By George Morris

5 enactment of a Farm Labor Relations law in Cali-
fornia is an historic victory for the state’s agricultural
workers. It provides, after decades of struggle, legal pro-
tection of collective bargaining rights. It may well mark
the opening gun for national legislation along those lines.
But the experience of the 1935 National Labor Relations
Act covering non-farm workers shows that the enactment
of the California law must be viewed as only the first, al-
though very important, step in the struggle and march
towards real collective bargaining for farm workers.

Farm workers in the U.S., as in capitalist countries
generally, are the most abused workers. Since the first
decade of this century, they shed much blood in struggles
for the most elementary human rights. Some of the most
dramatic of those struggles were under the leadership of
the pre-World War I Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW). But their organizations seldom lasted longer than
a harvest. They roamed from one crop to another. They
had an endless annual migratory life — from the Mexican
border to the Canadian, and for some even to Alaska for
the fishing season. A lasting and stable union was almost
impossible, not the least significant reason being lack of
support from the labor movément of that period.

More sustained organization of farm workers began
in the 1930s under Communist leadership. The struggle in
those years was intense. The growers and their supporters
in the rural areas, notorious as a base for anti-unionism,
racism and every other form of reaction, organized vigil-
ante and lynch mobs against militant farm workers. The
reactionaries were helped by the sheriffs, who filled their
jails with strikers.

Three years in California during the height of the
farm workers’ upsurge at that time helped give me an ap-
preciation of the significance of the 1975 victory.

My first job in California during the 1930s, in fact, was
to take charge of a drive for petitions to repeal the state’s
Criminal Syndicalism Law, and for the release of seven
workers jailed under it for leading the 1930 strike of 4,000
Mexican, Filipino and Japanese agricultural workers in
Imperial Valley. Three of the seven had been sentenced
to 42 years each. The state government was openly on the
growers’ side, as were the banks closely related to them.
The state officials, however, were not moved by the 35,000
petitions our delegation, led by the veteran Communist
leader Anita Whitney, brought to Sacramento. More ‘‘CS”’
(Criminal Syndicalism) indictments came later.

The Imperial Valley rebellion was only the first indica-
tion of the upsurge to come. The high point was in 1933.
The Department of Labor listed 37 strikes, almost all Left-
led, of fruit, vegetable and cotton pickers (47,575 strikers
in all), and acknowledged that 29 of them were won. Ac-
cording to the Labor Department, the number of idle days
that year due to strikes came to 669,000.

The official figures were an underestimation because
many farm strikes came in a flash and often ended the
same way because of seasonal pressure. The great cotton
strike of October 1933, for example, is listed as affecting
15,000 strikers. Statistics of the-Cannery & Agricultural
Workers Industrial Union, however, give the figure as
20,000. That four-week strike was probably the biggest and

From the 1930’s....

longest agricultural strike in U.S. history. (The govern-
ment said it resulted in 405,000 idle days. )

As soon as the cotton strike began, the growers drove
the workers out of the shacks in which they were housed
for the harvest. The workers set up vast camping locations
and strike centers. The offer of a sympathetic Corcoran
gas station owner, who had a sizable piece of ground, en-
abled the strike committee to set up a camp of 4,000 strik-
ers, many with their families. This was the largest of the
camps. It was managed like a city, with an administration
and rules, which were respected. The tents were lined up
like streets named after revolutionary leaders. The over-
whelming majority of the strikers were Mexicans, but
there were also Black and white ‘‘Oakies’’ (migrants from
Oklahoma).

The strikers won a 25% raise — from 60 cents a hun-
dredweight to 75 cents. For many in some areas, a hun-
dred pounds was a day’s work.

Some weeks later, I commuted-to Tulare, the center
of the San Joaquin Valley strike, to teach a Communist
Party new members’ class — many joined the party dur-
ing that struggle. When I arrived, only the local residents
were still around; the vast majority of farm workers had
already picked the crop and were off to other crops in
other areas. But there was already a beginning of some

International New!

coast-wide coordination. Cannery union card-holders were
often able to report to union headquarters or at halls ®
Communist or other supporting organizations along the
entire coast.

But everywhere the militant workers went they came
up against the most vicious opposition. The La Folletté
Committee of the Senate that held hearings on anti-labo!
organizations, collected a great deal of material during
its investigation of the union-busting role of Associat
Farmers and other vigilante organizations, showing the
type of hostility the farm workers faced. The Tulare Ad:
vance Register, for example, said in an editorial during
the cotton strike:

‘The ‘strike’ would vanish into thin air overnight i
the outside agitators were rounded up en masse and e&
corted out of the county as they should be. And in the f¥
ture we should guard against allowing them to get a pew
foothold for sowing the red seeds of radicalism among the
otherwise happy and contented people.”

And from the Fresno Bee:

“The people are getting exceedingly weary of the
activities of the professional Communist leaders m0S
from New York who are motivated by no honest desire 0
improve working conditions, but rather propose to featbe’
their own nests while promoting the cause-of social @
chy and red revolution.”’

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“Organization of farm workers began in the 1930's under Communist leadership.”’

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JULY 25, 1975—Page 4