Thread: Forced to Unionize: Is this Cesar Chavez's Legacy-Updated with Chavez video?

Forced to Unionize: Is this Cesar Chavez's Legacy?

• Fri, March 14, 2014

"If Cesar were here today, he certainly wouldn't be supporting what's being done now, which is a union trying to impose itself on employees," Dan Gerawan, co-owner of Gerawan Farms told Reason TV.

http://townhall.com/video/forced-to-unionize-is-this-cesar-chavezs-legacy-n1809092

Chavez interview.

It seems that UFWA has been taken over by folks that see illegals as a source of dues.

Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers of America stridently opposed illegal immigration!

Gordon A Hunsaker
Las Vegas

April 26, 2010

The UFWA (United Farm Workers of America) flag was designed by the cousin of Cesar Chavez. It was designed so that union members could easily reproduce the flag from the crude materials at hand. According to Chavez, “When people see it they know it means dignity.” The black eagle signifies the dark situation of the farm worker. Though many of the UFWA membership were of American Latino decent, there were many, both black and white who were not.

The UFW also adopted an official motto, "Viva la Causa" (Long Live Our Cause).However as you will soon read that “Causa” Chavez’s “Causa” was opposed to illegal immigration!

In the period of 1965 to 1981 the UFWA made great strides for the Latino American “stoop labors,” raising wages significantly across the board. Alas those raises have now all but disappeared due to the influx, deluge really, of illegal workers.

Chaves knew from up-close and personal contacts with the illegals, what a detrimental effect they would have on other legal Latin Americans who earned their daily bread as stoop labor in the fields. Chaves, who is now heralded as the patron saint of theReconquista movement. (A movement on the part of certain militant Latin Americans to reclaim all of the South West United States for Mexico).

In truth he was anything but.

These groups who so claim seem to turn history on its’ head at will by portraying Che Guevara as a benevolent man of the people when history tells us that he was little more than a murder. In fact Cesar Chaves was at the height of his popularity and power stridently opposed to illegal immigration, actively fighting against them in a number of different ways.

Chaves was a student of the laws of life: one of which is the law of supply and demand. The greater the supply of labor the lower the wages of those who perform it.

Following the lead of Samuel Gompers who called for immigration-restricting laws in 1924, Cesar Chaves was both open and active in the opposition of illegal immigration. According to Chaves the illegal’s hampered his ability to unionize farm workers and thus increase their wages.

“When the farm workers strike and their strike is successful, the employers go to Mexico and have unlimited, unrestricted use of illegal alien strikebreakers to break the strike. And, for over 30 years, the Immigration and Naturalization Service has looked the other way and assisted in the Strikebreaking. I do not remember one single instance in 30 years where the Immigration service has removed strikebreakers. … The employers use professional smugglers to recruit and transport human contraband across the Mexican border for the specific act of strikebreaking …” 1979 testimony to Congress

According to a 2006 article in The American Conservative by Steve Sailer, although Chavez's union, the United Farm Workers, did manage to raise wages significantly for stoop laborers from 1965 to 1981, those gains have largely disappeared for one reason: illegal immigration.

In 1969, Ralph Abernathy, the successor of Dr. Martin Luther King’s leadership of the Southern Leadership Conference, Senator Walter Mondale and Cesar Chavez led a march to the Mexican border in protestation of illegal immigration.

And Cesar Chavez took another step toward anti-illegal immigration one that was on occasion violent. Cesar Chavez formed a Minutemen-like border patrol of American Latinos lead by his brother who patrolled the Arizona-California borders with Mexico. On more than one occasion they beat illegal Mexicans whom they caught coming across the border and sent the back the way that they came. Chavez went a step further, he routinely reported suspected illegal immigrants to immigration officials.

Cesar Chavez’s opposition to illegal immigration did stop here but I will—until next time.

http://www.examiner.com/article/cesa...al-immigration

Obama to Establish National Monument to Cesar Chavez -- a Foe of Illegal Immigration

October 2, 2012 - 12:52 PM
By Fred Lucas, CNS News

Cesar Chavez and California Gov. Edmund Brown Jr., walk in UFW march, Aug. 11, 1979. (AP photo)

(CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama will travel to California next Monday to establish a national monument honoring Cesar Chavez, the late Mexican-American farm workers’ leader.

