1973 La Voz de Aztlan

              J—
Friday, Jan. 5, 1973
Ml    8 f7:
|UFWU carries out
food market boycott
A h
THE DAILY COLLEGIAN
California State University, Fresno
Vol. 78 No. 64
/ The United Farm Workers Un-
' ion and their supporters are now
in the process of carrying out a
nation-wide boycott against the
Safeway and A & P markets, the
two largest food monopolies in
the country.
The Union's action came after
unsuccessful meetings with the
officials of the two chain stores.
Both Safeway and A & P tried
to evade the question of the lettuce boycott and attempted to
steer the talks to legislation and
then asked why they were chosen
to be boycotted.
The two chain stores have effectively divided up the country
between them, with A & P dominating the eastern half of the food
market and Safeway the western.
A & P is the largest chain conglomerate in the country and
Safeway is the second largest.
During a recent meeting with
Safeway officials, Marshall Ganz,
national boycott director along
with Fred Ross, director of the
boycott in the Bay Area, charged
the 2,138 store-empire with being
the largest sellers of non-Union
lettuce in the entire United States
and noted that one of its top of
ficials had personally circulated
petitions for Proposition 22.
Safeway, with strong ties to
agribusiness, rings up sales of
$5.4 billion from its stores each
year and has long been a bitter
enemy of the UFWU. The store
chain has never stopped buying
scab grapes since the successful
grape boycott of the '60's and
now still refuses to change its
anti-worker position during the
lettuce boycott.
Meanwhile, back in New York,
farm labor leader Cesar Chavez
and boycott organizers told A & P
officials that they deserved to be
boycotted for trying to deceive the
public by displaying the Union's
black eagle label with non-union
lettuce.
A & P is a supermarket empire with 4,265 stores taking in
$5.5 billion in sales yearly. The
boycott of A & P started with the
appearance of human billboards
from Boston to Washington D.C.,
saying "Boycott Lettuce, Boycott
A & P." According to Ganz, the
boycott will very quickly spread
all over the east coast and then
the west coast.
Teamsters, Farm Bureau join fight against UFWU
"President Frank Fitzsimmons
of the Teamsters, after wining
and dining with the Farm Bureau
Federation, recently announced
that the Teamsters were going to
renegotiate their 'Lettuce agreements'." These were the words of
Dolores Huerta, vice president of
the United Farm Workers Union,
at a recent press conference.
"This is an admission of what
the UFW has maintained for over
two years. The present 'agree
ments' with the lettuce industry
are a fraud as massive as the
growers' fraud on Proposition 22.
Rich white men sitting in a motel
room cannot dictate the destinies
of 100,000 brown farm workers,
nor can they deprive the farm
workers of their legitimate union," she continued.
"It is no coincidence that the
Teamsters' announcement closely follows their meeting with the
Farm Bureau because the Farm
Bureau and lettuce growers are
Texas union strike continues
against clothes company
The continuing strike against
the Farah Manufacturing Company received a major boost recently when more than 1,000
pickets turned out at the downtown stores of May Co. and Bullocks in Los Angeles. The strike
support action is endorsed by the
County Federation of Labor.
The strike, which was started
by memoers of the Amalgamated
Clothing Workers Union at the
company's El Paso plant, has received backing from all major
sections of the labor movement
and has blossomed into a full-
scale   boycott   of  Farah  pants.
The company has refused to negotiate with the workers with the
main demands centering around
union recognition and wage increases. The firing of one of the
union's organizers touched off the
strike and more than 3,000 workers walked off the job.
The Farah Company has tried
every tactic at its disposal to
break the strike. The company
imported scabs from Mexico, despite the insistence by the National Labor Relations Board that
it go to the bargaining table.
The company was also able to
get a temporary injunction tore-
strict picketing and more than
1,000 strikers were arrested before the U-S. Supreme Court
struck down the order.
Romana's Foods' unfair labor practices
The decision by a National
Labor Relations Board hearing
officer in San Francisco that
Romona's Mexican Food Products, Inc., is guilty of widespread unfair labor practices
might appear to be routine to
some — but not to knowledgeable
Chicano leaders.
Romona's is qwned by a woman
whose signature appears in the
lower left-hand corner of the millions of dollars being turned out
by the Bureau of Engraving. She's
Romona Banuelosof Los Angeles,
chosen late in 1971 by President
Nixon to be Treasurer of the
United States and later confirmed
by the senate despite strong opposition by labor.
Nixon said that Mrs. Banuelos
was chosen for the post in recognition of her leadership among
Mexican-Americans. AFL-CIO
Director of Organization William
Kircher testified she was anything but that, based on labor relations and working conditions at
her plant. He said the firm has a
long record of "illegal" employment of Mexicans.
Romona's Mexican Food Products has in the past threatened
workers with loss of job if they
participated in a strike, continued the threats after the strike
began, threatened the employees
with loss of "alien-employee status and deportation" to Mexico
if they did not return to work and
later refused to rehire strikers.
attempting to destroy our Union.
The sweetheart contracts signed
by the lettuce industry- in 1970,
precipitating the largest agricultural strike in U.S. history, were
an attempt to provide the growers
with paper insulation to protect
them from legitimate aspiration
of their farm workers."
During the same time Fitzsimmons made-his announcement,
the American Farm Bureau Federation held its annual convention
in Los Angeles — a yearly gathering of farm worker enemies.
Not only was the usual group of
agribusiness heavies on hand to
do their dirty work — people like
FB president William Kufuss and
California Governor Ronald Reagan, but Teamster boss Fitzsimmons was on hand to use the
convention as a means to publicly
proclaim his anti-farm worker
views.
Several hundred farm workers
and supporters were parading in
a huge circle outside the LA
convention center when Fitzsimmons addressed the Farm
Bureau saying he had regrets
for crossing the picket line,
claiming the lettuce boycott is a
fraud and scoring points with
fat-cat fantasies by calling the
pickets revolutionaries.
Immediately after the Teamsters' boss spoke, the Union vice
president called a new conference
where she denounced the Farm
Bureau, for its continuing attempts to thwart the rights of
farm workers to organize with
their Union.
She also said, "Farm workers
are protesting the Farm Bureau's
use of tax-exempt money to crush
our Union. The Farm Bureau is
not the champion of the family
farmer, rather it is a multi-
billion dollar financial empire
that is cheating the American
people out of their tax revenues
through its fraudulent tax status.*
Nixon's Mexican-Americans
PHILLIP V. SANCHEZ, National Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity Program, is shown here
praising President Nixon last year. Now Sanchez faces the prospect that his beloved job is in jeopardy.
Sanchez may end up somewhere in South America soon. Next to Sanchez is Mrs. Romona Banuelos,
Treasurer of the United States, who is now under pressure to resign by labor leaders and under investigation by the National Labor Relations Board for unfair labor practices. Dr. Henry Ramirez, Chairman
of the Cabinet Committee for the Spanish Speaking, is seen in the background.