THE WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER WORKER

GRAPE LEADER CHAVEZ
HERO TO HIS MEMBERS

By Vancouver Alderman
KIN
The name of Caesar Chavez,
the 42-year old, Mexican-
American leader of the United

modern U.S. west. The late
Senator Robert Kennedy,
visiting him while he was on
a 25-day protest fast in 1968,
called him “one of the heroic
figures of our time”.

Caesar Chavez has been or-
ganizing farm workers for 20
years. He started work in the
big plantation fields of Cali-
fornia growers at the age of
‘10. His family, like other mi-
grant workers lived in tents,
hhovels_ and trailers, and
knew the meaning of hunger.
Chavez received only a Grade
7 education and had to go to
30 different schools to get
that.

13 Agreements

The union Chavez leads has
won agreements with 13 big
wine grape growers. But the
powerful $140 million grape
growing industry refuses to
talk to, bargain with or sign
any agreement with the union.

The kind of conditions
under which these ‘migratory
grape workers live were out-
lawed in most other U.S. in-
dustries over half a century
ago. Their work is hard, most
of it done in a stooping pos-
ture. The temperatures reach
115 degrees in the fields. The
men, women and children
working there suffer the hu-
miliation of no toilets or mo-
bile sanitation units.

Sickness Cause

The most frequent cause of
sickness among these farm
workers is from pesticides —
DDT and Parathion. They
spray it, breathe it, and get
it on their skins. The average
age of death for a grape work-
er is 49 years, compared to an
average age of 70 for all
Americans.

The grape pickers have
now been on strike against
table grape growers for over
four years. Backed by public
opinion and prominent public
figures from all walks of life,
but faced with harassment
and suppresion by the re-
actionary right wing govern-
ment of Governor Ronald
Reagan of California, the

“I honestly never expected to make it here, but I think what may
have tipped the balance was my boycotting California grapes.”

grape workers have now cal-
led for an international boy-
cott against California grapes
and the big chain stores that
handle them. Safeway, with
two big growers on its board
of directors, is one of the
stores still handling scab
grapes.

Four Room House

Today Caesar Chavez, his.

wife and family of eight child-
ren, live in a modest four

room house in Delaine, Cali-

fornia. Refusing to accept any-
thing more than his fellow
strikers, his family lives on
$5 a week spending money,
gets food from the strike
kitchen, and has its rent and
utilities paid.

Chavez is a firm advocate
of non-violence. But he ad-
mits it’s not easy in a violent
society. “What’s difficult”, he
told LOOK magazine recently,
“is to be non-violent in the
cause, in the battle for social
justice; knowing what vio-

lence can be done to our-

selves, knowing — and this is
even more difficult — what
violence can be done to our
family and brothers, and our
cause”.
Civil Movement

Caesar Chavez is to Mex-
ican-American farm workers
what Martin Luther King
was to the black people of
the United States. What he
leads is more than a union,
it is a civil rights movement
too.

9

BRITISH SHOP STEWARDS
LEARN BY TELEVISION

A television series specially
designed to help union shop
stewards is to be screened by
the British Broadcasting Cor-
poration in co-operation with
the Trades Union Congress.

NOTICE

New telephone numbers
have. been issued to Local
1-367 IWA, Haney. The Local
Union has recently moved
into its new building which
has been under construction
for the past six months.

The new telephone num-
bers are 463-8804 and 463-
8805.

The new address is 22558

It will consist of 10 half-
hour programs beginning in
the winter.

Vic Feather, Acting Gen-
eral Secretary of the TUC, has
described it as “a revolution-
ary development, probably the
first of its kind in the world.”

The series will be called
“Representing the Union,”
and it will be subtitled “Pro-
ductivity Bargaining for Shop
Stewards.”

It will not be a solemn lec-
turer holding forth. The cam-
eras will move out of the stu-
dio to show stewards negotiat-
ing in a plant where produc-
tivity bargaining is actually
under way.

Other subjects covered will
include communications, cost-
ing techniques, job evaluation
schemes for assessing wage
rates, work study, payment by
results, etc.

of Local 1-367 IWA
Haney extend to their

members Best Wishes

for a Merry Christmas

and a Happy and

Prosperous New Year

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