Word: ufw
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
...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...
Thus, the long-run implications of the current dispute must be weighed even more heavily than immediate wage gains. Many argue that the Teamsters now offer a better deal to the farmworker than the UFW. The Teamsters are rich, well-established and cozy with management, and in the short run they may well offer higher wages and better benefits than the UFW can. But the Teamsters Union already includes in its ranks cannery and packing-shed workers as well as truckers. Adding the field worker to this network would give the Teamsters virtual control of labor from the fields...
...UFW, on the other hand, is a union built by workers and for workers. While the union has apparently sometimes used tactics like the Teamsters'--it has been accused of burning the houses of workers who wouldn't strike, for example--it has made a serious effort to organize American farmworkers into a militant force over the last decade. Even more important, the UFW has come to symbolize a national movement, a movement trying to revive the idea of workers' control over their labor--an idea most American unions long ago abandoned in a single-minded pursuit of higher wages...
...needs to be broken--are the interests of the workers. They are the ones who have borne the brunt of this dispute; they deserve the best from the country which has literally feasted on the fruits of their labor. Unfortunately, in the current dispute, the workers and the UFW have no leverage with the growers except through a boycott of their products. That any boycott of stores carrying Gallo wines hurts not just Gallo but also small store-owners is unfortunate, but until and unless the heads of major corporations are willing to talk seriously with the UFW, a boycott...