Ironically, Chavez, the founder of the United Farm Workers union, was a foe of open borders and led a 1969 march on the California-Mexico border to oppose illegal immigration.

“Cesar Chavez gave a voice to poor and disenfranchised workers everywhere,” Obama said in a statement.

“La Paz was at the center of some of the most significant civil rights moments in our nation’s history, and by designating it a national monument, Chávez’ legacy will be preserved and shared to inspire generations to come.”
Obama will travel to Keene, Calif., on Oct. 8 -- less than a month before Election Day -- where he hopes to galvanize both the Hispanic and organized labor vote against Republican opponent Mitt Romney.

The monument was designated under the Antiquities Act and will be established on the property known as Nuestra Señora Reina de la Paz (Our Lady Queen of Peace), or La Paz, according to the White House.

In 1979, Chavez testified before Congress about farm workers and the problem of illegal immigration.

In his remarks before the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources during the 96th Congress, Chavez complained about illegal immigrants being brought in by growers as strikebreakers. (The testimony is posted on the University of Houston Digital History Web site.)

“For so many years we have been involved in agricultural strikes; organizing almost 30 years as a worker, as an organizer, and as president of the union--and for all these almost 30 years it is apparent that when the farm workers strike and their strike is successful, the employers go to Mexico and have unlimited, unrestricted use of illegal alien strikebreakers to break the strike,” Chavez told senators.

“And, for over 30 years, the Immigration and Naturalization Service has looked the other way and assisted in the strikebreaking,” he said.
“I do not remember one single instance in 30 years where the Immigration service has removed strikebreakers -- The employers use professional smugglers to recruit and transport human contraband across the Mexican border for the specific act of strikebreaking,” he added.

“We have observed all these years the Immigration Service has a policy as it has been related to us, that they will not take sides in any agricultural labor dispute -- They have not taken sides means permitting the growers to have unrestricted use of illegal aliens as strikebreakers, and if that isn't taking sides, I don't know what taking sides means.”

On Nov. 5, 2009, when Congress voted to name a U.S. Post Office after Chavez, Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.) spoke about Chavez’s tough stance on border enforcement.

“Mr. Speaker, there is a lotabout Cesar Chavez that a lot of people don't remember. The fact is that he was a decorated naval veteran. Also, they don't remember that Cesar Chavez was probably a good, well, 20 years ahead of his time. In fact, Cesar Chavez in 1969 led the first march on the Mexican border to protest illegal immigration,” Bilbray said.

César Chávez at a United Farm Workers rally, 1974. (Photo: Wikipedia)

“He was accompanied by Walter Mondale and Ralph Abernathy at that time to alert all to the problems that were equating with illegal immigration at that time. In fact, in 1979, Mr. Chavez, testifying before Congress, pointed out that when farm workers strike and their strike is successful, the employers go to Mexico and have unlimited, unrestricted use of illegal immigrants to break our strikes.”

“He also pointed out that the employers used professional smugglers to recruit and transport human contraband across the Mexican border specifically to break the union strikes of the farm workers. I think as we recognize him, we understand that history does repeat itself,” Bilbray continued.

“Years and years later, 20 years later, there were those raising the issue of the impact on the working class by illegal immigration, but first and foremost there was Cesar Chavez at the Mexican border saying illegal immigration is hurting us more than anybody is willing to admit and that the growers and the wealthy were benefiting from the exploitation of illegal immigration,” the congressman said.

Rep. Bilbray added: “History will show that Cesar Chavez was right and brave to stand up in 1969, and we should be doing the same today.”

The United Farm Workers Web site, however, paints a different picture of Chavez, calling him a “champion” of immigration reform.

“In 1973, decades before most labor organizations acted, the UFW became one of the very first unions to oppose the ‘employer sanction,’ a federal law making it illegal for employers to hire undocumented workers.” The UFW Web site points out.

