Farmworkers march in California "biggest ever"

by Marilyn Bechtel

This article was reprinted from the April 19, 1997 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

WATSONVILLE, Calif. - The new united, militant labor movement held center stage here Sunday as over 30,000 demonstrators marched under a sea of brilliant red United Farm Workers banners and flags to demand basic union and human rights for area strawberry workers.

The throng, from hundreds of labor, religious and community organizations, jammed the streets from curb to curb, spilling onto sidewalks and sometimes into yards, along the 2.5 mile route.

Leading the way were UFW leaders Arturo Rodriguez and Dolores Huerta, together with Jesse Jackson and AFL-CIO leaders John Sweeney, Richard Trumka and Linda Chavez-Thompson. On hand were top officers of a dozen other unions, the mayor of Sacramento and several members of Congress and the state legislature.

The area's 20,000 strawberry workers, largely Mexican and other Latino immigrants, are fighting for a union contract to end conditions such as 12-hour days spent stooping over the low plants, in fields full of pesticides and lacking clean toilets and drinking water. Workers' average yearly pay of $8,500 has stagnated for a decade while annual strawberry sales now top $600 million.

When workers at individual farms have voted for the UFW, growers have laid them off, plowed crops under and gone out of business. This year, the union ihas launched a campaign to organize the entire industry. In a sentiment echoed by others, UFW secretary-treasurer and co-founder Dolores Huerta called the march "as historic for farm workers as the march on Selma was for civil rights.

"Let's hope the growers hear your message," she added, "so the workers don't have to endure the beatings, the jailings and the deaths of farm workers that we have had to go through in the past."

UFW President Arturo Rodriguez called the demonstration - the biggest in the union's history - "the most stirring revival of that grand coalition that only a generation ago beat down the walls of segregation, ended an unjust war and galvanized Latino activism across the nation."

Rodriguez stressed the need for nationwide labor and community solidarity. "Strawberry workers can choose the UFW in as many elections as they like," he said. But "unless you take a stand and become involved, these conditions will go on and on."

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney promised "the full support of all of our movements to the dream of [UFW founder] Cesar Chavez. To the strawberry workers we pledge the power that flows from the melding of the badges on our breasts - carpenters and coal miners, service employees and teamsters, machinists, grocery workers and auto workers, steelworkers, communications and public workers - 13 million-strong," he said.

Teamster President Ron Carey's very participation was a sign of the new labor movement because decades ago previous Teamster leaders undercut farm workers' organizing efforts. To warm applause, Carey emphasized that Teamsters and farm workers now stand arm-in-arm. "We must learn from past experiences that when we are divided, working people lose and greedy corporations win. We must never let that happen again!"

Jesse Jackson told the crowd, "We fight a mean spirit: an immigration bill, NAFTA for the corporations and barbed wire and walls for the desperate ... a welfare shift without work." Jackson challenged President Clinton to lead a fightback against issues such as California's anti-affirmative action Proposition 209 and anti-immigrant Prop. 187.

Strawberry worker Leonardo Acosta electrified the crowd when he declared that despite being blacklisted by the growers, he and his fellow workers "are not going to bow our heads and submit to this oppression." Calling the demonstration "a giant step toward victory," Acosta called for continued solidarity.

Eleanor Smeal, speaking for the National Organization for Women and the Feminist Majority, declared the ongoing solidarity of the women's movement and pledged to take the growing campaign to get supermarkets to back the workers' rights nationwide.

Marching were veterans of farm worker struggles of past decades, current farmworkers from many crops, and students learning first-hand about today's struggles.

Santa Rosa labor attorney Gilbert Dorame told the World that in 1964 he and his wife had their first date distributing farm worker leaflets in San Francisco. Though she could not attend, he said, he was upholding the family tradition.

Riverside high school student Jennifer Medina, marching with her father and younger brother, said she had been inspired to attend when she wrote a paper on the strawberry workers for her advanced composition class. "What's happening in the fields is very sad," she said. "I can't imagine having to work bent over like that all day!"

Pedro Magana and Luis Andrade, lemon pickers from Blythe, said that after their industry was organized some 18 years ago, wages increased greatly, and they won a totally employer-paid medical plan and other benefits.

Pedro Valencia, a worker at the recently organized Monterey Mushroom plant, echoed the lemon pickers' comments and added, "Now the bosses respect us more. There is somebody to back you up when you have a problem."

Watsonville residents gave the demonstrators the warmest of welcomes, not only marching in large numbers, but waving enthusiastically from sidewalks, porches and windows. Virtually every yard had at least one bright red sign proclaiming, "Con union sevive mejor!" (With the union, we live better!) One household boasted several yard signs, a large window sign and a UFW flag hung in the top branches of a tree.