by Miriam Pawel
Mahony’s career had in an odd way paralleled that of Chavez, and the cleric’s rise was due in no small part to the role he played in the farm labor struggle. Nine years younger than Chavez, Mahony had grown up in North Hollywood and learned his first Spanish shoveling chicken manure with Mexican workers at his father’s poultry-processing plant. As a seminarian in the late 1950s, he accompanied priests who went to say mass in the labor camps around Oxnard. His Spanish became fluent and he gravitated toward ministering to Mexican Americans. He was ordained on May 1, 1962, one week after Chavez moved to Delano, and assigned to the Fresno diocese. He earned a master’s degree in social work, specializing in community organization. By the time the grape strike started in 1965, Mahony was in charge of social welfare programs for the diocese of Fresno. As secretary to the bishops’ committee, Mahony had made himself the most knowledgeable cleric on the issues and became a broker during key disputes.
He chose “To reconcile God’s people” as his episcopal motto, and wrote to Martin Zaninovich that the motto reflected the new bishop’s desire to heal wounds among Catholics in the valley. Mahony knew Zaninovich exemplified those wounds: the grower had angrily pulled his third-grader out of St. Mary’s Catholic School in Delano when the diocese adopted a new catechism that included passages on Cesar Chavez. Mahony invited Zaninovich10 to his ordination and mentioned the new governor’s pledge to support a farmworker bill that would require compromise on all sides.
The Delano growers were more open with the bishops than Chavez had been. They told the committee they thought legislation was inevitable. Grape growers had turned to the Teamsters as a last resort, in hope of fending off a boycott, and were not particularly happy with the result. They hoped for certain provisions in the law and were ready to take their chances to end the years of chaos and strife. Ernest Gallo also told Mahony11 that he wanted a law; the vintner had only 250 year-round workers and another 250 during the season, and was tired of being the poster child for greedy, exploitive growers. The boycott was hurting, too; Gallo’s wine sales in California dropped 6 percent during the first quarter of 1975, while other brands were up 13 percent over the prior year.
On February 24, 1975, a UFW rally in San Francisco kicked off a four-day march to the Gallo headquarters in Modesto. Fred Ross Jr., son of Cesar’s mentor, had been running the San Francisco boycott office and pulled together the march in response to Chavez’s call to focus on Gallo. The event succeeded beyond expectations, in part because the crowd swelled to many thousands, and in part because of Gallo’s response. Underneath the windows of a hotel overlooking Union Square where the marchers assembled, the company hung a banner that read: gallo’s farm workers best paid in u.s . . . marching wrong way, cesar? The UFW should aim its protest at legislators in Sacramento, Gallo argued. The company took out full-page ads urging that farmworkers be placed under the National Labor Relations Act.
After four days and 110 miles, the marchers reached12 Modesto. The crowd grew to about ten thousand and rallied in Graceada Park. “As the song says, we’re going to roll this union on,” Chavez said as he addressed the cheering crowd. “No doubt in our minds and our hearts that we’re going to win . . . Together, we’re going to stop drinking Gallo wines, and together we’re going to win!”
He concluded his speech with a pointed jab: “Brothers and sisters, we have a final message to another person.” He reminded the crowd that candidate Jerry Brown had pledged to support a farm labor law, but Governor Brown had yet to consult with the union. “We want to tell him, ‘Dear Governor, you know, we once went to Sacramento to visit your Daddy.’” Cheers of “Si se puede” greeted Chavez’s reference to the legendary 1966 peregrinación, when Pat Brown had snubbed the farmworkers and stayed in Palm Springs on Easter. “We want to make Modesto the furthest we go. But we’re not going to let anyone introduce legislation because they think they know what’s best for us!”
Within twenty-four hours, phones began to ring.13 Monday morning, the farm labor bill dominated the agenda at Brown’s weekly meeting with legislative leaders. On Tuesday, Chatfield placed an urgent call to Cohen, saying Brown wanted a complete briefing on farm labor legislation in time for his Friday cabinet meeting. A week later, Chavez and Cohen spent most of Saturday at the governor’s house in Los Angeles, the three of them alone for an hour, joined later by various aides.
“Jerry [Cohen] and I made a plan when we went there,” Chavez told the board14 a week later. “Say very little. Find out where Brown stood. Let him know that legislation wasn’t what we were after. We wanted damn contracts more than anything else. Legislation could screw us.” Chavez said he would support legislation, but only a very strong bill. He ran through the issues that were important—one unit for all workers, quick elections, recognitional strikes. Brown seemed fine with most of them and not overly worried about Teamster support. He thought growers would pose more difficulty.
Brown recognized Chavez was posturing, but the governor also sensed Chavez’s genuine and well-founded fear. “He knew that the legal structure favors the status quo, and farmworkers are not the status quo,”15 Brown said later. “They are marginal participants in the economy.” Around three o’clock in the afternoon, Brown suddenly invited Chavez to take a walk. Cohen was somewhat surprised when Chavez readily agreed; he ordinarily avoided situations where he might find himself trapped. But Chavez had a degree of faith in Brown. “We walked out, and that’s where we made some deals,”16 Chavez recounted to the board a week later.