Chavez was born in 1927 and died in 1993.

The La Paz property served as the national headquarters of the UFW as well as the home and workplace of Chávez and his family from the early 1970’s until his death, and includes his grave site, which will also be part of the monument, the White House news release said.

As the head of the UFW, Chavez staged a large grape boycott with Latino farm workers, and 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of his founding of the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the UFW.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the site's designation on the National Register of Historic Places last year.

The National Chavez Center, in consultation with the United Farm Workers of America, the Cesar Chavez Foundation and members of Cesar Chavez’s family, offered to donate certain properties at La Paz to the federal government for the purpose of establishing a national monument to be managed by the National Park Service commemorating Chavez and the farm worker movement, according to the White House.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-establish-national-monument-cesar-chavez-foe-illegal-immigration

8:49 AM 03/19/2014
Neil Munro
The Daily Caller



President Barack Obama has set aside 30 minutes Wednesday to showcase a new movie about Cesar Chavez, who is being portrayed by Democrats as an advocate for immigrants, even though he successfully minimized the employment of foreign migrant laborers.

Chavez campaigned against the hiring of Mexican migrant workers. He described them as strikebreakers who would cross a union picket line, and he eventually boosted farmworkers’ salaries in the 1960s and 1970s by minimizing the use of migrant labor.

Chavez died in 1993, just the Democratic Party began to gain votes in California and Texas from millions of illegal immigrants who were amnestied in 1986.

Obama will host the movie showing at 2:25 p.m., and will make a short speech which will be covered by pool reporters. The Daily Caller will not be able to ask him a question.

Obama will likely use the movie to whitewash Chavez’s role as an advocate for American workers, and also to tout his own 2014 push for “comprehensive immigration reform.” The Senate immigration bill supported by Obama would double the inflow of immigrants and guest workers seeking to compete for jobs now held by Americans, including American farm laborers.

“As long as we have a poor country bordering California, it is going to be very difficult to win strikes,” Chavez told a KQED TV interviewer in 1972.

At the time, Chavez was also managing a strike against an oil and gas company. “We’ve closed them down, they’ve been unable to get strikebreakers, or gotten very few, then all of a sudden, yesterday morning, they brought in 220 wetbacks,” he told the interviewer.

“These are the illegals from Mexico,” said Chavez, an Arizona-born American who helped create the National Farm Workers Association, now known as the United Farmworkers Union.

“There’s no way to defend against that strikebreaking,” he continued. “So the only way to win strikes is taking our fight to the citizens, to the people in the cities, and have them help us boycott those products that we’re striking,” he said in largely unaccented English.

The immigration-boosting bill that Obama is pushing is supported by progressives and wealthy people, but is opposed by many middle-class voters.

The year after Chavez’s KQED interview, some members of Chavez’s association set up a “wet line” to physically block illegal immigrants from Mexico.

In the early 1960s, Chavez successfully prodded then-President John Kennedy to curb the “Bracero” guest-worker program, which allowed farms to hire low-cost Mexican immigrants instead of American farmworkers. The program was killed by Congress in 1963.

The loss of foreign workers forced farms and food companies to triple the wages paid to American field workers. The wages rose from $1.77 per hour in 1965, to $5.63 in 1978. That’s equivalent to $20.27 per hour in 2014, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Since then, farmworkers’ wages has fallen after inflation, amid a huge wage of legal and illegal immigration that is backed by progressive Democrats and the GOP’s business wing.

That’s rise and fall of farmworkers’ wages is a function of supply and demand. In February, Jason Furman, the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, said the best way to boost Americans’ salaries in the marketplace is to engineer a “tight labor market” where the economy outgrows the supply of workers.

Until Congress increased immigration in 1965, few Americans outside the fields faced workplace competition from low-wage immigrants.

The increased wages won by Chavez also prompted farmers to develop new labor-saving techniques that sharply increased farmworkers’ productivity and allowed them to minimize the cost of food. The new productivity measures initially included lightweight ladders, but later included a herd of bizarre-looking harvesting machinery. For example. farmers in GOP Rep. Paul Ryan’s district are using robots to milk their cows, freeing farmers or migrant workers from the endless task of milking cows 365 days a year.

