Strikebreaking by the Pentagon
Mills, Nicholaus C.
IN 1966, the year before Cesar Chavez'sI United Farm Workers Organizing Committee began its national boycott of California grapes, South Vietnam was the world's 23rd largest importer of fresh...
...There is good reason to believe that a military-agricultural complex is as formidable as a military-industrial one...
...COMMENTS AND OPINIONS Meanwhile, the Department has argued that it would not be neutral to "freeze" grape purchases at the level they were before the boycott began...
...Today it is the world's fifth largest importer, a figure that puts its consumption patterns well beyond those of most European nations...
...3) having as its number one grape contractor, Giumarra Vineyards Corporation, the company against which UFWOC began its strike and the leading antiunion grower in the San Joaquin Valley (39 of the first 40 growers used by the Defense Department are also from California) ; (4) ignoring the fact that the low cost and wide availability of grapes are directly related to the California grape boycott and attributing increased Defense Department purchases to "normal factors of supply and demand...
...is buying more table grapes than at anytime in the history of the Defense Department, and has responded by saying they have solicitedtelegram requests to all points around the world urging their [food procurement officers'] consideration of the use of table grapes...
...To what degree the Defense Department can be moved from this position by public pressure is a question...
...This has led Senator Mondale to conclude: Finally, and most destructively, the DefenseDepartment admitted that if the price of grapeswere to fall due to the effects of the consumer boycott, the Defense Department would further increase its grape purchases—thereby committing the Defense Department to a policy ofundermining the nation-wide boycott...
...UFWOC's indignation that the Defense Department should, as UFWOC's vice-president Dolores Huerta charged, be "acting as a buyer of last resort for scab grapes," is shared by many others...
...2) giving "high troop acceptability" as a primary reason for choosing grapes as a substitute fruit when virtually all fresh fruits have "high troop acceptability...
...Despite an official policy of neutrality, the Defense Department has become one of the major supporters of California grape growers...
...IN 1966, the year before Cesar Chavez'sI United Farm Workers Organizing Committee began its national boycott of California grapes, South Vietnam was the world's 23rd largest importer of fresh table grapes from America...
...But Defense Department purchases of grapes are in excess of anything UFWOC expected...
...I think it is asking too much of the averagefarm worker [to tell him] to believe that theDefense Department is being neutral when it...
...In the last fiscal year alone, fresh grape purchases for all armed services were increased by 50 percent and for troops in Vietnam by 350 percent...
...They represent 2.4 percent of all 8 fresh grape production in the U.S., a percentage capable of shoring up prices on three to four times that number of grapes and of seriously hampering a boycott that has struggled to reduce grape shipments to 36 major cities in the country by as much as 20 percent...
...ALONG WITH these unprecedented purchases of grapes, the Department has taken the following steps during the California grape boycott: (1) recommending grapes and only grapes as a substitute fruit when a shortage of oranges developed, although other citrus fruits might also have been recommended...
...5) awarding contracts to growers who have been convicted of illegally recruiting migrant workers and violating health and safety standards...
...The reason for this change is not difficult to locate...
...For the United Farm Workers, who are still excluded from the protection of the National Labor Relations Act and from equal coverage under the minimum wage law, the federal gov ernment has long been a thorn in the side of organizing...
...Senator Walter Mondale says: It may well be that the policy of the DefenseDepartment is a neutral one, but it is a neutrality that obviously favors the growers in thelabor dispute surrounding the grape strike today...
Vol. 17 • January 1970 • No. 1
