The Crusades of Cesar Chavez (51 page)

The shift toward a legislative solution drove a change in the boycott, which now needed to pressure growers into accepting a good law rather than signing contracts. The grape and lettuce boycotts had built popular support and served as an ongoing nuisance but never had the same devastating economic impact as the first grape boycott in 1969. Lettuce was a staple, not a luxury item like grapes. Supporters were confused about which brands to boycott. The most promising target was Gallo wine, which had been added to the boycott list on the strength of its well-known name. The E. J. Gallo winery, which had signed with the UFW in 1967, had switched to the Teamsters in 1973.

The Gallo boycott was popular with college students. Though the union had invested few resources, the campaign had proved surprisingly effective, judging from Gallo’s response. The company hired a public relations firm, took out newspaper ads, and paid representatives to stage informational counterpickets wherever the union appeared. Chavez liked the idea of focusing on Gallo for an easy win. “Just do one thing—go after Gallo.
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Nothing else,” he suggested to the board.

In public, Chavez portrayed a different image. When the bishops’ committee came to California for a series of special meetings early in 1975, Chavez discussed the boycott and legislation but also talked at length about Yuma, claiming that three thousand lemon workers were still on strike. He predicted more strikes would occur and that the union would ultimately prevail. “Chavez presented a very forceful and self-confident picture
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of himself and the forces of their union,” concluded Roger Mahony, who had just been appointed auxiliary bishop of Fresno.

Mahony’s career had in an odd way paralleled that of Chavez, and the cleric’s rise was due in no small part to the role he played in the farm labor struggle. Nine years younger than Chavez, Mahony had grown up in North Hollywood and learned his first Spanish shoveling chicken manure with Mexican workers at his father’s poultry-processing plant. As a seminarian in the late 1950s, he accompanied priests who went to say mass in the labor camps around Oxnard. His Spanish became fluent and he gravitated toward ministering to Mexican Americans. He was ordained on May 1, 1962, one week after Chavez moved to Delano, and assigned to the Fresno diocese. He earned a master’s degree in social work, specializing in community organization. By the time the grape strike started in 1965, Mahony was in charge of social welfare programs for the diocese of Fresno. As secretary to the bishops’ committee, Mahony had made himself the most knowledgeable cleric on the issues and became a broker during key disputes.

He chose “To reconcile God’s people” as his episcopal motto, and wrote to Martin Zaninovich that the motto reflected the new bishop’s desire to heal wounds among Catholics in the valley. Mahony knew Zaninovich exemplified those wounds: the grower had angrily pulled his third-grader out of St. Mary’s Catholic School in Delano when the diocese adopted a new catechism that included passages on Cesar Chavez. Mahony invited Zaninovich
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to his ordination and mentioned the new governor’s pledge to support a farmworker bill that would require compromise on all sides.

The Delano growers were more open with the bishops than Chavez had been. They told the committee they thought legislation was inevitable. Grape growers had turned to the Teamsters as a last resort, in hope of fending off a boycott, and were not particularly happy with the result. They hoped for certain provisions in the law and were ready to take their chances to end the years of chaos and strife. Ernest Gallo also told Mahony
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that he wanted a law; the vintner had only 250 year-round workers and another 250 during the season, and was tired of being the poster child for greedy, exploitive growers. The boycott was hurting, too; Gallo’s wine sales in California dropped 6 percent during the first quarter of 1975, while other brands were up 13 percent over the prior year.

On February 24, 1975, a UFW rally in San Francisco kicked off a four-day march to the Gallo headquarters in Modesto. Fred Ross Jr., son of Cesar’s mentor, had been running the San Francisco boycott office and pulled together the march in response to Chavez’s call to focus on Gallo. The event succeeded beyond expectations, in part because the crowd swelled to many thousands, and in part because of Gallo’s response. Underneath the windows of a hotel overlooking Union Square where the marchers assembled, the company hung a banner that read: gallo’s farm workers best paid in u.s . . . marching wrong way, cesar? The UFW should aim its protest at legislators in Sacramento, Gallo argued. The company took out full-page ads urging that farmworkers be placed under the National Labor Relations Act.

