"No Grapes!"--a spirited rallying cry of the labor movement and the political left for much of the last four decades--officially receded into history Tuesday as the United Farm Workers of America declared an end to its protracted boycott of California table grapes.
The announcement by UFW President Arturo S. Rodriguez makes official what had already become a fait accompli; the union and even its loyal followers had mostly lost interest in the sanction against the state's grape growers.
Rodriguez said he ended the UFW's third grape boycott, which began 16 years ago, because of a recent string of farm worker victories that included the elimination of many of the pesticides the embargo had targeted.
"Some goals of that boycott have already been met," Rodriguez said in a letter to a farm worker support group. "Cesar Chavez's crusade to eliminate use of five of the most toxic chemicals plaguing farm workers and their families has been largely successful.
"It is not fair to ask our supporters to honor a boycott," Rodriguez said, "when the union must devote all of its present resources toward organizing and negotiating contracts."
Farm industry leaders welcomed the announcement, but said they believe that the union's move amounts to a concession that the boycott has failed to hurt the ever-expanding table grape business.
"The bottom line is that it never worked. It wasn't effective," said Bob Krauter, a spokesman for the California Farm Bureau Federation. "The union just had to have something to say when they called it off."
The boycott that ended this week was a pale imitation of two earlier union table grape sanctions, which galvanized farm workers and liberals as Chavez created the nation's first viable agricultural union.
The first boycott began in Delano, Calif., in 1963, as the fledgling union attempted to pressure growers to sign union contracts. UFW activists traveled in caravans to cities across America. They picketed in front of supermarkets, raising consciousness about farm workers and becoming a favorite cause for college activists. Chavez called off that first boycott in 1970, with the union in triumph and contracts in place with the state's largest grape growers.
But three years later, the boycott began again, this time with the UFW on the defensive after losing most of its labor agreements to the Teamsters Union, which signed sweetheart deals with growers.
