In the late 1970s, the future of organized labor in the fields of California had never looked brighter. A decade of boycotts, strikes, and marches had generated public and political pressure that culminated in the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act—“the best labor law in the country,” the United Farm Workers’ chief negotiator triumphantly proclaimed in June 1975. Soon thereafter, the Teamsters agreed to withdraw and cede organizing in the fields to Cesar Chávez's union, ending a costly and violent rivalry.

And yet, when Chávez brought his executive board and close advisers to a retreat in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains in February 1977, one of the few things they all agreed was that their union was floundering. “There's nothing between us and getting the workers organized right now,” Chávez says, on a tape recording of the meeting. “All obstacles are removed. We finally climbed the hill and we're at the flatland—and we can't go.”Footnote ¹

Why did the UFW, which attained such remarkable success in its early David vs. Goliath struggles, fail to achieve that which so many architects of its early triumphs believed was a goal well within its reach: a successful, sustainable labor union for farmworkers? For many who committed years to the farmworkers’ struggle in the 1960s and 1970s, the question has haunted them for decades. The answers are, of course, complex, and external forces influenced the UFW's trajectory. Yet, in its heyday, the hallmark of the UFW was its ability to overcome odds that appeared almost insurmountable, to challenge the most entrenched, hostile political establishments and agribusiness powers, and to rise phoenix-like from each defeat, to fight and win once again. That the UFW disintegrated at the very time it had achieved its greatest political success and appeared on the verge of becoming an established national union—that is the paradox.

The passage of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act (ALRA), the law that granted farmworkers the right to organize and protected union activity in the fields, marked a key, historical dividing line. So another way of framing the question is, why did the ALRA, to this day the only law of its kind in the country, pose such a quandary for Chávez? And how did the passage of the law affect the direction of the union, hasten nascent internal philosophical splits, and precipitate crises that ultimately crippled the organization?

The answers are rooted in events that begin well before the 1975 demarcation. An examination of Cesar Chávez's goals, words, actions, and convictions over time helps explain how the UFW snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and illustrates that, in some sense, the failure of the UFW should not have come as such a surprise.

From 1952 to 1962, Chávez worked for the Community Service Organization (CSO), a grassroots group founded by Fred Ross and funded through Saul Alinsky and the Industrial Areas Foundation. Ross recruited Chávez, who became his star pupil. His decade under Ross's tutelage was central to shaping Chávez's ideas about community organizing. The CSO was quite successful—it organized poor Mexican Americans and, through voter registration drives, citizenship lessons, and legal challenges, taught them how to exert power and make demands on the system. With their success, many of the CSO chapters began to be less concerned about helping poor people and more interested in pursuing an agenda that helped their members transition into the middle class. To Chávez, this was anathema, and he later spoke of it quite often. He left the CSO in 1962, not just because the organization declined to help farmworkers form a union in precisely the manner he advocated, but primarily because of his disdain for the increasingly middle-class objectives that many CSO leaders pursued and the constraints that the organizational bureaucracy placed upon him.

In these beliefs he was consistent throughout his life. Chávez preached the value of sacrifice and expressed contempt for those whose goal was to make more money and to achieve a middle-class lifestyle. In the early fighting years, this philosophy was an asset for the UFW; it helped popularize la causa and enhanced the movement's appeal, proving particularly valuable in attracting religious support. There is, however, an inherent dilemma in the views of a union leader who believes his members should not want to make too much money. Later on, when the union actually had members, this would become a key source of tension.

From his early frustration with the middle-class aspirations of CSO leaders, Chávez extracted an important lesson: When you empower people, they may not choose to use their power in the way you believe they should. This guided his later actions, becoming particularly significant in the late 1970s and early 1980s when an emerging group of farmworker leaders attempted to exercise their new-found power to shape the direction of the union.

A second characteristic of the CSO relevant to this discussion was its decentralized structure. There was a national board, but the two dozen or so local chapters around California had significant autonomy. As national director, Chávez was in some sense hemmed in at both ends—he worked for a board that afforded him limited ability to set his own agenda, and he could not dictate what the local chapters should be doing. This also became an important lesson that influenced his later decisions about how to shape the structure of the UFW—and control members of the executive board—to insure the bulk of the power was vested in the union president.

