The Grape Strike & The Farm Labor Movement

During the mid-to-late 1900s, fruit farms were the new cash cows of the West. However, these fruit empires were inoperable without the labor of farmworkers who were most often severely underpaid and endured mistreatment including unacceptable work conditions in many cases. “Essential to the state’s biggest industry, but only so long as they remained exploited and submissive farmworkers had tried but failed so many times to organize the giant agribusiness farms that most observers considered it a hopeless task,” according to the United Farm Workers organization.(59)

After Joseph’s death and beginning in 1965, grapes went sour. Well, more like a clash between civil rights activists and California fruit growers went sour. Arizona-born Cesar Chavez, a rising social justice reformer and leader of the United Farm Workers movement, decided to fight against what he described as “the largest corporation in Delano now”: the DiGiorgio Fruit Corporation. Chavez claimed DiGiorgio’s workers were mistreated by “now allowing free union elections, firing workers who were pro-NFWA [National Farm Worker Association], and setting pre-conditions for an election.”(60) The goal of the strike against the corporation was to receive “union recognition and a wage raise from $1.25 an hour and $0.10 a box of grapes, to $1.40 an hour and $0.25 a box.”(61) 

However, prior to his death, Joseph stood by his treatment of his workers as Carmella “CeCe” DiGiorgio Brooks, Joseph’s great-niece, said, “[Joseph] took very good care of his employees, and they were dedicated to him.”(62) Furthermore, in the Los Angeles Times August 15, 1937 Sunday paper’s magazine section, an iconic interview of Joseph titled “I Work; You Work; The Land Works,” Joseph said his workers have camps and homes with “a kitchen and front porch” that are “cool in the summer; warm in the winter.”(63) He went on to say that his workers pay “85 cents a day for his food” and “the pay roll on DiGiorgio farms, the Kern county project near Arvin, was $96,000 for the first two weeks in June--just for labor; no management costs included,” Joseph said.(64) Finally, the LA Times article author Kenneth Christ wrote that “there’s a hospital,” “excellent dormitories for girls who work in the packing-house, tennis courts and a regular Kern county school on land.”(65) CeCe said that Joseph allowed the farm workers to grow their own vegetables and fruits and raise cattle and pigs along with providing breakfasts with “the best meat.”(66) Although they never crossed paths, both Chavez and DiGiorgio were cut from the same cloth as they were both relentless--Chavez relentless in furthering his cause in the Sixties and DiGiorgio relentless in protecting his empire up until his death in 1951. 

Prior to Chavez’s growing cause in the late 1900s, in 1937 Joseph’s LA Times “I Work; You Work; The Land Works,” whether it was a case of Stockholm Syndrome or DiGiorgio’s workers truly were content with their current work conditions, these laborers allegedly were against unionizing:

“That’s why it’s tough on the organizers who come to whip the Di Giorgio hands into a union. The organizers feel they’d better get Joe in hand. Just a few weeks ago they made a visit. There were rumblings and grave talk.

‘Mr. Di Giorgio,’ these men said, ‘we’re going to unionize your farm.’ The little Sicilian rubbed a hand over his short cropped gray mustache.

‘You’re going to what?’ he demanded.

‘What do my men say? My men are free men. You aren’t going to do anything here they don’t want done!’

It was Mr. Di Giorgio, himself, who called his workers together. 

...he sent down the road. He met his laborers at his own side lawn. In shirt sleeves and mopping his bronzed brow with a big white handkerchief, he climbed up where all could see him.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘I work, you work, and the land works. Everybody and everything works around here. Nothing gets scared!’

‘These men from the city tell me you want a union. Do you? Do you want to pay out of your regular wages to fellows you don’t even know--men who sit around their offices and eat because you work in the hot sun/

‘If you do, you can. Joe Di Giorgio has no slaves. You get the highest wages paid in this valley. If you want to give them away, go ahead. They’re yours, aren’t they?’

‘About 1000 of you work here the year around. Sometimes, when the fruit is right, there are 2500 of you here. Always the Di Giorgio farms are growing. Your job is good as long as there’s work to do...and you do it.’

‘You know that one day the fruit is green, the next it’s ready, and the third and it’s rotting. We’re in the shipping business and it’s gotta move. How can you have a union?’

‘If you think you can, go ahead and try it. If this farm goes to hell your jobs do, too.’

There was whispered conversation  on the grass.

‘All right,’ Mr. Di Giorgio continued. ‘Go ahead and take your vote.’

He was sitting in the house when one of the laborers entered.

‘Mr. Di Giorgio,’ he said, ‘we voted.’

‘That’s a good American way,’ Mr. Di Giorgio returned. ‘Do you give your men pay to those fellows in the city...or not?’

A smile flashed across a sunburned face.

‘The men say they won’t get nothin’ for it if they do.’

‘How many of ‘em said that?” said the fruit king.

‘There were 2360 who voted: only two wanted to join.’

