Four Farm Workers Picket 'Stop & Shop': A Grape Boycott Begins in Boston

The story about the rugged little frontier farmer who tilled his fields from dawn to dusk and helped make America safe for democracy holds a fond place in most of our hearts. As America grew bigger and richer, the story continues, so did the farms, and the farmers. It is today's conventional wisdom that farmers wear gray flannel overalls and take care of their farms with three or four gleaming machines.

But what most people don't know is there are many crops around without machines to pick them. For instance, a machine to pick plums would have to wrap itself around the trunk and shake the plums down. So it has not been invented yet, and neither has a grape-picking machine. And this is where the real story begins.

In California, tens of thousands of men pick grapes for a living. About half of them are migrants, every year making the route through Texas, Arizona, California, and Oregon, picking whatever is in season. The rest are full-fledged Californians. They work eight months a year and try, usually without success, to get welfare for the other four. About three-quarters of these farmers are Mexican-Americans; the remainder are Oakies, Philippinos, and Negroes.

A grape picker in California works between 10 and 12 hours a day in fields which average more than 105 degrees during the summer. There are no toilets in the fields. Drinking water is allotted according to the number of bushels picked. The number is arbitrary depending upon the foreman's mood. The migrants live in tents, the regulars in long tin huts. By the time most of the children are 12 years old, they've quit school and work with their parents in the fields. Nobody earns more than $1.40 per hour picking grapes.

Not Covered

Everything is so bad because, for some reason, farm workers are not covered under the National Labor Relations Act. This law guarantees workers the right to unionize if they have so indicated by a majority vote and ensures that both parties, manager and employee, must bargain "in good faith."

Unionizing California's farm workers has been a major AFL-CIO project for three years. In September, 1965, they called a general strike in Delano, California, against 38 major growers. When the logistics of maintaining the strike proved too difficult, the AFL-CIO decided to confront the growers one at a time. Since that time, strikes and national boycotts have been carried out successfully against three now-infamous wine companies: Schenley, DiGiorgio, and Parelli-Minetti. Six others, including Gallo Wine, have singed union contracts after negotiation.

At the beginning of last summer, the AFL-CIO's United Farm Workers' Organizing Committee (UFWOC) decided it would finally try to unionize the fresh grape industry. In July, they sent a team of experienced organizers to the Giumarra Vineyards Corporation, largest producer of fresh grapes in the world, near Bakersfield, Calif. It took three weeks for the union men to present their case to the farm workers. By the end of July they had voted unanimously to strike.

Shut Down

On August 3rd, 1500 men walked off Giumarra's fields. For one week, Giumarra's 25 ranches were virtually shut down. But Giumarra, owned and operated by the many members of the family of that name, had learned something from the previous Delano strikes. There are special contractors who get 50 cents a head for importing workers from Texas and Mexico. The workers, called "scabs," had been earning 12 cents per hour in Mexico, so they discharged their new duties in California with little compunction.

The AFL-CIO took its case to the Immigration Department of California, claiming it was illegal to import workers in this fashion. The department responded by deporting 15 of these immigrant workers a day. Thirty more scabs arrived by bus every morning. As one Immigration official reportedly explained, "We have a community responsibility." The strike had been broken.

But there remained the single strongest tactic available to the UFWOC: the boycott. While strikes are easy to overcome in unregulated industries, a national boycott of the producers' goods can only be withstood for a relatively short time. The scandalous publicity and economic loss of a boycott brought Schenley to its knees a year ago.

In their attempts to counter the boycott, the Giumarra family have proved unusually resourceful. On August 5, they called a secret meeting of lawyers for the country's largest grape producers. The UFWOC learned from an informant who was present at the meeting that the growers would allow Giumarra to market grapes under all of their labels. Before the boycott effort had been initiated, Giu- marra sold grapes under six labels; the two most well known were "Arra Grapes" and "Grape King." Now, according to union information, there are at least 35 different labels used for grapes grown by Giumarra.