The early, heady years of the farm workers union, the grape boycott, and the first significant contracts have traditionally formed the spine of the familiar UFW narrative. Journalists and historians alike have tended, until recently, to shy away from writing about the later years, despite extensive documentation.Footnote ² But even during the early years, key indicators of problems that would emerge later on are apparent. I believe these often-overlooked elements are red flags, vital to understanding the union's decline. I will touch on a few, moving chronologically through UFW history.

First is the grape strike, which began in 1965 and lasted five years. One of the leading table grape growers consistently referred to the “so-called strike,” insisting most workers were still in the fields. The UFW ridiculed such statements and successfully promulgated the public fiction of a massive, widespread strike. The growers’ position was far closer to the truth. Either because of necessity or choice, most workers after the first few weeks of the strike returned to work. The vast majority of people on the picket lines were not farm workers, even in the early years.

The historic contracts signed forty-three years ago were not won by workers in the fields; they were won through the boycott, by people in the cities, and primarily because of the frustration of supermarkets who were boycott targets and no longer wanted to suffer financially for the labor difficulties of California grape growers. Almost overnight, in July 1970, tens of thousands of farmworkers found themselves forced to become members of the UFW. The UFW, accustomed to the role of underdog fighter, now needed to become a union that could deliver for its members. Instead, the union imposed practices that alienated workers for decades. Workers had to apply for jobs through unfamiliar, unfriendly union hiring halls largely staffed by young, inexperienced volunteers. Veteran workers were deliberately separated from their longtime employers. Families were divided so they could not work together. Seasonal workers had to pay dues even during months they did not work.

These conflicts have been largely glossed over in the traditional UFW lore, dismissed as minor complications and immediately eclipsed by the far more dramatic confrontation with the Teamsters in the Salinas Valley, a fight that erupted as soon as the grape contracts were signed. The Teamsters war took center stage, and the troubled administration of those dozens of contracts was relegated to a footnote. But the utter failure of the union to effectively administer the table grape contracts deserves more attention. That failure engendered hostility in the vineyards that lasted for many years and hurt the UFW's ability to organize grape workers later on. But arguably more significant is what that failure signaled: The administration of the grape contracts fundamentally did not interest Cesar Chávez. At the point where he might have headed off later problems and won the allegiance of skeptical workers, he showed no interest—despite persistent complaints and warnings from a variety of people, including key religious and labor allies and his own brother, who was stuck trying to make the contracts work. Chávez angrily brushed aside his brother's appeals for help, dismissed complaints as grower propaganda, and expressed disdain for ungrateful workers who had not been the ones to sacrifice to get their contracts. Contract administration was what Chávez would later call “non-missionary” work. He preferred to focus his attention on fighting the Teamsters, competing in an arena in which he proved a masterful strategist.Footnote ³

Tension also arose within the UFW early on over several interlocking issues that would later become divisive flashpoints: volunteerism, the role of farmworkers, and the “movement vs. union” debate. UFW staff worked for $5 a week plus room and board. In practice, many had special deals that enabled them to do this—the union paid off college loans, made mortgage payments, or contributed family assistance. In all likelihood, the volunteer system was not even cost effective. But Chávez was adamant about the need for volunteer status—proclaiming it essential on both pragmatic grounds (necessary to raise money from the public) and philosophical ones (the commitment to sacrifice). One result was that very few farmworkers worked for the union. They couldn't afford to. There was a small cadre of committed workers who could be counted on to take time off to board buses for demonstrations, spend weekends leafleting supermarkets, and dedicate free time to resolving grievances in the field or negotiating contracts. But as one organizer observed at an executive board meeting, it was always the same people, and it was a small group. When he and others argued that the union badly needed farmworkers on staff, and that they should be compensated for the time they put in on union business, the idea was denounced as the first step on a slippery slope—a path that would end in the death of the “movement” that made them special. Anytime he heard grumbling about the volunteer system, Chávez aggressively batted it down. “We'll organize workers as long as we're willing to sacrifice,” he said in 1971. “The moment we stop sacrificing, we stop organizing. I guarantee it.” He singled out farmworkers for criticism, saying those who wanted to earn money should not work for the union but go back to the fields, where they could earn more under the new contracts.Footnote ⁴