‘Good,’ said Mr. Di Giorgio. ‘On the Di Giorgio farms we grow crop--and men!’”(67)

Although unionization was allegedly opposed in the early 1900s, by 1965 following the publishing of “I Work; You Work; The Land Works” and Joseph’s death, the movement had gained momentum and an international boycott of DiGiorgio products and the farm worker strike against the corporation ensued and significantly impacted the business. Robert DiGiorgio, Joseph’s nephew, described the boycott and strikes as the “straw that broke the camel’s back” in terms of deciding if the DiGiorgio Corporation should be sold.(68) 

In a June 14, 1966, supplement called “The Movement: DiGiorgio Boycott Supplement” written by National Farm Worker organizers published the following under the headline, “The DiGiorgio Struggle”:

“The striking workers were not permitted to vote for or against a union before they walked off the job. Once they had walked off, the DiGiorgio Corporation began to bring in strike-breakers from other areas to work for more than the strikers had been getting themselves. When the strikers picketed the Sierra Vista Ranch to run back the scabs they were met with police harassment, threats of arrest for trespassing if they went on the land to speak to the scabs, and physical obstructions such as noise or clouds of dust from tractors run by supervisors: while the scabs were in the field. When the NFWA, with the help of the international Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, stopped the loading of DiGiorgio grapes at the docks in San Francisco and Oakland, the corporation asked for a court injunction against union interference with its products. The injunction was refused. As the unpicked grapes rotted on the vines and as the scabs mishandled the grapes they did pick, the growers, DiGiorgio included, insisted that there was no strike going on, and even if there was one, it wasn't hurting them! More grapes were picked this year, they said, than ever before. Meanwhile, scabs began showing up from farther and farther away...the growers continued to deny that the picket line had any effect: and the DiGiorgio Corporation sued the National Farm Workers' Association for damages and loss. The strike is costly to the strikers and it must be won. To dramatize their problem, as the civil rights movement has done, the striking workers set out on a 300-mile pilgrimage and organizing march up the San Joaquin Valley to Sacramento. Tremendous support developed during the 3-day march and by the end of it, Schenley's, the second largest Delano grower, had agreed to recognize NFWA and negotiate a wage raise. Unions and newspapers all over the country had come out in support of the strikers' demands. Governor Brown had seriously embarrassed himself by not showing up to meet the marchers at the Capitol Easter morning. And then DiGiorgio offered elections. ...In short. DiGiorgio demanded that the union accept ahead of time certain things that no union would agree to once it had sat down to the bargaining table. Holding a free election, even among scabs, would be a problem in itself. Trespassing ordinances have always kept union organizers off the DiGiorgio land and away from the homes of farm workers living there. How could the union campaign? The day after DiGiorgio called for elections he held a meeting of all the scabs working for him: Anti-union speeches were made and the men were served free candy and soda pop. Was a union represented freely at this meeting? On Thursday, April 21, a DiGiorgio guard drew a gun on a woman striker who was trying to speak to the scabs threw her to the ground and hit another picket on the side of the head, requiring ten stitches. Is this free speech? Our only alternative is to keep the pressure on the DiGiorgio Corporation with a boycott and strike until it makes an honest offer of union recognition and negotiations.”(69) 

On the contrary, Christine (Di Giorgio) Timmerman, the Di Giorgio Corporation’s treasurer during the 1980s and daughter of Di Giorgio Corporation CEO Robert Di Giorgio, shared:

“Although Di Giorgio ranches were not intensively targeted (since Di Giorgio workers were already paid at the level Chavez was campaigning for), the grape boycott hurt the company. (As a side note, when there was a labor union vote at the ranches the Di Giorgio workers voted for another union and not the United Farm Workers Union.) The poor publicity of the labor movement further inspired the management to consider diversification.”(70)

The corporation’s management following Joseph’s death believed their best solution to the conflict was “a secret-ballot election and commence negotiations with the winner of the election, with unresolved issues going to an arbitrator after 30 days. If the unions were to lose, then they would have to agree not to boycott or strike the corporation for one year.”(71) However, the management’s confidence in a vote against the union was faulty as the United Farm Workers won the election ending the five years of striking and boycotting.(72)

Decades after unionizing and selling the DiGiorgio Corporation, Robert DiGiorgio stood by his opposition of Cesar Chavez as he said, “[Chavez] does not keep his word. He makes a contract with you, and the contract binds you, but if it doesn't suit him, the part that binds him, because his cause is just and God is on his side, he doesn't have to live up to it. You can't do business with that kind of a person.”(73) Despite conflicting opinion in the Twentieth Century, today, Chavez is commemorated and celebrated with a national holiday on March 31 every year.

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59. “UFW History,” UFW, accessed November 2020, https://ufw.org/research/history/ufw-history/.

60. Chavez Speaks Out, American Catholic

61. “UFW History,” UFW

62. Morton, Brooks, Personal

63. Christ, “I Work”

64. Christ, “‘I Work”

65. Christ, “‘I Work”

66. Morton, Brooks, Personal

67. Christ, “‘I Work,” 1937

68. DiGiorgio, "The Di Giorgios”

69. “The DiGiorgio Struggle,” The Movement: DiGiorgio Boycott Supplement, 1966.

70. Grant, DiGiorgio Corporation?

71. Chavez Speaks Out, American Catholic

72. Chavez Speaks Out, American Catholic

73. DiGiorgio, "The Di Giorgios”