Strawberry Fields Forever by Randall Lyman

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Thirty years ago the United Farm Workers (www.ufw.org) changed the face of American agriculture with a nationwide grape boycott that significantly improved the lives of California's farm workers. Today the UFW is engaged in a another major campaign to organize the state's 20, 000 strawberry pickers, and it's re-employing the organizing and support-building techniques that made it a major political force in the 1960s. After a difficult 1980s and early 1990s, the UFW is making a comeback under its new president, Arturo Rodriguez, son-in-law of Cesar Chavez. Chavez, the union's co-founder and first president, died in 1993 at the age of 66. Rodriguez has since raised union membership and led the UFW to election victories on previously nonunion ranches growing a variety of crops. The strawberry campaign is following the two-pronged approach employed successfully by Cesar Chavez: organizing workers in the fields while winning public support for them in the cities. In the fields the UFW has registered measurable victories, above all neutrality agreements from many growers that will allow strawberry pickers to vote on union representation in free and fair elections without grower intimidation or threats. Elections are expected some time in 1998. The UFW wants to avoid calling for a boycott on strawberries, but whether it does or not, it will need public support to create a climate where workers can feel safe from grower backlash if they vote to unionize. So far about 5, 000 grocery stores have publicly stated their support for strawberry workers' right to organize, including Safeway, whose relationship with the UFW has been bitter ever since the 1960s grape boycotts. "If it's all in a vacuum, you canât win, " says Eva Royale, manager of the UFWâs San Francisco office. Participation in media events like the Digital Be-In is part of its public awareness efforts. UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta spoke at last year's ninth Be-In, and was so excited about it that the union is returning this year.