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Chicano-Indian American Cultural Center miscellaneous newsletters, 1977-1978
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Live without lettuce In years past many members of the university and Iowa City communities have given staunch and commendable support to the struggle of the United Farm Workers. Fast numbers of workers, people who understand the life-and-death demand for collective bargaining and workers' control over their livlihood, have joined us across the nation; and, in spite of heavyhanded reactions on the part of the bosses and governmental agencies, we helped promulgate significant successes in the struggle to unionize California grape fields. In a column elsewhere on today's Opinion Page is a further call for support from us as consumers, along with a lucid explanation of the issue within its proper context. Americans can live without lettuce, but there exists workers who may well not live without the potential for power this boycott represents. Nor can our society live with the cancer of injustice. Keep working to end slave labor. Boycott lettuce! Stan Rowe Lowell May Steve Baker Des Moines Register Page 14 Tues., Sept. 5, 1972 Spurn Lettuce, Catholics Urged (The Register's Iowa News Service) DAVENPORT, IA. -- The national boycott of non-union lettuce being pushed by the United Farm Workers (UFW) was supported Monday by the Social Action Department of the Catholic Diocese of Davenport. A statement issued by the department urges all church-related institutions such as hospitals, schools and homes for the elderly, as well as rectories, convents and individual families to support the boycott by eating only union lettuce or giving up all lettuce for the duration of the boycott. Since the Catholic Church has dropped the most mandatory penance, the Social Action Department statement suggested the lettuce boycott would be an opportunity for voluntary penance. U.S. Does Little About Tragic Abuses of Child Farm Labor An editorial in the Los Angeles Times. SECRETARY of Labor James D. Hodgson placed a mild interpretation on his department's lengthy study of the conditions of migrant farm workers. After stating that the "Labor Department has recognized over the years that many workers in rural areas have had to put of with inferior working conditions and wage rates," he conceded on the basis of the report that "it is clear to us that our corrective measures have not been strong enough and in some cases have not been fully carried out. What the study revealed was considerably more than that. Not only has the department's Rural Manpower Service failed to curb widespread exploitation of migrant farm workers, but has often helped to institutionalize abuses. 8-Year-Old On Tractor This is an old story. The hard, cruel facts about farm labor have been laid out often enough. Despite the efforts of Cesar Chavez, migrant workers remain largely unorganized and are among the most defenseless people in America. Child labor is an inseparable part of the problem. Thousands upon thousands of children, some as young as six years old, are working on the farms of this nation for a pittance. Romantic myths to the contrary, they are exploited as a cheap source of labor. One migratory worker said, "I want my children to go to summer camp or school while I work. I would like to see my 11-year-old son not having to push the 40-pound tomato bushels all through the fields." Was this account exaggerated, was this boy an exception? Hardly. A farm operator in the San Joaquin Valley was fined for permitting a boy to drive a tractor pulling a tomato harvester. The boy was eight years old. It is estimated that of the 400,000 farm workers in California, one quarter are children. One California labor law investigator reports that more than 10,000 children under 12 work illegally in the raisin harvests each fall in Fresno and Madera counties. [2 photos] CESAR CHAVEZ (on left) JAMES D. HODGSON (on right) The children's work force in the fields nationally is estimated between 600,000 and 800,000. The Senate subcommittee on migratory labor has documented nationwide exploitation of child labor. Children were found working in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas for as little as 40 cents a day. A study last year reported that 35 per cent of the potato crop in Aroostock County, Maine, is hand-harvested mostly by children. Survival At Stake The farm laws are inadequate and these inadequate laws are inadequately enforced, due in part to an insufficient number of law enforcement personnel. But there are other reasons. The Rural Manpower Service was set up to bring farm jobs and workers together. Later, it was given authority to deal with problems of rural workers. yet the Labor Department's own report on the agency said that when it made mistakes it made them "in favor of the employer to the detriment of the worker" it was supposed to protect. Laws protecting migrant labor should be improved and they should be enforced for, if no other reason, the protection of exploited children. These are not children who skip out to the fields to work as much or as little as they please to earn a little pocket money. These are children who have to work to survive and they often work long hours and live under unsanitary conditions. Worst of all they are deprived of any chance for a happy childhood.