After four days and 110 miles, the marchers reached
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Modesto. The crowd grew to about ten thousand and rallied in Graceada Park. “As the song says, we’re going to roll this union on,” Chavez said as he addressed the cheering crowd. “No doubt in our minds and our hearts that we’re going to win . . . Together, we’re going to stop drinking Gallo wines, and together we’re going to win!”

He concluded his speech with a pointed jab: “Brothers and sisters, we have a final message to another person.” He reminded the crowd that candidate Jerry Brown had pledged to support a farm labor law, but Governor Brown had yet to consult with the union. “We want to tell him, ‘Dear Governor, you know, we once went to Sacramento to visit your Daddy.’” Cheers of “Si se puede” greeted Chavez’s reference to the legendary 1966
peregrinación
, when Pat Brown had snubbed the farmworkers and stayed in Palm Springs on Easter. “We want to make Modesto the furthest we go. But we’re not going to let anyone introduce legislation because they think they know what’s best for us!”

Within twenty-four hours, phones began to ring.
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Monday morning, the farm labor bill dominated the agenda at Brown’s weekly meeting with legislative leaders. On Tuesday, Chatfield placed an urgent call to Cohen, saying Brown wanted a complete briefing on farm labor legislation in time for his Friday cabinet meeting. A week later, Chavez and Cohen spent most of Saturday at the governor’s house in Los Angeles, the three of them alone for an hour, joined later by various aides.

“Jerry [Cohen] and I made a plan when we went there,” Chavez told the board
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a week later. “Say very little. Find out where Brown stood. Let him know that legislation wasn’t what we were after. We wanted damn contracts more than anything else. Legislation could screw us.” Chavez said he would support legislation, but only a very strong bill. He ran through the issues that were important—one unit for all workers, quick elections, recognitional strikes. Brown seemed fine with most of them and not overly worried about Teamster support. He thought growers would pose more difficulty.

Brown recognized Chavez was posturing, but the governor also sensed Chavez’s genuine and well-founded fear. “He knew that the legal structure favors the status quo, and farmworkers are not the status quo,”
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Brown said later. “They are marginal participants in the economy.” Around three o’clock in the afternoon, Brown suddenly invited Chavez to take a walk. Cohen was somewhat surprised when Chavez readily agreed; he ordinarily avoided situations where he might find himself trapped. But Chavez had a degree of faith in Brown. “We walked out, and that’s where we made some deals,”
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Chavez recounted to the board a week later.

Brown said he was serious about a law, and Chavez said he was, too, but they needed a law with teeth that protected the workers’ right to decide on the union of their choice, with penalties on employers who interfered or failed to negotiate in good faith. Brown asked Chavez
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if he was sure the UFW could win elections. Chavez said of course. Brown asked a second time. Then they agreed on the outlines of a strategy. Brown would introduce his bill, and the UFW would support a more radical alternative and attack the governor’s measure, trusting him to ultimately negotiate a law that included the union’s bottom lines. Chavez wanted a three-member board; Brown argued for five. Chavez said the law would work only if the people enforcing the rules were sympathetic, aggressive, and hardworking. Brown said he thought that could be arranged. He understood that Chavez needed to create enough pressure so that a law appealed to all parties as preferable to continued chaos in the fields.

The next two months were a whirlwind of statements and counterstatements, late-night meetings, and strategy sessions, a wild ride that showcased Cohen’s legal and negotiating talents. Playing the game he had learned from Chavez, the lawyer gambled for all the marbles. He had nothing to lose. The UFW had mastered a strategy of confidence that bordered on arrogance, which enabled Cohen to act without concern about whom he might insult or offend. He referred to the Assembly Speaker as the kind of leader who made him puke, then shared a drink with the lawmaker the next day. When a UAW lobbyist questioned the UFW’s negotiating strategy, Chavez sent back word
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that “if he doesn’t trust brown people to make their own decisions and make their own strategy he can go fuck himself.”

