Cesar Chavez: Laws Broken In The Name Of Justice

Cesar Chavez was a Mexican-American civil rights activist and labour leader who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) in 1962, which later merged with the Agricultural Workers Organising Committee (AWOC) to become the United Farm Workers (UFW) labour union. Chavez was committed to the non-violent tactics of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and employed boycotts, strikes and litigation to improve working conditions for farm workers.

Chavez's views on undocumented workers and immigration have been described as nuanced. While he opposed strikebreaking, he also pushed a campaign against illegal immigration, which generated violence along the U.S.-Mexico border and caused schisms with many of the UFW's allies.

Cesar Chavez's views on undocumented workers and immigration

Chavez's opposition to undocumented immigration was driven by his belief that undocumented workers were strikebreakers and drove down wages. In the 1970s, he launched the "Illegals Campaign", an effort to raise awareness about illegal immigration and report undocumented workers to federal authorities. He also formed a private Border Patrol, which was led by his cousin Manuel Chavez. This patrol operation was accused of threatening, beating, and robbing Mexican immigrants as they tried to cross the border.

Despite his opposition to undocumented immigration, Chavez supported the rights of undocumented workers and immigration reform. From its inception in 1962, the United Farm Workers (UFW) union, which Chavez co-founded, welcomed all workers, regardless of immigration status. In 1970, Chavez rejected calls to check the immigration status of grape workers. In 1973, the UFW opposed the federal law that made it illegal to hire undocumented workers. Chavez also reaffirmed the UFW's opposition to deporting undocumented immigrants and supported their legalization. In the 1980s, the UFW played a key role in fashioning the amnesty provisions of the federal immigration reform law, which allowed many undocumented farm workers to become legal residents.

Chavez's views on undocumented workers and immigration were shaped by his experiences as a migrant farmworker and his commitment to improving the working conditions and rights of farmworkers. He believed that undocumented workers were being used as strikebreakers and drove down wages, but he also recognized that they were often in a desperate situation and were willing to work for lower pay and worse conditions. While he wanted stricter enforcement of immigration laws, he also supported immigration reform and the rights and protections of undocumented workers.

The National Farm Workers Association

Chavez's interest in farm workers' rights began in 1952, when he met Fred Ross, a community organiser working for the Community Service Organisation (CSO). Ross trained Chavez in grassroots, door-to-door, house meeting tactics, which were crucial to the NFWA's recruiting methods. In 1959, Chavez became the CSO's national director, and in 1962 he left the CSO to co-found the NFWA.

The NFWA was based in Delano, California, and was formed to address the injustices farm workers faced, including long hours, back-breaking labour, corrupt labour contractors, and low wages. The NFWA was also a response to the fact that many labour laws at the time, including the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, did not apply to farm workers.

Chavez and Huerta hoped that a union of farm workers could agitate for higher wages and help with rising rents in migrant camps. By 1965, the NFWA had over 1,000 members, mostly in California. That same year, the NFWA joined several other organisations in a strike against grape growers in Delano, which had been initiated by Filipino workers from the Agricultural Workers Organising Committee (AWOC). The NFWA went on strike in support, and as a result of the commonality in goals and methods, the NFWA and the AWOC formed the United Farm Workers Organising Committee on 22 August 1966. This organisation was accepted into the AFL-CIO in 1972 and changed its name to the United Farm Workers Union.

The NFWA offered a variety of services to its members, including local medical clinics and access to funeral insurance. Union members and their families also belonged to a credit union that only charged one per cent interest on loans. Eventually, the union encompassed thousands of farm workers in multiple Valley counties. Under the black, red, and white flag of an Aztec eagle, they fought for just wages, medical protection, and adequate living conditions.

The Delano grape strike

On September 8, 1965, over 800 Filipino farmworkers went on strike, demanding a raise in both their hourly wages and the piece rate (the pay a worker earned for each box of grapes packed). The strike was led by two veteran organisers, Larry Itliong and Ben Gines.

A week later, the predominantly Mexican National Farmworkers Association (NFWA) joined the cause. Led by Cesar Chavez, the NFWA membership voted overwhelmingly in favour of the strike, and within a few days, NFWA was picketing ten additional vineyards.

Despite this remarkable show of unity by the farmworkers, the region's growers refused to negotiate with the farmworkers on strike. Instead, they hired replacement workers, or "scabs," from elsewhere in California and as far away as Oregon, Texas, and Mexico to complete the fall 1965 harvest.

The NFWA had always been more than a union. Chavez had organised the NFWA around the premise that the farm workers’ struggle was part of a much broader movement for civil rights. The ongoing Black Freedom Struggle provided both inspiration and allies to the farm workers. During the strike, organisers from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), along with student activists from the Bay Area, arrived in Delano to offer support, drawing parallels between the Jim Crow South and rural California in the fight for racial justice.