And finally, Chávez's leadership style and his control issues, which became controversial in later years, were quite apparent from the start. They were evident in early purges of volunteers, in his dealings with the Filipino leaders after Larry Itliong's Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee merged with Chávez's National Farm Workers Association in 1966, and in his private comments. Here, for example, in January 1969, is Chávez explaining (again from a taped conversation) to a small group of union volunteers his recent conversation with Filipino leaders, who objected to Chávez's autocratic style and complained that they were shut out from decision making: “They said that it was a one-man union. I said, ‘Yes, that's true. If I leave, I bet you that most of the volunteers who work with me would leave.’ I said, ‘They're here mostly because of me.’” He went on to say he would have to “pull a Joseph Stalin” to oust them. “And I don't think I want to do that. By the time I do that, then I'll be a different man. Then I'll do it again for some other reason. More and more and more …’’Footnote ⁵

Those early disagreements—about volunteerism and control—faded far in the background as long as the union was at war. Whether the common enemy was the growers, the Teamsters, or the politicians, Chávez's ability to cast the struggle in black-and-white terms brought everyone together. They were on the side of good, fighting evil. The differences were inconsequential. If democracy was a casualty, if farmworkers had little voice, if someone got purged now and then, none of that mattered during the heat of battle.

Chávez was most comfortable, he said, in the role of the “non-violent Vietcong.” He opposed including farmworkers under the NLRA and was not enthusiastic about a California statute. He recognized that a law would change the playing field and impose rules the union would have to play by. He was reluctant to abandon his role as guerrilla fighter and only endorsed the idea of legislation because he didn't have much choice: In 1973, he needed a strike fund. The price that the AFL-CIO imposed in exchange for its $1.7 million donation was that Chávez support efforts to pass legislation in Sacramento. At the time, with Ronald Reagan as California governor, this seemed like a fairly safe deal. But in 1974, Jerry Brown was elected governor. In his extremely brief inauguration speech, he pledged to bring peace to the fields and basic rights to farmworkers. And in one of the most significant accomplishments of his tenure, he negotiated and signed the ALRA during his first year in office. Elections in the fields began that summer.

Most of the union staff frantically prepared for elections, strategized how to compete against growers and the Teamsters, and lobbied for state regulations advantageous to the union. Chávez took a walk—quite literally. He walked 1,000 miles across California, a peregrination that he saw as a quasi-religious experience. People embraced him, cried, and begged him to stop. “The sacrifice,” he said during the march, “they understand.”Footnote ⁶

Within months, Chávez was itching for a fight again. At a September staff meeting, he took a call from the chair of the ALRB, complained angrily about the way the state was administering elections, and told him the union was prepared to boycott the process. He told his best organizers they were kidding themselves to think they would win more elections; the state was bungling the law so badly the union didn't stand a chance.

But, in fact, they did win more elections, as many of the talented organizers figured out how to make the law work for them. And by 1977 the union had a different problem: They had won so many elections, and negotiated so few contracts, they were losing potential members. In some cases, workers got fed up, as they had voted for the union a year earlier and had not seen a UFW staff member since. In some places, union supporters were fired—illegally—but the union was stretched too thin to defend the workers. Election victories without contracts brought no income. The union was going broke. Chávez forced a vote on the executive board to stop organizing and focus all attention on negotiating contracts. Some board members argued that organizing was not separate from negotiations or administering contracts, but their protests were dismissed. For all intents and purposes, organizing stopped.Footnote ⁷

Volunteerism also became a more significant issue in the late 1970s, for several reasons. The volunteer model worked when the UFW was in crisis mode but was far more problematic in peacetime. Lack of continuity and competent staff hobbled the effort to transition into a functioning union. A core group of competent volunteers were still sent to put out every fire. Growers didn't know who would show up at the next negotiating session. The negotiator might have quit or been reassigned. The new volunteer might know little, if anything, about farmwork, much less the status of negotiations. Very few farmworkers were willing to work for free, and they didn't have families subsidizing them the way many volunteers did. And finally, committed and talented volunteers who had joined the union as young singles, with few, if any, financial responsibilities, were now five or ten years older, with families. They wanted some stability and some security. And they didn't want to have to write Chávez asking permission to buy their child a pair of shoes.