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Live without lettuce In years past many members of the university and Iowa City communities have given staunch and commendable support to the struggle of the United Farm Workers. Fast numbers of workers, people who understand the life-and-death demand for collective bargaining and workers' control over their livlihood, have joined us across the nation; and, in spite of heavyhanded reactions on the part of the bosses and governmental agencies, we helped promulgate significant successes in the struggle to unionize California grape fields. In a column elsewhere on today's Opinion Page is a further call for support from us as consumers, along with a lucid explanation of the issue within its proper context. Americans can live without lettuce, but there exists workers who may well not live without the potential for power this boycott represents. Nor can our society live with the cancer of injustice. Keep working to end slave labor. Boycott lettuce! Stan Rowe Lowell May Steve Baker Des Moines Register Page 14 Tues., Sept. 5, 1972 Spurn Lettuce, Catholics Urged (The Register's Iowa News Service) DAVENPORT, IA. -- The national boycott of non-union lettuce being pushed by the United Farm Workers (UFW) was supported Monday by the Social Action Department of the Catholic Diocese of Davenport. A statement issued by the department urges all church-related institutions such as hospitals, schools and homes for the elderly, as well as rectories, convents and individual families to support the boycott by eating only union lettuce or giving up all lettuce for the duration of the boycott. Since the Catholic Church has dropped the most mandatory penance, the Social Action Department statement suggested the lettuce boycott would be an opportunity for voluntary penance. U.S. Does Little About Tragic Abuses of Child Farm Labor An editorial in the Los Angeles Times. SECRETARY of Labor James D. Hodgson placed a mild interpretation on his department's lengthy study of the conditions of migrant farm workers. After stating that the "Labor Department has recognized over the years that many workers in rural areas have had to put of with inferior working conditions and wage rates," he conceded on the basis of the report that "it is clear to us that our corrective measures have not been strong enough and in some cases have not been fully carried out. What the study revealed was considerably more than that. Not only has the department's Rural Manpower Service failed to curb widespread exploitation of migrant farm workers, but has often helped to institutionalize abuses. 8-Year-Old On Tractor This is an old story. The hard, cruel facts about farm labor have been laid out often enough. Despite the efforts of Cesar Chavez, migrant workers remain largely unorganized and are among the most defenseless people in America. Child labor is an inseparable part of the problem. Thousands upon thousands of children, some as young as six years old, are working on the farms of this nation for a pittance. Romantic myths to the contrary, they are exploited as a cheap source of labor. One migratory worker said, "I want my children to go to summer camp or school while I work. I would like to see my 11-year-old son not having to push the 40-pound tomato bushels all through the fields." Was this account exaggerated, was this boy an exception? Hardly. A farm operator in the San Joaquin Valley was fined for permitting a boy to drive a tractor pulling a tomato harvester. The boy was eight years old. It is estimated that of the 400,000 farm workers in California, one quarter are children. One California labor law investigator reports that more than 10,000 children under 12 work illegally in the raisin harvests each fall in Fresno and Madera counties. [2 photos] CESAR CHAVEZ (on left) JAMES D. HODGSON (on right) The children's work force in the fields nationally is estimated between 600,000 and 800,000. The Senate subcommittee on migratory labor has documented nationwide exploitation of child labor. Children were found working in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas for as little as 40 cents a day. A study last year reported that 35 per cent of the potato crop in Aroostock County, Maine, is hand-harvested mostly by children. Survival At Stake The farm laws are inadequate and these inadequate laws are inadequately enforced, due in part to an insufficient number of law enforcement personnel. But there are other reasons. The Rural Manpower Service was set up to bring farm jobs and workers together. Later, it was given authority to deal with problems of rural workers. yet the Labor Department's own report on the agency said that when it made mistakes it made them "in favor of the employer to the detriment of the worker" it was supposed to protect. Laws protecting migrant labor should be improved and they should be enforced for, if no other reason, the protection of exploited children. These are not children who skip out to the fields to work as much or as little as they please to earn a little pocket money. These are children who have to work to survive and they often work long hours and live under unsanitary conditions. Worst of all they are deprived of any chance for a happy childhood.
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