By September 1, the UFWOC had placed organizers in 20 strategic cities. Their job was to establish a thorough boycott; trying to elicit cooperation from wholesalers and retail outlets, picketing those who were uncooperative, getting publicity for the boycott in local news media.

To Boston

Four organizers and one UFWOC volunteer arrived in Boston on September 1. The volunteer was Alan Moonves, a Harvard junior and SDS activist who had spent his summer at the Giumarra farms working as a trainee for the UFWOC. "At first our job seemed pretty clear cut. But the label game made it a lot harder. Giumarra managed to sell his grapes somewhere and it was our job to track them down."

There are ten large chain stores in Boston. Each was visited by one of the organizers accompanied by the head of the largest union local employed by the chain. They asked the company to switch their brand of grapes. Only two have cooperated so far and cancelled their order from Giumarra until the conclusion of the strike.

Giumarra grapes are no longer sold at Haymarket Square. And, according to Moonves, most of the city's 300 small retailers have cooperated.

The UFWOC organizers are concentrating their efforts on New England's largest chain, "Stop and Shop." The man who owns all 138 stores is Irving Rabb, financier, philanthropist, and member of Brandeis' Board of Trustees. Several months ago the Rabb Foundation, which is a family project, was discovered to be one of the many conduits for CIA financing. Last week, Irving Rabb was picketed by more than 200 people when he attended an honorary function at Brandeis.

Rabb has adamantly refused to cooperate with the boycott. He has patiently explained to the organizers that, as a wealthy and prominent member of the community, he is always walking a tightrope between altruism and capitalism. He has admitted that this time he cannot see his way clear to take the altruist position. One felt great sympathy for his position, Moonves reported after his visit with Rabb.

Specifics

David Fine, head of labor and industrial relations for "Stop and Shop," has said "no" in less picturesque terms. He, in fact, cited three reasons. (1) Most of the company's workers belong to unions, thereby proving the good will of "Stop and Shop." (2) Giumarra grapes are the highest quality grapes on the market and settling for anything less would be selling the customer short. (3) If "Stop and Shop" were to accede to the organizers' request, they would be bound to the same reaction "the next time." And if they had to stop selling every product made by non-union workers they would soon go out of business.

Having refused to stop selling Giumarra grapes, Rabb and associates have not been content to rest on their laurels. Signs have been placed on the grape stands of "Stop and Shop": "This brand of grapes is not one of those being picketed." Actually, according to the UFWOC organizers, they are the brand of firms which agreed to market Giumarra grapes. Also, says Moonves, the company has made a behind-the-scenes attempt to keep publicity about the grape strike and picketing out of the local papers.

An informant from the Globe told the organizers, Moonves says, that a "Stop and Shop" official has called every Boston newspaper requesting their silence. Thus far, the only story in the Boston papers about the boycott was a brief report of the Brandeis demonstration which appeared in the Globe.

One of the UFWOC organizers put his assessment of the situation in these terms. "The grape money, it is peanuts, you know, compared to what these big money boys have. But they sure do stick together anyway."

The four organizers have had little support since they came to Boston. A few Harvard SDS members have helped them picket for a day or two. In fact, there is manpower enough to picket only two stores in Cambridge and Waltham. At each, the customers' reaction to the request has been almost unanimously favorable.

High Hopes

For the organizers, no matter how discouraging the situation appears now, it is not a question of whether or not the boycott will succeed, but rather one of how long it will take. They will continue picketing until Giumarra relents or until the grape season is over. If the strike continues, they will be picketing again next year. They have a driving sense of mission. "If Giumarra goes, one million farm workers will be organized in five years," says one organizer.

Managers of "Stop and Shop" have an equally serious sense of their own importance. They claim the boycott is doomed to failure and the picketing is an unsightly waste of time. Concludes labor-management coordinator Fine, "It is something like pinching a pimple on an elephant's back.