LABOR: Render unto Cesar

In a bitter and sometimes violent struggle that dragged on for more than a decade, Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers Union battled the Teamsters in what the Chicano leader called an “all-out war” to organize workers in California’s vineyards and truck farms. Last week, before television cameras, the two unions signed a peace treaty that gives the field hands to the U.F.W., and the canners, packers and farm-truck drivers to the Teamsters. The unlikely allies pledged to honor each other’s picket lines, support each other’s organizing efforts and cooperate in seeking legislation to strengthen the right of farm workers to union representation. “Both of us were fed up with fighting,” said an exultant Chavez as he signed the agreement with M.E. Anderson, director of the Western Conference of Teamsters. “Now the battle starts with the real opponents—the growers.” Teamsters President Frank Fitzsimmons flew from Washington to give his blessing.

Holy Cause. Which leaves unanswered the real question: Why did the Teamsters give up a fight they had been winning? Under the agreement, the Teamsters will render unto Cesar workers whom they had been taking away from him. Using their financial resources and, according to the U.F.W., “goon squads,” the Teamsters had already persuaded more than 50,000 of California’s 250,000 agricultural workers to join them rather than the U.F.W. Chavez, who is better at persuading liberals to regard boycotting grapes and lettuce as a holy cause than he is at administering union services or efficiently parceling out jobs, had seen the membership of his union dwindle from a high of more than 60,000 in 1972 to a low of 5,000 in 1974 (current membership: 18,000).

Chavez aides claim that the Teamsters feared they would lose a jurisdictional dispute now pending before the California agricultural labor relations board and thus have to surrender 50,000 workers to Chavez involuntarily. But the real reason for the Teamsters’ cave-in seems to be public relations: the scandal-scarred Teamsters are under heavy attack. An investigation of the union’s Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund, often accused of funneling money to the Mafia, is still under way at the U.S. Department of Labor. This week, Federal officials will announce a plan forcing all Teamster members off the fund’s board of trustees. In this climate. Teamsters leaders may well have thought that by giving in to Chavez, still a liberal hero, they could for once appear to be on the side of peace and brotherhood.

Chavez was more than willing to clasp the Teamsters’ hand. He expects his union to gain 22,000 new members by year’s end. With a firm base in California, the charismatic Chicano could then move on to other Western states. Last week’s U.F.W.-Teamsters agreement applies to 13 Western states for five years, and provides that after two years the unions will begin negotiations to make the agreement national. If that happens, the agriculture industry could be forced to drop its opposition to a national collective-bargaining law for farm workers, and Chavez could be on his way to realizing what generations of union organizers have looked on as an unattainable goal: a national farm workers’ union.