On this day in 1970, the largest U.S. farm worker strike in history, known as the "Salad Bowl Strike", began when field workers, organized with César Chávez and the United Farm Workers (UFW), struck, doubling the price of lettuce and costing sellers $500,000 a day.

The UFW had just won the Delano Grape Strike, which had lasted an astonishing five years, winning contracts with dozens of grape growers that were the first of their kind in agricultural history.

The origins of the Salad Bowl Strike lay in a jurisdictional dispute with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which had won the right to organize field workers after concluding a successful strike of drivers and packers in the lettuce producing sector in July.

The UFW strongly contested this claim, and, after negotiations broke down, between 5,000-7,000 field workers went on strike. The labor action was not just a strike, but also included mass pickets, boycotts, and secondary boycotts by the participants.

The price of lettuce almost doubled immediately, and the interruption to work cost lettuce growers approximately $500,000 a day. The strike was a bitter dispute which suffered violence and state repression. César Chávez, a leading labor organizer, was jailed after refusing to stop the picketing on court order. On November 4th, 1970 a UFW regional office was bombed.

The strike ended on March 26th, 1971 when the Teamsters and UFW signed a new jurisdictional agreement reaffirming the UFW's right to organize field workers, however jurisdictional disputes between the UFW and Teamsters continued for years afterward. In 1975, the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act (CALRA) became law, establishing the right to collective bargaining for farmworkers in that state, a first in U.S. history.

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  • heartheartbreak [fae/faer]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Bob avakian is the cult leader/"Great Man" of the RCP (Revolutionary Communist Party). The RCP was a fairly regular NCM (New Communist Movement of the 60s and 70s) group up until the 90s where they started on their weird cult shit.

    New Communism is Bobby's "synthesis" of maoism and American conditions, including the idea of sepultura - that every revolution needs to be led by a great man. This is why they can't shut the fuck up about adrenochrome bobby. Loads of allegations of misogyny and abuse you could probably pretty easily find if you search it up online. I'm like 90% convinced the whole thing is a puppet of the alphabet boys to make revolutionary politics look completely untenable. Sadly the other 10% is that all of their membership seem to be old folk from back in the day who are for whatever reason incapable of stopping.

    Genuine joke, but relatively popular in the 70s and they recognized the BP as the vanguard as did many other NCM orgs.