An Interview with United Farmworkers Co-Founder Dolores Huerta
This interview was originally published in the February 1998 issue of Lowrider magazine.
Most Lowrider magazine readers are already familiar with the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), the labor union founded in 1962 by César Chavez, Dolores Huerta and others, that to this day fights to guarantee farm workers – many of them immigrants, legal and otherwise – fair treatment, freedom from harassment, protection from toxic chemicals, insurance and a living wage.
Although many of the original union members were not citizens and spoke only limited English, the UFW reasoned that because these hard workers paid taxes and contributed to the economy, that they deserved rights and protection under the law. Unfortunately, many growers, whose profit margins increased with low wages and a substandard working environment, often disagreed. The struggle still continues, with new UFW president Arturo Rodríguez and long-time warriors like Dolores Huerta continuing where César Chávez left off.
New Mexico native Dolores Huerta was the first Mexican-American to negotiate a labor contract with an agribusiness giant, the 1966 agreement with Schenley Wine Company. Her work helped bring about the ban of the pesticide DDT, and in 1975 she directed the famous grape boycott that finally allowed farm workers to unionize. Huerta currently travels the country working for not only the UFW, but also organizations including Latinas for Choice and FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting). She has been beaten by San Francisco police, which cost the labor leader her spleen, and also helped get the landmark 1985 Federal Immigration Act passed. She has done all this as the single mother of 11 children.
Today, the United Farm Workers are fighting once again, this time seeking fair pay, health care and unemployment benefits for strawberry workers. According to the UFW, the government-subsidized strawberry industry employs some 20,000 workers, who make an average of $8,500 per season. Workers report that there are fields where no fresh water or on-site bathrooms are available, and growers who charge for necessary safety equipment after the fields are sprayed with cancer-causing chemicals. Female workers charge that foremen at certain companies demand sexual favors in return for shifts. The UFW and its lawyers are already at work on many of these problems.
The UFW’s “Five cents for fairness” campaign points out that if customers spent an extra five cents for each pint of strawberries, wages for field workers would rise to around $12,000 per season, pushing take-home pay above the poverty level for families with two parents working full time. As part of their effort to publicize this campaign, Lowrider magazine received the honor of interviewing Dolores Huerta.
LRM: Why did you choose to devote your life to helping farm workers?
DH: The need was just so drastic. When we started the union, workers were making 50 cents per hour. It was awful. People couldn’t afford food year round.
LRM: But the need is still there, and most people choose to ignore it.
DH: People just didn’t know what to do about it. Even today, you have this disparity – people over here just don’t realize that people over there are suffering. In those days, the growers used to go to Sacramento and say, “These people are lucky to have jobs. These people are winos, degenerates.” They created this whole image of farm workers as this subhuman class of people. The general public was just unaware that farm workers were suffering. I think that the UFW has really helped change this image, which helped us get unemployment and disability insurance, and eventually federal aid for children. We were able to remove the citizenship requirements for public assistance, a law that they have just turned around.
LRM: What was the original goal of the UFW, and how has it changed today?
DH: It’s still the same, to organize a national union of farm workers, so that the farm workers can negotiate contracts and be protected legally. Originally, we thought that the farm workers had enough power to be recognized as a union on their own. What happened immediately was that we had to go to the general public, with the grape boycott. Now, with our strawberry campaign, we’re doing just that.
Our other role was one that we never even thought about [in the beginning]. The farm workers movement sort of spawned what we now call the Chicano Movement. That role has grown because one of the things we do is teach people how to work together and develop leadership. There have been many leaders who have come out of our union, for instance, Miguel Contreras, the Secretary/Treasurer of the Los Angeles Federation of Labor, and Service Employees International representative Eliseo Medina, who were both grape pickers. I think this role will have more of an impact in the growing Latino community than the union itself.
LRM: Over the past few years, the UFW has again become very visible. What are your current goals?
DH: Our main priority is the strawberry campaign. The strawberry industry has 20,000 workers who work under very bad conditions. Every attempt that we have made with the growers, when we’ve talked to workers, when the workers have gone on strike or talked about sexual harassment, the growers have actually gotten tractors and plowed the berries under.
The strawberry campaign is a campaign of morality. We’re hoping that this moral pressure will be sufficient that we won’t have to go to a boycott, so we won’t have to go to a strike. When we’ve had strikes in the past, people have been killed. We hope to avoid that.