However, the immigration bill backed by Obama and Ryan would reverse much of Chavez’s accomplishments.

The Senate bill backed by Obama would offer an amnesty to at least 11.7 million illegal immigrants, double the annual inflow of one million immigrants and 650,000 guest workers, and set uniform wage-rates for migrant farm workers. For example, the migrant dairy workers in Ryan’s district would be paid $11.37 an hour, which is roughly equal to half the wages paid in 1978 to California farm workers.

And if farmers can hire cheap labor, they’re less likely to buy machinery, say the salesman now selling robot-milkers in Ryan’s district.

Overall, the Senate bill would provide green cards to 30 million immigrants and work-permits to at least 10 million guest workers, during a decade when 40 million Americans will turn 18 and begin looking for jobs in a slow-growing, increasingly-automated economy.

Obama isn’t likely to highlight Chavez’s preference for Americans over foreigners.

Instead, Obama will likely portray Chavez as an civil rights advocate for immigrants, many of whom are naturalized and eligible to vote in the 2014 midterm elections.

The movie’s director, Diego Luna, described the movie as a way to aid immigrants. “We’re coming out with ‘Cesar Chavez’ at the right moment in the States,” he told Variety in February. “There’s a big debate in the U.S. about immigration reform [and] we need to reflect on who’s feeding this country today, why this community has been ignored,” he said.

“There’s still much injustice and inequality,” complained Luna, who is a Mexican, unlike Chavez.

Variety’s article also portrayed Chavez as a champion for Mexicans and illegal immigrants. The movie’s producers, according to the Hollywood trade publication, are “empowering a new generation of Mexicans and Latin Americans… ‘Cesar Chavez; isn’t just a story for Mexicans, Luna insisted.”

In a Tuesday report about the movie’s premiere in D.C., local news website Politico also emphasized the immigration angle.

“It makes no sense that this country has 11 million workers feeding, building this country, making America what it is and they don’t share the same rights of those who are consuming the fruit of their labor,” Luna said, according to Politico.

“I don’t see why there should even be a debate,” said Luna.

The movie “is going to be open-borders propaganda even though Chavez was opposed to illegal immigration and understood the connection between open borders and low wages,” predicted Mark Kirkorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies. The CIS advocates for reduced immigration, partly because it will drive up salaries by forcing companies to compete for Americans’ labor.

Chavez’s championship for American workers is widely known by immigration experts, but is rarely acknowledged by progressives.

That’s partly because progressives have shifted their charity and their political pitch from the declining number of American blue-collar workers to the rising number of Latino service voters.

One progressive who has highlighted the political shift is Ruben Navarette, a Californian journalist, columnist and a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors. “Chavez earned many titles in his life, but ‘champion of immigrants; was not one of them,” Navarette wrote in October 2012 when Obama opened the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument, near Bakersfield, California.

Chavez “was primarily a labor leader who was concerned about illegal immigrants undercutting union members, either by accepting lower wages or crossing picket lines,” Navarette wrote in the 2012 column.

Chavez “never pretended to be anything else,” Navarette said. “When he pulled workers out of the field during a strike, the last thing he wanted was to see a crew of illegal immigrant workers take away his leverage.”

http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/19/ob...-cesar-chavez/

Added Daily Caller article to the Homepage with slightly amended title:
http://www.alipac.us/content.php?r=2...t-Cesar-Chavez

Mar. 19, 2014 1:28pm
The Blaze

President Barack Obama promoted comprehensive immigration reform before a screening of the new biopic “Cesar Chavez” at the White House on Wednesday, but he didn’t mention the views of the famous farm labor leader on illegal immigration and border security.

That’s likely because the National Farm Workers Association cofounder was strongly against illegal immigration.

“Cesar Chavez once said when you have people together that believe in something very strongly, whether it’s religion or politics, or unions, things happen,” Obama said. “Today we’ve got labor leaders and CEOs and faith leaders and law enforcement and they’ve come together and said it’s time to fix this broken immigration system.”

