding towns- not in the union
headquarters of La Paz. The author reveals his strong viewpoint
in the title apparently
referring to Chavez “Trampling out
the Vintage” where a union had
been created.
In
1962 Cesar Chavez made the decision to organize the settled mostly
Mexican American workforce in and around Delano - a grape growing region
in California’s Central Valley. Based upon his prior work with Community
Services Organization (CSO) [U1] and
his training by Fred Ross in the Saul Alinksy tradition, Chavez decided to organize entire families
into an association, not just the workers into a union. This required, for example,
organizing women as family members and as workers. Most of
the working families had settled in the area; they had roots, they stayed year- around rather than
migrating from place to place.
Chavez saw this population as a base for
building a permanent organization. The decision to focus on Delano and its semi-permanent
grape workers was a choice to not
focusing on recently arrived Mexican workers – those whom Bardacke worked among
in the Salinas valley. Bardacke
criticizes the decision by Chavez
and Dolores Huerta to organize the
more family-established Mexican Americans rather than the more migrant Mexican
workers in the vegetable and row crops.
Several of Bakrdacke’s central arguments are well established. Labor writer Steve
Early, for one, reviewing Randy
Shaw’s book, Beyond the Fields:
Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st.
Century, writes:
Chávez
was not accountable to anyone within the UFW. Rank-and-file critics of his charismatic leadership were
purged, then black-listed, and driven from the fields in truly disgraceful
fashion.
Over
time, Chávez further stifled "creative internal deliberation" by
replacing "experienced UFW leaders with a new, younger cadre, for whom
loyalty was the essential qualification,” Shaw reports. The result was a
dysfunctional personality cult.” (Steve Early, http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/a-union-of-their-dreams-becomes-a-nightmarehas-ufw-history-been-replayed-in-seiu/)
Part of the problem in responding to Trampling Out the
Vintage, is that supporters of
the Farmworkers Movement have spent so much time and energy defending the UFW
and its members from growers, from capitalists, and from politicians.
Recall that the UFW’s major growth occurred while Ronald Reagan was
governor of California. In
this troubling times it was difficult to step back and examine internal union
development. Bardacke describes important union issues of the UFW failing to develop worker control over
their own union, the lack of democratic leadership, and the failure to develop
new worker leadership. He does not
deal with the highly contentious and controversial relevant issue of how the
Teamsters maintained control of the racially stratified and anti democratic
unions of mostly Mexican American workers in the canneries and packing sheds at
the same time.
Berdacke does provide details of authoritarian control of the union and the executive board,
explaining them as a result of
individual psychological manifestations of Cesar Chavez’ power. For evidence of this abuse and failure Bardacke , like Miriam Pawell in A Union of Their Dreams, uses
the board’s own recorded meeting minutes.
Bardacke claims of authoritarian
control are supported by other sources.
Marshall Ganz in his excellent book, Why David Sometimes Wins;
Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement,
(2009) says, “Between 1977 and 1981, Chavez undid the UFW’s strategic
capacity. The changes irrevocably
altered the character of the UFW leadership. Instead of a diverse team with
both strong and weak ties to multiple constituencies, it became a narrow circle
of people with strong ties, often Chavez family members or dependents.” ( p.247.)
We can agree that a consolidation
of power occurred and that it led to a weakening of the union and harm to its
members. We need not agree to the
psychological interpretation Bardacke gives for why this consolidation was
successful. It’s here I think Bardacke’s
case is weak.
The author tells the story of centralizing recognition and power in the person of Cesar Chavez
. Like all authors, Bardacke selects what to tell to
develop his narrative. His selections in deciding what to report about in 1962 lead to his conclusions
about what happened in 1984. If
you are going to create a historical record to argue your viewpoint, you need
to present your evidence in the context of the historical period
In most cases Bardacke does
this. At others, times, however, he argues for what could have been rather than
what actually existed. For
example, he tells the story of
Henry Anderson’s
focus in the 1962 on
building local leadership and union locals. He uses this to claim that centralized power got out of hand
in the nascent farm worker movement. That is he is telling the story backward after
arriving at his conclusions. There
is nothing wrong with reasoning from history, but it does make the issue of union democracy or lack
of democracy seem more determined that it necessarily was.
