We're standing up to them in the fields.

Boycotts are a drag. You're tired of them, just as the farm workers are tired of striking (and all that goes with it). But the workers will not be reduced to chattel again. Least of all Teamster chattel. Cesar Chavez asks consumers to unite as never before. No less will cause the growers to grant workers the simple right to vote, by secret ballot, on the union to represent them: the UFW or the Teamsters.

Three years ago a massive consumer boycott dragged growers kicking and screaming into the 20th Century. Now, when the UFW's hard-won contracts are up for renewal along come Teamster honchos who, without a word to the workers, sign a ready-made contract with the growers. That Teamster contract reinstitutes the notorious Labor Contractor hiring system, reduces the workers' already minimal pay, imposes no restrictions on the use of man-killing pesticides and leaves the workers without any effective medical benefits. There are other cruel inadequacies in the Teamsters' sweetheart contract, but that should be enough to make you lose your taste for grapes.

So how come these union-hating growers welcome Teamster advances rather than negotiate with a worker-controlled union? Growers, not surprisingly, prefer to deal with bosses who have nothing in common with the men and women who spend their lives bent over in the fields (When you read the terms of the contract this unholy alliance produced, you'll see just how well the Growers and Teamsters get along -- and why it only took them all of two days to write that contract!)

Yes, the farm workers are seeking redress via the courts and by petitioning the growers for secret-ballot elections. But the wheels of justice do not move as fast as Nature grows grapes. The Teamsters are now importing scab labor (many of whom arrive not knowing they are strike-breakers and who are coerced to keep working by the Teamsters' inelegant persuasions!). The bitter fruit of this labor is now arriving at stores in your neighborhood. If these grapes sell, the next bunch of growers with UFW contracts to renew (in July) will follow the lead of their Coachella peers and invite the Teamsters to "organize" the fields on their terms i.e., a lower hourly wage; no restriction on the use of condemned sprays; reinstitution of the slave-labor contractor system (shades of the '30's!); a medical plan that neatly excludes seasonal workers! Those great humanitarians of the Teamsters' Western Conference aren't squeamish about growers using a derivative of nerve gas. Why should they be -- the Teamsters' well-paid "negotiators" will never have to work in those deadly fields!

Is there any way out of the squeeze play the Teamsters and Growers have executed? To strike is to go hungry, and for many workers it will mean going to jail (and all that goes with it).

But strike we will. Strike we must, even knowing this will not prevent the harvest. We strike to reinforce our only real hope, you, the buyer of table grapes.

You are our last line of defense. You are the one critical element the Teamsters cannot control. If you are sickened by this ignoble attempt to return farm workers to the status of cattle, then the workers' cause is not yet lost.

The Growers understand sales. The memory of the last great boycott is their recurring nightmare. If the grocers find their customers turning away, the Delano and Fresno growers won't be so fast to conspire with the Teamsters when their UFW contracts expire. To be stuck with a worthless crop is a fate even worse then negotiating with a worker-controlled union.

The farm workers take no pleasure in seeing grapes go to waste. But do they give us any choice? Their feudal value system can only be affected by power. Your non-buying power!

Nothing less will cause the Growers to recognize a union that represents the workers.

Once M ore W ith Feeling: All people of goodwill can support the farm workers in their non-violent resistance to the Neanderthallic conditions imposed on them by the Grower-Teamster consortium, by 1) Boycott table grapes, starting now! 2) Contribute money to help feed the workers who now will miss the few months when they can earn any wages. The money you send will be used for basics: food, clothing, medicine. Their need is staggering. 3) Continue to boycott iceberg lettuce and A & P Stores.