The Obama administration supports a Senate-passed bill that would bestow legal status on some 11 million illegal immigrants and increase border security. The bill has dim prospects of passing the House.

On Nov. 5, 2009, then-Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.) noted Chavez’s activism against illegal border crossings on the House floor.

“Cesar Chavez was probably a good, well, 20 years ahead of his time,” Bilbray said. “In fact, Cesar Chavez in 1969 led the first march on the Mexican border to protest illegal immigration. He was accompanied by Walter Mondale and Ralph Abernathy at that time to alert all to the problems that were equating with illegal immigration at that time.”

Mondale was a senator who went on to become vice president. Abernathy was a pastor and civil rights leader.

A decade after that march, Chavez testified in front of the U.S. Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee about the problems of illegal immigration as an avenue for employers breaking strikes.

“For so many years we have been involved in agricultural strikes; organizing almost 30 years as a worker, as an organizer, and as president of the union—and for all these almost 30 years it is apparent that when the farm workers strike and their strike is successful, the employers go to Mexico and have unlimited, unrestricted use of illegal alien strikebreakers to break the strike,” Chavez told senators. “And, for over 30 years, the Immigration and Naturalization Service has looked the other way and assisted in the strikebreaking.”

Chavez told the Senate panel, “I do not remember one single instance in 30 years where the immigration service has removed strikebreakers.”

The Immigration and Naturalization Service has since been reformatted as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“We have observed all these years the Immigration Service has a policy as it has been related to us, that they will not take sides in any agricultural labor dispute,” Chavez said in his 1979 testimony. “They have not taken sides means permitting the growers to have unrestricted use of illegal aliens as strikebreakers, and if that isn’t taking sides, I don’t know what taking sides means.”

The Chavez testimony came after a farm worker strike ensued in January 1970 in California’s Imperial Valley, which borders Mexico. The United Farm Workers was seeking a 42 percent pay increase from growers over three years for the striking farm workers, and placed patrols on the border to prevent “unauthorized strikebreakers” from entering the country, according to the conservative nonprofit Center for Immigration Studies.

The UFW would later change its position in 2000 on illegal immigration at the urging of the AFL-CIO, which wanted to end employer sanctions.

During the White House press briefing Wednesday, a reporter asked if the movie screening will bring attention to the issue of immigration reform.

“I think the place that Cesar Chavez has in our history, the outstanding place that he holds, is separate and apart from any policy,” Carney said.

Carney didn’t answer another reporter’s follow up question from about Chavez’s view on immigration reform.

The Center for Immigration Studies report quoted labor organizer Bert Corona, an ally of the UFW, saying: “I did have an important difference with Cesar. This involved his, and the union’s position, on the need to apprehend and deport undocumented Mexican immigrants who were being used as scabs by the growers.”

Corona added, “[I] believed that organizing undocumented farmworkers was auxiliary to the union’s efforts to organize the fields. We supported an open immigration policy, as far as Mexico was concerned.”

In October 2012, Obama spoke at the dedication of a national monument for Chavez in Keene, Calif. In 2011, Obama declared March 31 to be Cesar Chavez Day.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014...ilm-screening/

By Dave Boyer
The Washington Times
3/19/14

Obama: Cesar Chavez ‘an American hero’

President Obama called the late labor leader Cesar Chavez “an American hero” Wednesday at a White House screening of a new movie about the civil rights activist.

The president said Mr. Chavez, who organized migrant workers and farm laborers beginning in the 1950s, was an inspiration because he understood that persistence brings change.

“That is one of the great lessons of his life — we don’t give up the fight,” Mr. Obama said. “No matter how long it takes, no matter how long the odds, we keep on going.”

The audience of about 125 in the White House screening room included members of the Chavez family, labor leader Dolores Huerta and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California. Mr. Obama was introduced by White House aide Julie Chavez Rodriguez, a granddaughter of Mr. Chavez, who died in 1993.

The president drew a parallel between Mr. Chavez’s life and some of the issues on Mr. Obama’s agenda, such as raising the minimum wage and approving comprehensive immigration reform.

