Word: workers
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Chavez forces me to join union. This year I make $1400 less than last year. --Giorgio Aglipay, farm worker...
...problems began with the UFW contracts themselves. Chavez contracts required growers and workers to use a hiring hall system. Under the plan, growers could not hire workers. Instead they would notify the UFW of how many workers they needed and when. Meanwhile, anyone who wanted to work would go to the hiring hall where the UFW would pass out assignments. This meant that a worker could only get a job through the union, worker could not get a job through the union, establishing a closed shop. The closed shop is illegal under the Taft-Hartley Act, but the act does...
Furthermore, the contract made it clear that there was to be no limit to Chavez's discretion in assigning jobs. One of the conditions for working is that a worker must be in good standing with the UFW. The term good standing is not explicitly defined. But as a hint the contract reads, "The union shall be the sole judge of the good standing of its members," and also, nothing in the contract "is intended to limit the grounds for determination of good standing...
...farmworkers themselves will tell of their experiences in the UFW if only people will listen. In one California paper, for example, a worker reported "some people go to the hiring hall and pay through the back door and get sometimes 40 assignments while others wait for days. The people in the hiring hall say they only get $5 a week so they say 'you give me a hand and I'll give you an assignment.' You see, they're blackmailing the people." Another worker reported "certain laborers found they had to wait three or four days for an assignment while...
...significant that in the 1930s, when there was a "threat" of farm-worker organization, the Associated Farmers, a growers' outfit, was set up to fight farm labor organization, with funds from all the big corporate names in California...