The Farm Workers Fight It Out

The Teamster actions are disgraceful. They are clearly union-busting. They are engaged in a concerted campaign to wipe out the United Farm Workers. —George Meany

Ever since 1968, Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers have had two principal opponents: the growers who control California’s $5 billion-per-year agricultural industry and the Nixon administration, which, through Department of Defense purchases of nonunion grapes and lettuce and National Labor Relations Board attacks on the Farm Workers’ right to boycott, has sought to cripple the union.

This year, with the expiration of contracts signed in 1970 at the conclusion of the grape boycott, the Farm Workers acquired a third major...