The author could have told other stories of other events to
emphasize a different conclusion.
For example the author
makes the case that Chavez and Huerta, among others, had a strong critique of the method other unions used, such as focusing only on the worker and
not on the family, or of Mexican
American workers always led by
Anglo leaders, etc. That is
an alternative and valid perspective on worker participation that is not
developed in Trampling Out the Vintage.
Among the more contested issues
raised by Barnacke is his view of the UFW’s relationships with undocumented
workers in 1975 period, the so called “Wet Line”. Bardacke makes the case that the UFW
used violence and terror against “Wet Backs.” This is the same argument being made today by various militia groups , Tea Party advocates
and posted on Wikipedia .
In truth we don’t know what
actually happened in the dessert near Yuma, Arizona in 1975. Was there violence? How much violence? Who was hurt? Barnacke takes one side, and the official UFW histories take
the other, saying the union was
stopping strike breakers who happened to be undocumented.
Having worked up close with
the issue of immigration for decades I have a different
view. The one memo cited by Barnacke as evidence, a confidential one, is not
definitive proof that violence was
union policy. ( P. 492) Note, the other memo on the same page takes the opposite position. We can agree that Chavez made
some high handed, perhaps opportunistic
mistakes, but where Bardacke cites the worst case reports of violence,
knifings, even murder in Arizona, he admits these charges could not be
independently verified.
Rather than take Bardacke’s view on
the role of the Wet Line, I prefer Bert Corona’s. Bert was a leading voice on immigration issues and organized undocumented
workers in the organization Hemandad
Mexicana. He was also a friend of
mine, and we worked together on immigration issues. Although critical of the UFW policy, Bert never took the highly destructive view that
Bardack promotes. There were
disputes over issues, and errors were
made but remember the context, which Bert for one did. The UFW was losing the strike as strikers were
replaced by with undocumented
workers crossing a border and a picket line to work in struck fields. These
undocumented workers, who knew little or nothing about the UFW or the long,
violent, bitter and costly strike
they were breaking, were nonetheless breaking a strike on a movement for
justice and equality.
Ultimately in 1975 the UFW convention took a formal position to organize the undocumented and to allow
them to vote in elections as a part of the California Agricultural Relations
Act. That is the official UFW
position on the undocumented.
Bardacke uses the records
of who won union
representation elections
and where to argue that the pro undocumented position
was the better position, and that strike breakers should have been reasoned
with and treated with respect .
UFW lost elections to
Teamsters in the grape fields of
Delano but split the vote
in Salinas. Bardacke argues that
UFW won elections in the Salinas Valley because they had supported successful strikes in
Salinas, had not imposed troublesome
hiring halls, and had not campaigned against undocumented workers.
In addition to pages of fascinating
local histories on various campaigns and strikes, Trampling Out the Vintage makes a major contribution in arguing that the
issues that defeated the UFW in elections and in the fields
included the antidemocratic structures of the UFW created and honed by Cesar Chavez himself, along with no established locals and
the divisions that grew up between
the staff, veteran union members and new workers.
In the midst of several life and death struggles over
power against corporate agriculture and the political power of the state, the
UFW executive committee did not develop democratic union structures . They
often responded to conspiracies with conspiracies weakening the union and
preventing it from organizing.
The author
also spends a great deal of time on the purges of UFW activists,
organizers, and volunteers in 1977
-1981 period. While often presented as anticommunist decisions by Chavez, many of the dismissals were for lack of loyalty to Chavez
and his decisions as the final arbiter of all issues in the union. Some of the “purges” were based upon left politics, and some
of the dismissals were based upon other differences, including differing views
of the best direction for the union.
There were dismissals and
staff leavings for a variety of
reasons. Some of the
most significant dismissals were not about left nor right, but were about
issues of both policy differences and personal loyalties.