Chávez was clear and consistent. He wanted volunteers committed to a culture of sacrifice, and he believed that communal living—not paid staff—was the solution. He talked, as he had since the late 1960s, about exploring “collectives,’’ and building a broader Poor People's Union. When he spoke about his goals for the UFW, he talked of the need to “educate” workers to understand the importance of sacrifice—particularly recent immigrants who crossed the border to make money. He praised the volunteers, who led by example. “You don't want farmworkers running the union now,” he said in 1976. “With the attitude they have about money, it would be a total goddamn disaster … unless they're taught the other life, it wouldn't work.”Footnote ⁸

He made it clear he would accept no compromise on this issue, and he began to threaten to quit. Here is Chávez at a heated meeting in the summer of 1977:

Debates escalated as the demands for basic stipends by union staff grew. When Chávez saw an opening to end that discussion, he seized the opportunity. The union lawyers, who had from the start earned $600 a month, asked for small raises. Chávez used the request to force a vote affirming the philosophical commitment to volunteerism. Rather than having to debate requests for salaries from ex-farmworkers, he was able to demonize the all-Anglo, pedigreed legal department, turning them into Exhibit A in the need for a renewed commitment to community and shared sacrifice. On the nine-member board, he won by only one vote, an extraordinary split on a board that almost routinely rubber-stamped Chávez's motions. He carried the day, but, in the process, dismantled the legal department, one of the union's best functioning units and a most effective weapon against the growers. Ironically, two years later Chávez was paying more for outside legal counsel than had he granted the lawyers’ requests. But it was never really about the money; it was about control.

That there was no room for dissent became increasingly clear. Dissent was tantamount to disloyalty. Within a short period of time, there was a large exodus of talent among those who had been struggling to build a more traditional labor union. Some left voluntarily; others were purged. Without a stable, competent staff to administer not only the contracts, but also the union's medical insurance plan, health clinics, and pension plan, the need for strong leadership among workers at individual ranches became even more pressing. Strong ranch committees—the crew leaders and committees elected by their peers—could handle grievances, compensate for the paucity of farmworkers working full-time, and act in effect as union staff. For a number of years, at meeting after meeting, there had been discussion about the need to train ranch committees, to write guidelines, to define their responsibilities. Each time, Chávez enthusiastically embraced the idea. And then, each time, he ignored it.

Nevertheless, strong ranch committees emerged in the vegetable fields of Salinas and the Imperial Valley. The leadership evolved primarily out of a 1979 strike, which initially shut down most lettuce production and lasted, in varying strength, for more than eight months. The contracts that ended the strike included a paid representative position, modeled on the UAW contracts. The worker leaders who had helped run the strike became the first generation of farmworkers paid to work full-time on union business.

Chávez had been reluctant to train ranch committees before; this new leadership posed a far more significant threat. He had learned decades ago in CSO the outcome of empowering people who share a different vision. The lettuce workers’ vision was clear: They wanted a smooth-functioning union and competent staff who could administer the medical plan—not a system where workers were jeopardizing their credit rating because health bills went unpaid; not a union where the top aide Chávez dispatched to investigate the workers’ complaints came back and reported finding insurance checks in the union office—in envelopes unopened four years after they had arrived.

The worker leadership headed inexorably toward a clash with Chávez, and it was not a fight they could win. They tried to run two candidates for the board; Chávez changed the election rules. The dissident workers lost, were drummed out of the union, and became an example for all who remained. Loyalty had become the most important commodity, and the last best chance to form a viable union slipped away. In the words of one of the farmworker leaders, who had gone from cutting lettuce to negotiating contracts:

He and others who could have formed the core of a new generation of UFW leaders were instead denounced as traitors, driven out of the union and the fields. Unlike the middle-class volunteers who had jobs and lives to return to when they were purged, the farmworker leaders whose questioning branded them disloyal lost their livelihoods—along with their illusions.

Yes, the UFW in the 1980s battled powerful external forces. The sympathetic Brown administration in Sacramento was replaced in 1983 by a hostile Republican administration that favored the growers. The 1960s were long gone. Illegal immigration increased. But the UFW had faced and defeated tougher challenges in earlier times. This time the destruction came from within.

The ALRA, as Chávez had foreseen, “changed everything.” The stakes became higher, winners and losers emerged more clearly. Fundamental differences in priorities and visions became clear. Chávez was not going to cede control over an organization he had made his life's work, whose very existence was in some ways miraculous. He knew very well the risk of giving up control, and that was not a risk he was willing to take. That decision had profound consequences.