Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW: Puerto Rico, Hawai’i, California

Chapter 5. Marked in the Annals of the Labor Movement: The National Farm Labor Union, Organized Labor, and the DiGiorgio Strike

CHAPTER 5 Marked in the Annals of the Labor Movement: The National Farm Labor Union, Organized Labor, and the DiGiorgio Strike A struggle took place that will be marked in the annals of the labor movement. hank hasiWar, national Farm labor Union Unionists had long been attracted to California agriculture because it was home to the largest farmworker population in the nation and offered the greatest potential for members. In the late 1940s there were more than 150,000 full-time agricultural workers in the state, and twice that number during harvest.The numbers underscore Carey McWilliams’s view that it was a “great exception,” an observation still popular among academics and unionists and used to justify the disproportionate attention they have devoted to the state.1 For many years the assumption of California as the exception has been the basis of strategies considering it the key to organizing and the necessary base for agricultural unionism in the United States. I argue that this view is flawed, as it fails to consider the complexity and geographic interconnectedness of agriculture and agricultural labor on a national and international level, or to consider other possibilities such as Puerto Rico and Hawai‘i, where unions made greater inroads with fewer resources. I now turn to the National Farm Labor Union (the Farm Laborers), formerly the Southern Tenant Farmers Union (the Tenant Farmers), and its major organizing campaign in California between 1947 and 1952. Admitted into the AFL in 1946, the union gained unprecedented support from allies in organized labor yet achieved few immediate results. In this chapter I will discuss assessments of the fate of the union and then examine its earlier relations with organized labor, its initial preparations in California, and finally, its longest and most determined strike, conducted against the DiGiorgio Corporation between October 1947 and May 1950. 170 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW The lack of immediate victories, particularly collective bargaining contracts, have shaped scholarly assessments of the Farm Laborers. One view, adopted from hindsight, considered the endeavor hopeless, emphasizing structural factors in the political environment and the workforce. Robert Tomasek, for instance, considered the Farm Laborers “doomed to weakness” because of seasonal employment and poverty, making it virtually impossible for workers to create a stable organization or attract sufficiently powerful and committed allies. J. Craig Jenkins addressed limitations of the union itself, which he argued lacked adequate leadership, failed to mobilize available resources, and adopted flawed strategies beginning with DiGiorgio, which involved “an orthodox industrial union approach.” Dick Meister and Anne Loftis focused on its weak position politically despite greater support from organized labor and other allies than any predecessors. Adherents of this interpretation emphasized that the union was unable to mobilize resources to support strikers, which forced many dedicated members to depart, making it easier for growers to hire nonunion replacements. They add that Farm Laborers’ leaders in California were outsiders unable to sustain themselves when aid from labor and other allies dwindled.Their conclusion is consistent with Tomasek ’s—that the union in general and the DiGiorgio strike in particular were “doomed from the start.”2 A contrary interpretation posits that the union fared comparatively well and that its ultimate defeat was not preordained. Ken Blum and Richard Boyden argue that the Farm Laborers’ leadership was competent; that the union gained substantial support from urban liberal groups, the church, and organized labor, from which it cultivated widespread favorable publicity; and that its DiGiorgio boycott was better organized than the first NFWA effort that contributed to the 1966 Schenley contract. Historian Donald Grubbs contends that the union was well prepared and innovative but that DiGiorgio and the Associated Farmers were more experienced and able to devise a strategy to “lead corporation farming in general to as smashing a triumph as possible over organized labor.” Grubbs noted that many union tactics were later successful for the UFW, including the use of loudspeakers to lure nonstriking workers from the fields, soup kitchens, and car caravans. Both were committed to hiring halls and nonviolence; they gained allies from within the labor movement, churches, and urban liberal groups; and cultivated favorable publicity in the media. Both engaged in educational and informational activities to obtain resources, support for boycotts, and publicity; and both conducted Marked in the Annals of the Labor Movement 171 voter registration drives and campaigned for candidates to support union agendas. Grubbs concludes that...