In
my view Bardacke underanalyzes the nature of the racial state and the interaction of racial and economic
oppression in the fields of California and in the U.S. .While he makes some brief references to a role of Chicano or Mexican nationalism within
the UFW, these are not analyzed in
depth. Specific incidents of
police and political repression are treated as abuses of power rather than a racially constructed system of
oppression. After all, the
previous attempts to organize farm workers were broken with violence along
racial lines.
The
role of racism, and the individual reactions to systemic structural racial oppression are complex
and vary in part based upon the
differences in experiences of the participants. As the Chicano movement argued at its core- the experiences of U.S. born and reared Mexican Americans and Chicanos were
different than the experiences and the perceptions of racism of Mexican
immigrants, both documented and undocumented. There are a diversity of racisms and a diversity in the
manner in which workers
learn to respond to oppression. Chicanos and Mexican Americans grew up,
were educated, and worked in an internal colony. Their schools, their unions, and their political experiences
were structured along racial
lines. They learned
colonized structures. Bardacke recognizes this structural oppression
in the lives of several UFW leaders including specific descriptions of the
early lives of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta , though he does not sufficiently
acknowledge the struggle of the UFW and the Chicano
Movement in breaking this colonial legacy.
Mexican
migrants had a difficult life under an oppressive one-party state at home, but usually did not suffer
this internalized colonialism.
Bardacke reports on these differences in his descriptions of the early lives of rank and file leaders Mario Bustamante, Hermilo Mojica, Marcos Munoz and others.
Their struggle in the fields
was initially primarily a workers struggle for economic justice.
As an example of the importance of
this issue, Bardacke reports on the sharp differences in views those who
thought that the struggles in Salinas could be won by strikes and work
stoppages (paros) and the Chavez, Huerta, Executive Board position to depend
more upon building a boycott.
These differences led to sharp divisions in the union. The two groups had learned different
lessons from their different experiences in the fields. The Chavez, Huerta group insisted
upon the strength of the boycott.
That is what their experiences had taught them. The Mario Bustamante, Mojica, side, and
author Bardacke, wanted to push for extensive strikes and work stoppages,
perhaps a general strike, including preventing strikebreakers from harvesting
enough crops. This direct
workplace action approach is what their experience had taught them. The two groups of union activists had
learned different lessons from their different experiences of confronting
corporate –grower and racist power.
Marshall Ganz in
Why David Sometimes Wins,
does a better job than does Bardacke in describing some of the racial
fault lines of farm worker organizing. Ganz was director of organizing
for the UFW in Salinas and a long time member of the UFW executive board. He notes, the unions were organized along ethnic lines- as were
the growers and the political power of
dominant Anglo political
forces. ( Ganz P.161) Since the
organizations were structured along racial and ethnic lines, it
is peculiar then to have Bardacke
describe conflicts between the UFW
and its opponents as if they
were primarily economic in nature. Barnacke discusses the volatile
issues of racism as
primarily about Chavez’s
liberal supporters – by which he means largely white or Anglo supporters.
As the author chronicles, Chavez
knew well some of the failings of
unions in the 1960’s, including the problems of a growing internal
bureaucracy, but the UFW was not able to create a viable democratic alternative. Chavez’ own
history and personality structure, and his manipulation and dismissal of
activists occurred in part because
the executive board was unable to free itself from the dynamics of a group
under constant siege.
Marshall Ganz also argues that
Chavez deconstructed the organizational strength of the UFW in the 1979 -1981
period in an effort to keep personal control of the union. (Ganz, p. 247 ) Today the UFW has about
5,000 members and few contracts.
The lack of unions in the fields and the declining strengths of unions nationwide
indicate that we do not yet know how to build a progressive union movement. These problems are overwhelming-
even more so when added to the
problems of trying to build a union for poor people in a racialized state such
as rural California in the 1970’s-
1990’s.
The UFW was overwhelmed by the negative forces against it,
including capitalists, growers, racist cops and politicians, liberal Democrats,
union bureaucrats and more.
