State Representatives Pass Resolution As Support for Farm Workers Cools

The Massachusetts House of Representatives withdrew its support for the United Farm Workers union boycott of non-union grapes and lettuce yesterday.

A resolution passed yesterday modified a strongly pro-UFW resolution passed by the House and the Senate last Wednesday after Cesar Chavez, director of the UFW, was introduced on the House floor.

The new resolution, introduced after State Representative John F. Melia made a motion to reconsider the earlier resolution, avoids any specific mention of the UFW. It does, however, support the UFW position on the right of the farm workers to choose their own union in "free and fair" elections, and it condemns growers who force their workers to accept a union chosen by the grower alone.

State Representative Barney Frank, a speaker at the UFW rally on the State House steps last Tuesday and firm supporter of the original resolution, said yesterday that the new resolution was a defeat for the UFW. "It was a compromise," Frank said, "But in the current context, the new resolution still supports the UFW as opposed to the Teamsters."

The representatives just wanted a "neutral" resolution in the face of the UFW-Teamster struggle in California," Frank said yesterday. "They hate to take sides between the Teamsters and the AFL-CIO" which supports the UFW.

"I've always supported the cause of the itinerant farm workers in Massachusetts," Melia said yesterday. "But there is nothing we can do for the California farm workers."