The boycott campaign proved especially effective. In December 1965, the NFWA called for its first boycott, targeting Schenley Industries, the second-largest grower in Delano. Schenley was a nationally known company, with millions in liquor sales each year, making it an attractive and highly visible target for the farm workers.

The Schenley boycott was just the beginning. Over the next decade, the union would repeatedly make use of the boycott, refining its strategy and approach depending on the crop and the employer. The tactic proved remarkably effective in nationalising the farmworker struggle and, to some extent, neutralising the effects of the financial and political power imbalance that existed between growers and workers in the Central Valley.

In August 1966, the AWOC and the NFWA merged to create the United Farm Workers (UFW) Organising Committee. In July 1970, the strike resulted in a victory for farm workers, largely due to a consumer boycott of non-union grapes, when a collective bargaining agreement was reached with major table grape growers, affecting more than 10,000 farm workers.

The California Agricultural Labour Relations Act

The goal of the Act is to "ensure peace in the agricultural fields by guaranteeing justice for all agricultural workers and stability in labour relations." The Act, part of the California Labor Code, explicitly encourages and protects "the right of agricultural employees to full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, to negotiate the terms and conditions of their employment, and to be free from the interference, restraint, or coercion of employers of labour, or their agents, in the designation of such representatives or in self-organization or in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection."

The Act established rules and authorized regulations similar to those of the National Labor Relations Act, a federal law that formally protected the collective bargaining rights of most American workers except farm and domestic workers. The California Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) administers the Act and has two functions: to conduct, oversee, and certify representation elections, and to investigate unfair labour practice (ULP) charges and pursue remedies. Administrative law judges and agency staff adjudicate most cases, with the five-member Board serving as a final arbiter.

The Act defines agriculture to include farming (which includes cultivation and tillage of soil; dairy production; cultivation, growing, and harvesting of agricultural or horticultural commodities; raising livestock, bees, furbearing animals, or poultry; and/or forestry or lumbering operations), and includes all activities incidental to or in conjunction with agriculture (such as preparation for market, transportation, or storage). Employees are defined in the Act, but the definition excludes anyone engaged in construction, painting, building repair, or land-moving operations unrelated to the preparation of land for cultivation.

The Act establishes a five-member Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB), whose five-year terms are staggered so that one member's term ends on January 1 of each year. The ALRB must issue a written report on its activities to the Governor and Legislature each year, may establish officers or offices and delegate all or part of its authority to such on an as-needed basis, and has extensive investigatory, subpoena, and enforcement powers.

The Act defines unfair labour practices for both employers and labour unions. Section 1154 (d) of the Act bans strikes (including recognition strikes) by workers who have not selected an organization as their labour representative through the procedures outlined by the Act, but protects secondary picketing and publicity only if the labour union is the certified bargaining representative or has not lost an election at the worksite in the past 12 months and only if the publicity or picketing does not induce others to engage in strikes. Section 1154.5 explicitly bans hot cargo agreements. The Act also requires bargaining in good faith.

The Act outlines procedures similar to those of the National Labor Relations Act for electing a representative labour organization. Only secret ballot elections are permitted. The Board has the right to determine the correct bargaining unit, and an election is triggered only when a petition signed by a majority of current workers is presented. There are several bars to holding an election (including the existence of an existing certified labour organization, an election was held and lost within the previous 12 months, and an election was held but no contract executed within the previous 12 months).

To encourage the adoption of collective bargaining agreements, the Act (as amended) provides for the declaration of an impasse, mandatory and binding 30-day mediation and conciliation, review of the mediator's report, and court review of binding mediation. The Act contains a "make-whole" remedy for bad-faith bargaining intended to encourage employers to bargain in good faith. Under this provision, the ALRB can "take affirmative action including...making employees whole, when the Board deems such relief appropriate, for the loss of pay resulting from the employer's refusal to bargain".

The Act's "make-whole" provision has also come under scrutiny. Although the make-whole provision's goal is laudable, it is argued that the Board's decisions have led to litigation that lasts for years and mitigate the impact of any awards.

The United Farm Workers

Throughout the 1970s, Chavez continued leading the union's efforts to win labor contracts for farm workers across the agricultural industry, employing the same nonviolent techniques of strikes and boycotts. In 1972, he went on a second hunger strike to protest an Arizona law banning farm workers from organizing and protesting. Thanks to the UFW’s efforts, California passed the landmark Agricultural Labor Relations Act in 1975, giving all farm workers the right to unionize and negotiate for better wages and working conditions.

In the mid-1980s, Chavez focused the UFW’s efforts on a campaign to highlight the dangers of pesticides for farm workers and their children. In 1988, at the age of 61, he underwent his third hunger strike, which lasted for 36 days. Chavez died in his sleep on April 23, 1993, at the age of 66. The following year, President Bill Clinton awarded him a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award.

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