Brown’s bill, his first as governor, was introduced by Assemblyman Howard Berman and Senator John Dunlop at an April 9 press conference. Brown and Chavez talked twice that day. The governor held a press conference the following day and called friends of the UFW to report that Chavez was close to endorsing the new measure. Chavez unleashed Cohen, who held his own press conference to attack the bill as deceptive and unacceptable.

By then, Mahony was in on the game. He explained the strategy to Cardinal Timothy Manning, president of the California Catholic Conference, before testifying at a committee hearing in favor of the governor’s bill. The cardinal should not be alarmed when the UFW packed the hearing with several thousand farmworkers and loudly denounced the bishops. “That is part of their plan
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and we should not be fazed by it. At some point, attention will turn to the governor’s legislation, and after much public noise, it is expected that the governor’s approach will prevail.”

Brown negotiated among the parties, ending with round-robin talks in his chambers—the UFW in one room, the Teamsters in another, the growers in a third. On May 5, 1975, they had a deal. With all the parties assembled in his office, Brown called Chavez on the speakerphone and asked him if he would support the compromise. Chavez feigned hesitation before he agreed, though the growers were not fooled. The room broke into applause.

The law contained so many provisions favorable to the union that the growers lost track and mistakenly announced in their trade magazine that the boycott had been outlawed. Farmworkers would have the right to support a union without fear of retribution, and employers would face penalties if they violated those rights. Workers would vote in expedited secret-ballot elections and could trigger an election within forty-eight hours if they walked out on strike. The union could still boycott under certain circumstances. Growers who failed to negotiate in good faith faced severe penalties, including back pay to all their workers. No other union in the country had the right to unilaterally determine the good standing of its members.

Growers needed the governor’s help on other issues, such as water, and Brown exerted his political clout to add another twist: the legislature must approve the exact measure he had negotiated, with not a single change, or the deal was off. In a last-minute trade, the UFW agreed to allow the Teamster contracts to remain in effect until elections took place, and in exchange the bill would be passed in special session and go into effect ninety days later, in time for the late summer season. Brown signed the Agricultural Labor Relations Act on June 5, 1975. The law became the shared legacy of the two men who had gone for a short walk in Los Angeles less than three months earlier.

Brown understood the law marked a profound turning point for the UFW, a milestone that risked draining the energy from the movement if the union could not make a successful transition from guerilla warfare. That was the argument he had used with growers:
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that a legal structure worked to their advantage. Some growers supported the law because they believed they could beat the union in elections; others calculated they could outlast Chavez.

Chavez had been well aware of the pitfalls, and now, at his moment of great triumph, he was apprehensive. Congratulations poured in as the outside world hailed the improbable victory: the farmworkers had negotiated the most favorable labor law in the country. For Chavez, the future appeared far more cloudy.

He sighed when Jacques Levy asked if the law would do to the farm worker movement what federal legislation had done to the civil rights movement—rob the struggle of its spirit. “The whole fight’s going to change,”
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Chavez said. “Because once you’re recognized, that’s essentially what the law does, then the essential fight of recognition, which is the one that appeals to the human mind and the heart, more than anything else, is no longer there. Then from that point on, you’re talking about wages, you’re talking about money, you’re talking about benefits, you’re talking about . . . something more diffuse and not as crucial and critical.”

He predicted that growers would sign contracts as long as the union was negotiating with an entire industry, so that no individual was at a competitive disadvantage. He foresaw that growers would improve wages and benefits in order to convince the workers they did not need the union. The great challenge that worried him was whether he could sustain a movement. “The only thing that will keep us going will be if we get into, if we can develop the movement into a real commitment to giving. By that I mean giving to other people who need to struggle, giving them help, but giving them substantial and real help. If we can do that, we can continue to have a movement.”