Grape Workers' Strike
The Grape Workers' Strike, which began in the fall of 1965 in Delano, California, was a pivotal labor movement that sought better wages and working conditions for farmworkers, primarily of Mexican American descent. The strike was initiated by Filipino grape pickers from the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) and later united with the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), led by César Chávez. This collaboration marked a significant moment as it drew attention to the exploitative practices of growers who had long relied on intimidation and violence to suppress labor activism.
The movement gained national prominence through the efforts of Chávez and supporters from various sectors, including civil rights organizations and college students, who participated in a nationwide boycott of grapes and related products. This strategy highlighted the plight of farmworkers and garnered public sympathy, leading to substantial financial pressure on growers. The strike and subsequent boycott were characterized by nonviolent resistance, despite facing violent reprisals from growers and minimal law enforcement intervention.
By July 1970, the collective efforts of the grape workers resulted in significant victories, with Delano growers signing contracts that included improved wages and health safety provisions. The success of the strike not only transformed labor relations in California agriculture but also established the United Farm Workers (UFW) as a dominant voice for farm labor rights. The Grape Workers' Strike remains a key historical event, symbolizing the struggle for social justice and labor rights in the United States.
Grape Workers' Strike
Date: September 16, 1965-July 29, 1970
A milestone event in the farmworkers’ movement. This strike successfully established, for the first time in U.S. history, the right of farmworkers to organize and bargain collectively and helped in the development of many effective union strategies.
Origins and History
At the beginning of the 1960’s, the situation for U.S. farmworkers was much as it had been throughout the post-World War II era. In California and the Southwest, the largely Mexican American agricultural labor force was subjected to blatantly exploitative policies. Growers were confident that law enforcement agencies and lawmakers would continue to ignore their often violent intimidation of striking workers and their engineering of labor surpluses in order to maintain a large pool of desperate unemployed workers who would cross picket lines.
In the 1960’s, John F. Kennedy’s administration and the Civil Rights movement extended support to U.S. farmworkers, who were predominantly members of minority groups and one of the most oppressed occupational groups in the country. The unique political climate of the 1960’s made the effective organization of farmworkers possible for the first time in U.S. history. For an effective farmworkers’ movement to come into being, a charismatic leader who could unify farmworkers into a community of common interests had to appear. César Chávez was that leader.
The Strike
The seminal events in the farmworkers’ movement were strikes by workers in Delano, California, vineyards and a nationwide consumer boycott of grapes and products made from them or marketed by vineyard-owning corporations. In the fall of 1965, Filipino grape pickers associated with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) went on strike against Delano-area growers to protest excessively low wages. The remainder of the farmworkers in the area were represented by the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), which was headed by Chávez, so AWOC asked the NFWA to join them.
Although Chávez expressed serious reservations, the members of the NFWA voted overwhelmingly to join the strike. Chávez knew his union had no resources to sustain striking workers, so he sought and received financial and moral support from grass-roots sympathizers, religious leaders, civil rights organizations, labor unions, and college students. He initially raised funds by going on a speaking tour of California universities, returning with $6,700 in dollar bills and change donated by students. Walter Reuther, head of the United Automobile Workers, pledged $5,000 a month to the strike, and others followed with similar offers of support. People from the various groups that supported the grape workers’ strike stood on the picket lines with farmworkers and were beaten, sprayed with insecticide and fertilizer, and struck by vehicles driven through their lines by growers’ associates. Local police did little to intervene and made mass arrests of pickets when injunctions restricting the number of pickets were issued by local courts.
Chávez knew that it would take substantive financial pressure on growers, who were still operating using nonunion workers, to achieve a victory for the farmworkers. In October, 1965, he called for a nationwide consumer boycott of California table grapes, products made from them, and products marketed by corporations that owned vineyards. The public had witnessed how the striking workers had been treated through media coverage of the events, and they responded. In 1966, Chávez, inspired by the 1965 voting-rights march led by Martin Luther King, Jr., from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, organized a twenty-five-day, three-hundred-mile march from Delano to Sacramento, the state capital, which further heightened the nation’s awareness of the boycott and strike. Boycott organizations sprang up in every city in the country; the strategy began to have a significant economic impact on the growers.
The early success of the boycott drew the strongest possible response from politically and financially powerful growers and their associations. A battle ensued between some of the nation’s most powerful politicians and associations, and grassroots political activism grew to epic proportions. Growers’ organizations mounted an expensive national public-relations campaign to promote grape consumption, thinking that they could entice the public with slogans such as “Eat grapes, the forbidden fruit.” California governor Ronald Reagan characterized the boycott and strike as being immoral and illegal, and while campaigning for Richard M. Nixon during his 1968 bid for the presidency, he called Chávez and the strikers “barbarians.” After Nixon was elected, the new president helped growers by increasing Defense Department purchases of grapes to be sent to troops in Vietnam from half a million pounds in 1968 to more than two million pounds in 1969. The boycott continued to cost growers millions of dollars, and on July 29, 1970, all the Delano growers signed contracts with the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC, later the United Farm Workers of America, UFW); these contracts contained the worker health and safety provisions and wages sought by the union.
Impact
The movement’s leaders brought the grape workers’ strike to the attention of the national media, and the entire nation became aware of the living and working conditions that led to the strike and the growers’ response: violent intimidation of strikers, the use of strike-breaking workers, and petitions for court injunctions against the strikers. The heightened public awareness of the brutality and injustice suffered by farmworkers and Chávez’s absolute insistence on nonviolence gained sympathy for the farmworkers’ movement from organizations and individuals whose financial contributions and political clout made the movement’s accomplishments possible. The cooperation of large numbers of Americans who did not consider themselves political or labor activists during the grape boycott helped workers gain many concessions from growers. The Delano grape workers’ strike and boycott were so successful that by the mid-1970’s, 85 percent of California’s grapes were picked by workers covered by UFW contracts. Nearly three decades after the strike, the UFW was still the largest union for farm laborers in California.
Additional Information
Detailed accounts of the Delano, California, grape workers’ strike and the events surrounding it are found in the following books: César Chávez: A Triumph of Spirit (1995), by Richard Griswald del Castillo and Richard A. Garcia; The Politics of Insurgency: The Farm Worker Movement in the 1960’s (1985), by J. Craig Jenkins; César Chávez: Autobiography of La Causa (1975), by Jacques E. Levy; Sal Si Puedes: César Chávez and the New American Revolution (1971), by Peter Matthiessen; and Farmers’ and Farm Workers’ Movements: Social Protest in American Agriculture (1995), by Patrick H. Mooney and Theo J. Marjka.