The UFW Must Break with Its "Partnerships" with the Growers and Schwarzenegger

The UFW Must Return to Its Roots!

By AL ROJAS

Forty-two years ago, many of us joined Brother César Chávez in founding the independent United Farm Workers Union (UFW) as a merger between the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) of César Chávez and the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC, AFL-CIO), among others. We were determined to build a strong workers’ union that was led and represented by the workers themselves and would defend a workers’ right to organize.

It is therefore very disappointing for us to now see the UFW that we built over so many long and difficult years take a complete turnaround from organizing workers and establishing a strong presence and visible force in the fields.

This Special Supplement of El Organizador is addressed to the delegates participating in the UFW’s 18th Constitutional Convention in Fresno, California. It is aimed at addressing the central questions that we believe are at the root of the UFW’s departure from its original rank-and-file, fightback principles.

You will read in this Special Supplement our strong criticisms of the UFW leadership’s “complicit partnerships” with the growers and politicians — particularly with anti-union and anti-immigrant Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger — all of whom are responsible for (1) the deaths of agricultural workers in the fields, (2) the heightened exploitation / forced labor of farm workers through the “Guest Workers Bracero Program,” and (3) the massive expulsion of millions of campesinos from their farms and countries south of the border as a result of the failed North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The UFW leadership has no business supporting laws that give agribusiness the upper hand against the workers, that gut occupational health and safety, that exonerate the growers for violations of the most basic rights of the farm workers. Likewise, we are critical of the UFW leadership for their failure to invest time and money in “organizing and mobilizing” the farm worker communities — so that this great union can once again become a visible presence and force in the agricultural fields.

The UFW leadership must not pander to politicians like Schwarzenegger and Fabian Nuñez. The UFW needs to go back to the fields and organize workers at the grassroots, allowing workers to take control of their union under their leadership and fighting for union representation and stronger union contracts — with a stronger voice for the workers.

The UFW must break with the “partnership” collaboration they have established with Schwarzenegger and with the growers. It must go back and reclaim the very principles upon which this proud union was founded. We hope the articles in this Special Supplement will contribute to this effort.

[Al Rojas is a founder of the UFW. He is also a former State Deputy Labor Commissioner.]