Union democracy did
not grow and antidemocratic forces flourished. The UFW
leadership failed to build a competent administrative structure to deal
with union contracts, and failed to expand the organizing structure and
union culture rapidly enough to
bring in the thousands of new farm worker
members to create an
active, democratic union life.
The failure to gain strength is not
surprising. Compare the period
of decline of 1977-1986 in the UFW
to the complex battles of the
Reuther Brothers to gain control and to keep control of the United Auto Workers, including the UAW’s
relationship with the AFL-CIO . (1949- 1970). The UAW went from 1.5 million members in 1979 to 390,000 in
2010, and the United Steelworkers and other unions suffered similar declines. Is it any wonder that the
smaller, less established, less well funded UFW suffered dramatic declines from racial oppression and the brutal assault on the union in the fields of Texas, Arizona and California?
A shorthand for this debate is: how do working people combine
the strengths of civil rights movements with the institutionalization of
unions? How do organizing
social movements differ from organizing in a union? What can organizers in each learn from one another ?
Did the UFW decline? Yes. Did farm workers lose the substantial gains in wages and
working conditions they had won in the 1970’s? Absolutely. How do unions build
a movement when undocumented workers can replace strikers ? This issue has continued to divide and
defeat unions in the U.S.
We know that social movements
emerge, are organized, grow and then are institutionalized – or they decline. Few
unions have been able to create democratic internal culture. Few social movements have been able to maintain
their momentum for more than a decade and they leave behind little of
institutional power except small
advocacy groups. Where are
the examples of unions building a democratic process which fights for their
jobs? Certainly not the
rival Teamsters union in the canneries and packing houses of California.
How do we build an activist,
democratic union with democratic leadership and locals ? How do we build a union that
contributes to the liberation of a people? How do we build a union that educates its members on the
politics of their own struggle and develops and promotes its members to become its future leaders ?
Trampling out the Vintage
gives one view of how the UFW effort failed, but we have yet to learn
how to create a powerful democratic organizational vehicle. Bardacke, and other left critics of the
UFW experience argue that the destruction of the UFW was a result of the
personal control of Chavez and his allies and their failure to build a
democratic union. Well,
Cesar Chavez has now been dead for over 17 years. Why has no vital, democratic union grown up in the fields to
continue the effort to build a union for some of the most exploited workers in
the U.S.?
There are numerous other important
issues raised in this history including the role of Catholicism and Catholic
symbols, the importance of non violence, the problems of working with Jerry Brown and the Democratic
Party, including Bardacke’s sub title for the book, Cesar Chavez and the Two
Souls of the United Farm Workers. These issues are beyond the scope of this review.
I recommend the book for serious students of the Farmworker Movement
who wish to learn of the diverse perspectives of the struggles in the
fields. I do not recommend
it as a sole or primary source on UFW history or the history of Cesar
Chavez. Rather it should be
read in conjunction with other
sources on the UFW including Marshal Ganz’s Why David Sometimes Wins:
Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement,
Randy Shaw’s Beyond the Fields; Cesar Chavez, the
UFW, and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st. Century and the
extensive sources available on the Farmworker Movement Documentation Project http://www.farmworkermovement.us/
1. Duane Campbell,
“Bert Corona, Labor Radical.” Socialist Review. 1989, p. 51. , See also. Randy Shaw, Beyond the Fields; Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and
the Struggle for Justice in the 21st. Century, p. 196.
Duane Campbell , professor emeritus
of Bilingual/Multicultural Education at California State University-Sacramento, worked with the UFW as a volunteer from
1972-1976. He then collaborated with Bert Corona on immigrants-rights efforts.
His most recent book is Choosing
Democracy: a practical guide to multicultural education. (2010) He is currently chair of Sacramento Democratic
Socialists of America and chair of the Chicano/Mexican American Digital History
Project for the Sacramento region For information on the projects, go HERE
[]
I want to thank Mike Hirsch for
his comments on this review.
This is the 50th
Anniversary of the UFW. http://www.ufw.org/_page.php?menu=news&inc=_page.php?menu=news&inc=/50/anniversary.html
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