Brown said he was serious about a law, and Chavez said he was, too, but they needed a law with teeth that protected the workers’ right to decide on the union of their choice, with penalties on employers who interfered or failed to negotiate in good faith. Brown asked Chavez17 if he was sure the UFW could win elections. Chavez said of course. Brown asked a second time. Then they agreed on the outlines of a strategy. Brown would introduce his bill, and the UFW would support a more radical alternative and attack the governor’s measure, trusting him to ultimately negotiate a law that included the union’s bottom lines. Chavez wanted a three-member board; Brown argued for five. Chavez said the law would work only if the people enforcing the rules were sympathetic, aggressive, and hardworking. Brown said he thought that could be arranged. He understood that Chavez needed to create enough pressure so that a law appealed to all parties as preferable to continued chaos in the fields.
The next two months were a whirlwind of statements and counterstatements, late-night meetings, and strategy sessions, a wild ride that showcased Cohen’s legal and negotiating talents. Playing the game he had learned from Chavez, the lawyer gambled for all the marbles. He had nothing to lose. The UFW had mastered a strategy of confidence that bordered on arrogance, which enabled Cohen to act without concern about whom he might insult or offend. He referred to the Assembly Speaker as the kind of leader who made him puke, then shared a drink with the lawmaker the next day. When a UAW lobbyist questioned the UFW’s negotiating strategy, Chavez sent back word18 that “if he doesn’t trust brown people to make their own decisions and make their own strategy he can go fuck himself.”
Brown’s bill, his first as governor, was introduced by Assemblyman Howard Berman and Senator John Dunlop at an April 9 press conference. Brown and Chavez talked twice that day. The governor held a press conference the following day and called friends of the UFW to report that Chavez was close to endorsing the new measure. Chavez unleashed Cohen, who held his own press conference to attack the bill as deceptive and unacceptable.
By then, Mahony was in on the game. He explained the strategy to Cardinal Timothy Manning, president of the California Catholic Conference, before testifying at a committee hearing in favor of the governor’s bill. The cardinal should not be alarmed when the UFW packed the hearing with several thousand farmworkers and loudly denounced the bishops. “That is part of their plan19 and we should not be fazed by it. At some point, attention will turn to the governor’s legislation, and after much public noi
se, it is expected that the governor’s approach will prevail.”
Brown negotiated among the parties, ending with round-robin talks in his chambers—the UFW in one room, the Teamsters in another, the growers in a third. On May 5, 1975, they had a deal. With all the parties assembled in his office, Brown called Chavez on the speakerphone and asked him if he would support the compromise. Chavez feigned hesitation before he agreed, though the growers were not fooled. The room broke into applause.
The law contained so many provisions favorable to the union that the growers lost track and mistakenly announced in their trade magazine that the boycott had been outlawed. Farmworkers would have the right to support a union without fear of retribution, and employers would face penalties if they violated those rights. Workers would vote in expedited secret-ballot elections and could trigger an election within forty-eight hours if they walked out on strike. The union could still boycott under certain circumstances. Growers who failed to negotiate in good faith faced severe penalties, including back pay to all their workers. No other union in the country had the right to unilaterally determine the good standing of its members.
Growers needed the governor’s help on other issues, such as water, and Brown exerted his political clout to add another twist: the legislature must approve the exact measure he had negotiated, with not a single change, or the deal was off. In a last-minute trade, the UFW agreed to allow the Teamster contracts to remain in effect until elections took place, and in exchange the bill would be passed in special session and go into effect ninety days later, in time for the late summer season. Brown signed the Agricultural Labor Relations Act on June 5, 1975. The law became the shared legacy of the two men who had gone for a short walk in Los Angeles less than three months earlier.
Brown understood the law marked a profound turning point for the UFW, a milestone that risked draining the energy from the movement if the union could not make a successful transition from guerilla warfare. That was the argument he had used with growers:20 that a legal structure worked to their advantage. Some growers supported the law because they believed they could beat the union in elections; others calculated they could outlast Chavez.
Chavez had been well aware of the pitfalls, and now, at his moment of great triumph, he was apprehensive. Congratulations poured in as the outside world hailed the improbable victory: the farmworkers had negotiated the most favorable labor law in the country. For Chavez, the future appeared far more cloudy.
He sighed when Jacques Levy asked if the law would do to the farm worker movement what federal legislation had done to the civil rights movement—rob the struggle of its spirit. “The whole fight’s going to change,”21 Chavez said. “Because once you’re recognized, that’s essentially what the law does, then the essential fight of recognition, which is the one that appeals to the human mind and the heart, more than anything else, is no longer there. Then from that point on, you’re talking about wages, you’re talking about money, you’re talking about benefits, you’re talking about . . . something more diffuse and not as crucial and critical.”
He predicted that growers would sign contracts as long as the union was negotiating with an entire industry, so that no individual was at a competitive disadvantage. He foresaw that growers would improve wages and benefits in order to convince the workers they did not need the union. The great challenge that worried him was whether he could sustain a movement. “The only thing that will keep us going will be if we get into, if we can develop the movement into a real commitment to giving. By that I mean giving to other people who need to struggle, giving them help, but giving them substantial and real help. If we can do that, we can continue to have a movement.”
