Fighting for Strawberry Workers

Today, more than 15 campus groups are coming together to sponsor a talk concerning the working conditions of strawberry farm workers in California. Speakers will include Professors Cornel West and John Womack, long-time activist Sister Tess Browne and two worker activists. The talk is meant to raise awareness on campus of the attempts to unionize strawberry workers by the United Farm Workers (UFW).

For the past several years, the UFW has been trying to unionize the 20,000 strawberry workers in California. Every effort to do so has been met with vicious resistance by the strawberry growers. Initially, attempts were made to organize single farms. Each time a farm was successfully unionized, however, the growers used tactics such as plowing under fields to prevent the union from becoming established.

These farms are part of large-scale agribusiness companies and are a far cry from the idealized picture of "family-owned-and-operated" farms. They can afford to sacrifice profits on a season's crops, destroying the workplace to eliminate the union along with it. These farms later move their operations to neighboring fields and worker activists are "permanently" replaced.

The present focus of the UFW is on the industry as a whole. This is because the strawberry growers have banded together to use their collective force to attack the efforts of the UFW. In doing so, the growers are effectively preventing decent living conditions in the fields. It is only by organizing the entire industry at once that the challenge can be met.

Already as a result of this campaign, wages have increased, workers have paid holidays, drinking water and bathrooms are finally in some of the fields and the treatment of workers by the companies has slowly begun to improve. Much, however, remains to be done. Wages are still unjustifiably low, sexual harassment continues to persist in the fields and the vast majority of the workers, while still affected by the widespread use of pesticides, have no access to basic health care.

To win the battle the UFW has expanded its focus beyond the fields. Organizers have recently been engaged in a campaign to get supermarkets and other consumers to sign a pledge in support of the workers' right to vote for a union, free of intimidation by the growers.

To this date, four of the seven largest supermarket chains in the country have endorsed the UFW pledge. The shift of the UFW campaign from a local struggle to a national attempt to generate pressure on the growers makes our role as students, located far from the strawberry fields of California, important.

Stores like Bread and Circus have refused to sign the pledge for more than a year, insisting, despite documented evidence to the contrary, that conditions in the fields do not warrant complaint. As students, we can work to effect change by going in delegations to these stores to get them to sign the pledge and by discussing the issue with Harvard Dining Services. Despite our distance from the strawberry fields, our efforts in Cambridge can have a direct, meaningful and beneficial impact on the UFW's efforts.

Student action on campus, however, must come with a full understanding of the issues surrounding the campaign. Efforts cannot be blind or haphazard, or they risk of becoming counterproductive. An uninformed rally or an unprepared debate can do more harm than good. Understanding, by contrast, can inspire ventures into avenues previously unexplored. A large part of the UFW's success is in fact due to its innovation and creativity in dealing with large and impersonal agribusiness companies.

Understanding can also create the sensitivity and the awareness to bring neglected issues to light. The UFW has recently begun to focus on the rampant sexual harassment and abuse of female strawberry pickers that has been, for the most part, ignored.

Most importantly, understanding can give the power of inspiration. It can imbue and infuse meaning that will move people to new heights of action and success. When understanding and commitment is communicated through a group's efforts, it can only inspire others to take action.

Sergio J. Campos '00 and Daniel R. Morgan '99 are social studies concentrators in Currier House. Campos is president of Harvard-Radcliffe RAZA. Morgan is a member of the Progressive Student Labor Movement.