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Ernest Rodriguez' "Impressions," 1960s-1980s

""United Farm Workers Union"" by Ernest Rodriguez Page 1

United Far Workers Union
Ernest Rodriguez

Most Americans have very strong feelings about any attempts to deprive them of their constitutional or civil rights whether it is the rights to vote, freedom of speech, rights to trial by jury. 
There is another civil rights law not always defined as such and that is the rights of industrial workers to organize into unions. This law we know is the National Labor Relations Act which was passed in 1935 creating the National Labor Relations Board and administer the act, 
The NLRB gives protection against unfair labor practices to both labor and management. The NLRB can be appealed to by labor and management to supervise an election where there is a question of whether a union is desired by a group of workers as their bargaining representatives. To insure passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935 farmworkers were excluded although exponents of the law felt that appeal apparatus of the act should be extended to the farm industry. 
This is the dilemma that has led to the present labor dispute in Delano, California and which has attained national proportions in a consumers grape boycott. 
In 1965 the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez at their head against the Organizing Committee of the AFL-CIO went on strike California table grape growers demanding union representation elections as a prelude to contract bargaining. Owning to the farmworkers exclusion from NLRA they therefore could not appeal to the NLRB to supervise on election wherein it could be determined whether or not the pickers of the table grape wished the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee to represent them

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United Far Workers Union Ernest Rodriguez Most Americans have very strong feelings about any attempts to deprive them of their constitutional or civil rights whether it is the rights to vote, freedom of speech, rights to trial by jury. There is another civil rights law not always defined as such and that is the rights of industrial workers to organize into unions. This law we know is the National Labor Relations Act which was passed in 1935 creating the National Labor Relations Board and administer the act, The NLRB gives protection against unfair labor practices to both labor and management. The NLRB can be appealed to by labor and management to supervise an election where there is a question of whether a union is desired by a group of workers as their bargaining representatives. To insure passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935 farmworkers were excluded although exponents of the law felt that appeal apparatus of the act should be extended to the farm industry. This is the dilemma that has led to the present labor dispute in Delano, California and which has attained national proportions in a consumers grape boycott. In 1965 the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez at their head against the Organizing Committee of the AFL-CIO went on strike California table grape growers demanding union representation elections as a prelude to contract bargaining. Owning to the farmworkers exclusion from NLRA they therefore could not appeal to the NLRB to supervise on election wherein it could be determined whether or not the pickers of the table grape wished the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee to represent them