“We’ve got a lot of causes that are worth fighting for,” Mr. Obama said.

The president didn’t stay to watch the movie, saying he had a copy to watch later in the residence.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...american-hero/

What the 'master of deception' is doing here is trying to rewrite history and believing gullible, uneducated Americans will buy into it.

He will try and paint Cesar Chavez as the Mexican counterpart to Martin Luther King, thereby legitimizing illegal immigration by attaching that 'movement' as being on par with 'The Freedom Movement.'

Originally Posted by Jean

The loss of foreign workers forced farms and food companies to triple the wages paid to American field workers. The wages rose from $1.77 per hour in 1965, to $5.63 in 1978. That’s equivalent to $20.27 per hour in 2014, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Since then, farmworkers’ wages has fallen after inflation, amid a huge wage of legal and illegal immigration that is backed by progressive Democrats and the GOP’s business wing.

During an interview, 'Bama characterized his policies as being those of a moderate Republican. Cross out "moderate," and you'll understand an important aspect of 'Bama's immigration policy. He could care less about Americans - certainly no more than do the Republican congresspeople who are eager to sell out American workers, to please their big donors.

Those of us who care about American workers are often astonished by people who don't seem to know what a new wave of immigrants will do to American job prospects and American wages. But as someone remarked way back in the 1920's, The business of business is business. Unless we want to see American wages further depressed, we absolutely must oppose a new wave of immigrants.

Universal E-Verify is a tool which will work in both the short and long terms. Eliminate the jobs lure, get a moratorium on immigration until we can define American needs, and illegal aliens will become something that we used talk about.
***********************************
Americans first in this magnificent country

American jobs for American workers

Fair trade, not free trade

12:26 PM 03/20/201
Neil Munro
The Daily Caller



President Barack Obama declared Wednesday that “none of us can claim to know exactly what [labor organizer] Cesar [Chavez] would have said about this [2014 immigration] fight, or any other.”

Chavez is a hero to progressives, but he actually waged a campaign against low-wage immigration.

Obama’s attempt to whitewash Chavez’s stance came during a short speech that he gave in the White House to the producers, actors and supporting crew of a new movie about Chavez.

The movie, which was directed by a Mexican, converts the union leader into a “civil rights” supporter of Mexican immigrants.

“I do think he would want us to remember that the [immigration] debates we have are less about policy than they are about people,” Obama claimed at the preview.

Chavez was born in Arizona, and viewed himself as an American. His greatest wins were in the 1970s, when he managed to triple farmworkers’ wages and boost mechanization by reducing the legal inflow of strikebreaking Mexican “Bracero” laborers.

Chavez called the illegals “wetbacks” and “strike breakers” because they bypassed his picket lines. “As long as we have a poor country bordering California, it is going to be very difficult to win strikes,” Chavez told a KQED TV interviewer in 1972.

At least one of his deputies called the border-crossers “scabs.”

He died in 1993, and his wins were diluted in the 1980s and 1990s, when the unions began welcoming Democratic-leaning illegal aliens, and the federal government largely stopped enforcing laws against the employment of illegal immigrant farmworkers. Since then, farmworkers’ salaries have dropped below the level won by Chavez, along with the salaries of many other Americans who are forced to compete with low-wage legal and illegal immigrants.

Obama, the progressive movement, and most Hispanic lobby groups are now backing the Senate’s June 2013 bill that would triple legal immigration to 30 million, and double the inflow of guest workers to 10 million during the next 10 years.

The Senate bill would allow farms to employ 300,000 foreign farm workers, at wages set by government, and reduce farmers’ incentive to invest in high-tech farm machinery.

A draft House bill would allow food companies to employ 750,000 foreign workers at government-set wages.

Opposition to the bill has been growing in a GOP populist wing, led by Sen. Jeff Sessions.

But passage of the immigration increase would be a big win for the Democratic machine, because most immigrants and poor farmworkers end up voting Democratic. So would many of the Americans whose wages and jobs prospect would be damaged by the inflow of low-wage competition.

http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/20/ob...erican-policy/