Word: ufw
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...public support and sympathy for the United Farm Workers, AFL-CIO has been generated by deliberate misrepresentations by union leaders regarding (1) the wages of farm laborers; (2) their living and working conditions; (3) the economic position of their employers and the extent of farm labor support for the UFW. Although there have been a number of very strong responses to it already, Mr. Ferrara's argument is so faulty in its use of data and so misleading in its inferences that we felt we should add our voices and some further material to the criticism...
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Mr. Ferrara's article is its implication that the typical farmworker is a satisfied, relatively well-off citizen who has little need of or desire for a union such as the UFW. It is hard to square this image with even a minimal knowledge of the realities of farmworker life. Our own very different experiences (one of us spent many years in a community regularly employing migrant labor and the other worked for two years as a legal services attorney among farmworkers in Delano, California) only confirm what has been said and observed...
...Ferrara would have all of us who have responded to appeals from the UFW for aid and support believe that we are the victims of a concerted and quite massive misrepresentation. No fair and reasonable assessment of the relevant date could support such a conclusion...
...permanent residences Mr. Ferrara makes so much of, the Senate Subcommittee on Migratory Labor found in 1969 that 42 per cent of all farm housing was substandard, or three times higher than all other housing (including urban slums). The issue of concern in the UFW's requests for support, of course, is not home ownership or "migrancy" but the real circumstances of farmworker life...
...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...