AND CESAR CHAVEZ

To the Editors of The Crimson:

Peter Ferrara's article on the United Farmworkers in Monday's Crimson contains a number of important factual misrepresentations and misleading statements which should be corrected.

1. "Farmworkers were averaging $4.50 to $5.50 an hour with piece work before there was any union." According to the Department of Agriculture, median daily earnings of full time farmworkers (those working on farms for over 150 days a year) were only $10.90 in 1970. Mr. Ferrara's claim that UFW statistics come from averaging full and part time workers' annual wages is simply not true. Malcolm Lovell, Assistant Secretary of Labor, has testified that the average Chicano family of six, all working full time in the fields, makes $3,350 a year--hardly Mr. Ferrara's "$8000 to $12,000."

2. "Rich corporations and conglomerates are only a very small part of the agricultural industry." This statement is true for the industry as a whole. But Mr. Ferrara's implication that it holds for growers whose workers the UFW is organizing is incorrect and misleading. Corporate farms in California account for 90% of the melon crop and 30% of the citrus crop, two of the main areas of UFW activity. Two corporations control over a third of the nation's production of leafy green vegetables, another key area of UFW organizing. (National, 6/15/71). And Gallo wine, currently the main target of the UFW boycott in Cambridge, produces at least 37% of all domestic wine (Fortune 9/71), and is worth an estimated $250 million (Business Week, 9/19/70).

3. "The farmworkers do not support Chavez and his strikes." As evidence of this "fact" Mr. Ferrara cites several positions and a survey of "71 non-union grape pickers." Unfortunately, there is no way of saying exactly how extensive support for the union is. The UFW has called for elections to determine what the workers want. But the growers and the Teamsters have consistently refused, bitterly opposing state and federal laws that would require union elections.

There is, however, no shortage of clear evidence that the workers support the UFW. In a recent poll of nearly 1000 grape pickers in 31 fields, conducted by an independent group of Congressmen and religious leaders, 80 workers voted for the Teamsters, 78 for no union, and 795 for the UFW. And the California Supreme Court, after reviewing the evidence, declared in 1972 in a 6-1 decision that "...a majority of field workers desired to be repesented by the UFW and expressed no desire to have the Teamsters represent them."

4. "Chavez's strike was a complete hoax." Here Mr. Ferrara cites as evidence the testimony of one state official. But according to L.A. Times reporters, the UFW strikes have had overwhelming support from the workers. They reported that in 1973, over 90% of the grape workers in the Coachella Valley struck, despite the best efforts of the growers and the Teamsters. And Inter-Harvest, California's largest lettuce grower, was forced to admit, "The Teamsters have our contracts, but the UFW has our workers." (Nation, 9/3/73).

There is one final attack on the UFW implicit in Mr. Ferrara's article which should not go unanswered. Mr. Ferrara repeatedly refers to the UFW as "Chavez." He speaks of "Chavez" getting control of workers, of "Chavez's strike," of workers not supporting "Chavez." There is the constant implication that the union is controlled and manipulated by one man. This is the hardest kind of attack to rebut, because it is never even stated explicitly, much less documented. But if Mr. Ferrara thinks that the UFW is undemocratically run, if he thinks that the election of Chavez by a vote of the entire membership was somehow rigged, if he thinks that the UFW policy of requiring a vote of the membership on all important policy decisions is somehow being ignored, let him present his evidence. Steven Carlip '75