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ring the crep harvested. eu. . have to wait and see who is right. The following points my * be kept in nind if dne is to underst& : fully why the strike exists. A, At the heart of the grower-Teamster /UFU dispute is the issue of the hiring hall. The UFW maintains that the hiring hall is essential in ordez to check grow- er exploitation of the farm worker. The background on this issue has to din ith the gynverst practice of using 8 “labor coniractor™ to get the field workers to bring in the harvest. The UF yhas aluays fought against the presence uf the labor contractor (or its equiva- Nlent); thus the labor contractor vs. the hiring hall was the major bone of conten- tion between the growers and the UFW. How does the labor contractor operate in theory? Suppose e grower needs 200 field workers. Most likelyhe will have & lauor contractors whose job it will be “to get 50 workers to do the work in the fields. In this system many abuses can develop end have developed over the years. In the past labor contractors would be paid a lump sum by the grower; the labor contractor would then pey the farm worker out of his preket. Hence he could main- tein the "power of the purse." He could ask for 2 payoff for giving someone @ job __.#8 well as a percentage of the farm work- er's wages. If a woman is asking for a job, she may have to do the labor contrac- tor a “favor" or tuo. Lebor contractors -have been know to hire only young men (20 to 4D years of age) whom they could force to work fast and thus get the most out of the wages they pay. Thus women and older men would be’ discriminated against. Cer- tainly there would always be the problem pf the labor contracter hiring only his favorites. Tp make sure that these abuses would cease the UFLi has demanded in its caon- tracts that there be e hiring hall; the 2 gworkers receive jobs through a seniority =i system. A person's seniority in the UFW “\is determined according to how long one has heen a member of the union. Suppose a grower needs 200 workers to pick grapes. He would send this request g hell in Coachella. The netched to the crower 2 aty. 21 usually have a foreman for every 50 men Thy Grou: - : Z whose task f sis assign work .and co- ordinate the effo.vs of the crew. He has no suthority,*a hire. Growers compleir . that the hirl 4) hall cannot work, ‘and this they maintain, was the major reason why they refused to sign again with Ceser Chavez. The Teamsters did not push the idea of the hiring hall in their contract and so the growers signed with them. The deal the Teamsters made with the growers has been called in the media ea "sweet- heart contract." We can see exectly what this means in relation to the labor con- tractor. The Teamster-grower contract @ sweetheart deal in the sense that the union (Teamsters) has sold out the workers by negotiatiing a contract for the good is of the employers and not the workers, e.g., labor contractor issue. The UFW maintains that the Teamster "foremen" is the equivalent of the la- bor contractor, and hence there are the same old abuses creeping in. The grow- ers on the other hand say there is no substance to this charge and that the role of the foreman is to provide field workers and coordinate work efforts. $1.6 Million from Meany B. 150 fight the growers and the Team- sters the UF has been given $1.6 mil- lion for strike benefits by George Meany, AFL-CIO chief. Each person on strike is given $90 per week (the strike breakers in the fields are making about $120 per week). Those on strike do more than just sit home and collect pey checks. All strikers meet at the local Coechella park at 4:30 a.m. daily. Picket captains group the strikers who then begin to set out in caravans of cars and buses to the fields of the growers. Their aim is to arrive at the entrances of the fielts be- fore the scabs, where the UFU strikers talk to them and encourege them tc join the "huelge"(strike). Each picket line is equipped with a loud speaker anc so throughout the morning UF leaders telk to the workers in the fields, asking them to come out and join their brothers and sisters on the picket line. Work i the field ends around 171.00 a.m. ur noon. (The sugar content in the sreres is reduced with the 115° temperatu and therefore pitkingo must enc c ro day). elds they are fi ic camp by UFW representatives, and further —— wn