He talked vaguely about helping build unions in Europe, the Philippines, and Latin America, in countries where people thought they were too poor to organize. The farm worker movement could serve as a model that taught poor people how to organize and demand rights when they had no resources with which to fight, except their own lives. “If we can set ourselves up so we can give,” Chavez said, “then we’ll keep our movement. Short of that, nothing can keep us going.”
Part IV
June 1975–November 1978
Chapter 27
Elections in the Fields
We knew that the new legislation was going to have an impact on the union, but we had no way of knowing how big it would be . . . We have to find a way of enduring.
With just ten weeks to prepare for elections in the fields, Cesar Chavez deployed his best organizers to areas of California where competition would be most fierce. Alone in La Paz after everyone had fanned out across the state, the union leader struggled to define his role in this new world.
He traveled to a meeting in Calexico and watched the UFW film Fighting for Our Lives with a group of workers. He had seen the movie about the brutal summer of 1973 dozens of times, and his mind wandered. “During the film, you know, I was thinking, well, what am I going to do?” Chavez recalled a few weeks later. He couldn’t envision himself behind a desk at La Paz while everyone else was in the field, though he realized that might be helpful for coordinating the campaigns. “I’ve got to be out there,” he said. If he drove from place to place, he would spend most of his time in the car. “And right there I said, ‘March!’”1
Chavez began to plan his route that night. He decided to begin at the San Diego border and walk up the coast. Starting at the southern end of the state would give organizers in the battleground areas of Salinas, Oxnard, and Delano more time to build support before he arrived. “It’s just being with the people,” he said about the appeal of the long walk. Workers were less afraid to join a march than attend a meeting. Walking, like singing or praying, was participatory. Families and children could join. “It’s like a common language,2 especially with the Mexican worker. I can’t explain,” he said. “I know that if you walk, something happens to people. If they walk, something more beautiful happens.”
No one knew what would happen when the law went into effect on August 28, 1975, creating a state agency to oversee union activity in the fields. A lot would depend on the five-member Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) and the general counsel to the agency, who supervised elections. Governor Brown made good on his commitment to Chavez and appointed a sympathetic board, including former UFW official LeRoy Chatfield. To chair the historic board, Brown persuaded Bishop Roger Mahony to temporarily forsake his clerical duties. The board immediately faced dozens of crucial decisions about eligibility of voters, union organizers’ access to workers in the fields, and election procedures. Some policies would be decided by regulations, and many would ultimately be decided by the courts. “The first month is going to be incredibly chaotic,”3 Jerry Cohen predicted when he briefed the union staff. “It’s unbelievable the problems the state is going to be faced with, they have no notion of what’s going to happen to them. We may not have any notion of what’s going to happen to us either,” he added with a laugh.
Chavez summoned to La Paz the executive board members, boycott leaders, field office directors, and key volunteers so that Cohen could explain the intricacies of the law and walk them through the cycle. Elections had to take place during peak season, when more than half the company’s total workers were employed. The union needed to collect cards—nonbinding pledges of support for the UFW—from more than half the workers to file for an election. Once the board certified the petition, an election would be held within seven days. At every step of the way, there could be violations, problems, challenges, and appeals. “That’s the campaign . . . it’s chaos!” Cohen said. “Remember, we thrive on chaos!”
For a decade, Chavez had argued that his union represented the workers and would win in any fair contest. Now he faced pressure to live up to those claims. He warned his staff the union had a short window to succeed, and he outlined the challenges realistically. If the union won elections and did not negotiate contracts fast enough, workers would get discouraged. If strikes became necess
ary to convince recalcitrant growers to sign, workers would equate a vote for the UFW with a strike. Growers would begin to match union wages and argue workers did not need the UFW. “Our best time to win elections is this year,” he said.
Chavez suggested a campaign modeled on those the union had conducted for Robert F. Kennedy and Proposition 22. “We’ll make it a movement election and get the people involved,” he said. The first set of rallies should focus on the law and the workers’ right to the union of their choice. A second set would feature Fighting for Our Lives. In between, the Service Center would help workers with medical, immigration, and other non-work-related complaints—a version of Chavez’s old “problem clinic.”
His best organizers had other ideas. They faced tight deadlines, dozens of quirks in the law to master and litigate, and hundreds of workers to win over. Only a targeted approach would yield enough cards to file petitions on August 28. Then they would need to hold on to supporters, in the face of strong campaigns from the Teamsters and the growers, to win elections.
The UFW leaders debated major strategic choices, often with insufficient information. Should they focus on taking contracts away from the Teamsters or file for elections at ranches that had no existing contracts? How would they compile accurate lists of eligible voters at each ranch? Who would inform workers of their rights and protect them if employers retaliated against union supporters?
The issue that aroused the most passionate debate would prove more peripheral to their ultimate success: whether illegal immigrants should vote. The law did not address the question, and Cohen asked whether Chavez wanted to seek clarification from the new state board. Cohen was not optimistic about the chances of a regulation that would bar undocumented workers from voting and unsure the idea made sense from a legal or political perspective.