Word: ufw
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July of 1970 marked the first major successful effort of agricultural labor organizing in this country. The UFW culminated a five year campaign that year when it convinced the bulk of California's table grape growers to sign contracts giving the union representation over the tiny percentage of farmworkers who toil in the grape vineyards. The international grape boycott was over. The triumph belonged to the hundreds of thousands of boycott supporters and to the farmworkers, who now had a realization that they did have power over their lives and working conditions...
Until farmworkers have the power to look out for their own rights, they can expect to risk more of the same deadly treatment. The UFW is the means to that power...
...when a number of the UFW grape contracts expired, growers signed with the Teamsters, denying the workers any participation in the choice of union representation. Contracts with the Teamsters brought back the notorious labor contractor system, thus doing away with job security, and elminated pesticide controls, medical benefits, and union democracy. When Gallo ignored its workers' wishes and signed with the Teamsters, the workers went out on strike. Gallo had them replaced by strikebreakers and illegal aliens, but even the strikebreakers went out on strike, along with thousands of other workers from other ranches. They were met with intimidation, mass...
...grapes, lettuce, and Gallo wine began as 600 farmworker families left California for cities like Chicago, New York, and Montreal, to help the boycott organizers tell the story. Two years later the growers were ready to negotiate. Newly-elected Governor Jerry Brown of California brought the growers, Teamsters, and UFW together and hammered out the California Labor Relations Act of 1975, the first piece of collective bargaining legislation for farmworkers in U.S. history. In the first few months, the UFW won 70 per cent of the 200 or so elections held (by law they can only be held...
...month period last year as agri-business lobbyists blocked funding for the new law in the state legislature, and the state agency assigned to enforcing the law has been slow to certify elections and decide unfair labor practice complaints such as growers firing union supporters. As of this month, UFW has won the first eight elections under a rejuvenated law. The Teamsters have stopped participating in elections...