In the meantime, we have a campaign with Gallo Wine up in Sonoma County. In the last five years, they’ve only given their workers one ten-cent raise. And some of their managers make very derogatory statements about the workers, that they’re just Mexicans, only good for a pick and shovel. Gallo workers voted for representation in 1994, and we still haven’t been able to negotiate a contract. We also have a campaign going on in Florida, for mushroom workers, and we just signed a contract with a rose company.
LRM: How can Lowrider magazine readers help you with the strawberry campaign?
DH: If you go to one of the chain stores that have endorsed the campaign – Ralph’s, Lucky, even Safeway just signed on – just thank them for supporting the farm workers. Also, one of the big companies who cools strawberries is a company called Driscoll Associates, and that cooler ships the largest number of strawberries. The growers who ship through Driscoll probably employ 5000 workers. You can call or write to them and say, “Hey, why don’t you just do the right thing and let the workers organize?”
What they’ve done is intimidate and even fire some of the pro-union workers. We’ve had workers who have had their tires slashed, their cars spray-painted, some workers have even received death threats because they want a union. We just want Driscoll to be “hands off,” like Cal Coastal, and let the workers decide if they want to organize. The Labor Relations Act says that workers have the right to organize, and they can organize themselves into a union without fear of intimidation, coercion or threats, and that’s what these workers have to face every day if they’re pro-union.
LRM: Is the grape boycott still in effect?
DH: We’re still asking people not to eat [conventionally grown] California table grapes, which is simply because of the pesticides on the grapes.
LRM: Recently, you’ve been working with Jesse Jackson fighting proposition 209 [the California law that repeals affirmative action, a group of laws guaranteeing minorities and women equal access to jobs as White men]. Where does 209 stand now, and how will it affect young Mexican-Americans?
DH: This is all part of the public policy laws that have been pushed by that have been pushed by [California] Governor Wilson and the Republican party, because they are trying to limit the political influence and the education of the Latino community, primarily the Mexican-American community. They are building more jails, trying to shut the door on higher education, trying to get rid of bilingual education. For children [beginning primary education], that will make it more difficult to begin learning. It’s all part of a terrible, racist mindset.
Right now on Proposition 209, we’re calling on California cities to disobey the law. Mayor Willie Brown in San Francisco has said that in his city, affirmative action will continue. He says that he will honor federal law, and federal law says that you have to have affirmative action programs; affirmative action opens the door. The United States flag flies higher than the California flag.
LRM: According to the Los Angeles Times, many in the Latino community are opposed to bilingual education, saying that it keeps children from learning English.
DH: They did the same thing on Proposition 187 [a California initiative barring children of undocumented immigrants from public schools]. They go out of there way to find a few people, Latinos, who support something that most of the community is against. One of the main Latinos against bilingual education is a republican from Chile – he’s not even from the United States. They find a few of these people who will go out and make these statements for them. There are large masses of recent immigrants, not just from Mexico, but from Cambodia, Laos, Korea and other places. All these children need bilingual education. It’s reactionary and regressive to remove bilingual education from the classroom. Governor Wilson reaches these people by tapping into the inherent racism in society.
[Wilson] also does it by deceiving the public, like they did on 209. In Houston, Texas, a similar initiative, Proposition A, was voted down – it asked clearly, “Do you want to repeal affirmative action?” Houston answered “No!” In California, it was called the Civil Rights Initiative, so people were very confused as to what the law really meant.
LRM: For the past two decades, lowrider car clubs have been trying to organize in cities across the Southwest, against police harassment and anti-cruising laws, with varying degrees of success. Do you have any advice for these organizers?
DH: Don’t despair, don’t give up. The lowrider culture is a beautiful culture because it is one of preservation, a true Latino invention. Don’t stop organizing. The media demonizes our youth; some 750 Latinos graduated from the University of Arizona last year, and half are going into teaching. But all that the media covers are the gangs. We can’t let this happen.
You have a lot of leadership in the lowrider organizations. Because of the whole lowrider culture, these people have been able to earn a very strong position in the community. But it’s more of a cultural position. They’ve got to get involved politically. Besides the MEChA groups, the college and student groups, I would say that lowriders have the biggest influence on Latino youth. They can use that leadership position. You have a lot of organizations that are government funded. Lowriders are the true entrepreneurs, because they have funded themselves, organized themselves. This is real grassroots leadership.
Then, when you have a lowrider show, get everyone registered to vote. Let local politicians know what you are doing. Find out where they stand on the issues you care about, and if you like them, say, “OK, Ms. So-and-so, Mr. So-and-so, we are willing to support your campaign for city council. We’ll come out and help you get elected. But, if we do this for you, you’ve got to give us a safe place to cruise…Lowrider organizations fighting for their own rights can be powerful here…the youth will follow the lowriders.