Farah

AFTER 21 MONTHS of bitter denunciation and unbridled hostility on both sides, the Farah Manufacturing Company has finally recognized the rights of its 9000 workers to join one of the country's oldest labor unions, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. Company president Willie Farah once said that he would rather "go bankrupt than unionize." But faced with a National Labor Relations Board judge's condemnation, a growing group of angry stockholders and a determined union willing to continue the boycott indefinitely, Farah had few alternatives to choose from.

All major clothing manufacturers based in the Southwest should follow Farah's lead and give all their laborers-- Chicano, Indian, black and white--the right to unionize freely. This especially applies to those firms that were lucky enough to have escaped the Amalgamated boycott and have prospered, perhaps unfairly, at Farah's expense. Unionization will prevent large companies from moving from one region of the country to another in order to exploit cheap labor in runaway shops.

Here in Cambridge and Boston, conscientious consumers should remember to patronize the stores (The Coop, J. August, Almy's) that voluntarily joined the boycott. They should try to avoid those large downtown and suburban department stores (Filene's, Jordan Marsh, Milton's) that callously refused to support the Chicano laborers and had Amalgamated picketers arrested and harrassed when they publicized the struggle to weekend shoppers.