Let The Workers Choose

IT DOESN'T TAKE a mountain of statistics to decide whether or not to support the UFW boycott against grapes, lettuce, Gallo wine, and Harvard Provision. All it takes is a little reason.

The goal is to help farmworkers. They should have the right to choose the UFW, the Teamsters, or neither, if they wish. They know the working and living conditions of farmworkers better than anyone else. They know what the UFW and Teamsters have to offer, many have worked under both unions. They know best what conditions were like before the unions.

But the boycott doesn't give them a choice, it chooses for them. Those who support the boycott will be choosing the UFW and forcing farmworkers into that union. Support for the boycott means that growers will be unable to sell their crops and be forced to sign with the UFW, whether the workers like it or not. We don't need to know of the massive evidence that Chavez and the UFW has hurt the workers. All we need to know is that workers should have their free choice. But if we support the boycott, we will be making the choice, even though we are three thousand miles away from the issue and most of us have only second hand reports of the actual conditions.

THE ONLY THING that will give the workers the choice is officially supervised secret ballot elections. These have never been held for the farmworkers. We don't need to know of the evidence that Chavez has consistently prevented these elections. All we need to know is that, in the words of The New York Times, "the choice on which union, if any, ought to represent pickers of grapes and lettuce and is not for the Times to make, or Mr. Meany, or for housewives in supermarkets from New York to San Francisco. That choice should belong to those who work in the fields and it should be made in an atmosphere free of physical or economic coercion."

Therefore, there should be an end to the boycotts and there should be federally supervised secret ballot elections in the grape and lettuce fields of California and Arizona. The workers should be free to make the choice.