Inspiration, Si--Administration, No

Our movement is spreading like flames across a dry plain. The time has come for the liberation of the poor farm worker. iViva la causa!

Those fiery words of five years ago illustrate the charisma that made Cesar Chavez a liberal hero and his United Farm Workers of America a power in the grape and vegetable fields of the Southwest. Today, another side of Chavez's personality is becoming painfully apparent: his talents as a union administrator scarcely match his gift for inspirational leadership. Partly as a result, his prediction has a hollow ring; the U.F.W.A. is fighting now to stay alive. Membership, which totaled 50,000 in California alone in 1971, is down to 10,000. Faced with the certainty that still more growers will defect to the rival International Brotherhood of Teamsters when their contracts with the farm workers' union expire this spring, Chavez last week intensified the latest nationwide boycott of non-U.F.W.A. California table grapes that began last year. The boycott also extends to non-U.F.W.A. iceberg lettuce.

Much of Chavez's trouble stems from an aggressive and sometimes violent drive by the Teamsters to oust the U.F.W.A. from the vineyards. But in addition, a growing number of Chicano farm workers who still revere Chavez have become disillusioned with the U.F.W.A. as a union. A major cause: poor administration by incompetent union officials of the hiring halls that the U.F.W.A. set up to break the power of unscrupulous labor contractors.

Ironically, some ex-Chavistas claim, U.F.W.A. dispatchers at the halls are guilty of the same arbitrary work assignments that made the contractors hated. Members of large families with only one car between them have been sent to widely separated fields. In some cases, workers say, U.F.W.A. dispatchers have played favorites. "Once I had to wait four hours last year before I could get dispatched," says Grape Picker Gloria Esquirrel, a former U.F.W.A. member. "The people who had put in time on the picket lines were sent out first." Since farm workers are generally paid by the hour (average wage: $2), such delays can result in serious financial loss.

Other criticism focuses on the U.F.W.A.'s poorly run medical benefits program. Farm Worker Concepcion Garcia claims that when she tried to collect a $300 maternity payment from the U.F.W.A., "I was told that I was ineligible because the grower I work for was a thief. I complained, and finally the person in the union office said I could have the money if I would steal his books."

Goon Squads. Even so, the workers are reluctant to join the Teamsters, whose four-year organizing drive has been conducted partly by ax-handle-wielding goon squads. Indeed, many farm workers seem ready to shun both unions. Last month, for example, the 100 employed at Keene Larson's 200-acre Coachella Valley vineyard--one of the first to sign with Chavez--voted two to one not to affiliate with either union.

Such sentiments are shared--and encouraged--by some growers who also prefer no union.

Still, many growers, Larson among them, are likely to sign with the Teamsters because they believe publicity has made it almost impossible to sell grapes that have not been picked by some union. Larson maintains that the U.F.W.A.'s problem is not Chavez but the "angry young men who staff the hiring halls." Grower Milton Karahadian agrees: "The minute we begin contract negotiations, the union [U.F.W.A.] starts telling us how we hate Mexicans. I'm not fighting a war. If I have to negotiate, let me do it with a professional." Presumably, that means a Teamster.

U.F.W.A. leaders concede the validity of some of the charges against them, but insist that the problems have been exacerbated by grower duplicity. They charge, for example, that the balloting at Larson's vineyard was rigged; no U.F.W.A. representative was present, and the priest who presided is allegedly anti-Chavez. Indeed, many California growers have rushed into contracts with the Teamsters. Their pacts are more attractive to the growers because they do not require the establishment of union-administered hiring halls. Instead of using the workers dispatched by the union, a grower can hire whomever he wants --including illegal immigrants from Mexico, who often work for less than American farm hands.

Chavez retains enough support to wage a protracted struggle. Last week, for example, the AFL-CIO, to which the U.F.W.A. belongs, urged its 13.5 million members to support the grape and lettuce boycott. Its success, however, is doubtful. The first grape boycott, which ended in 1970, rallied many consumers to the U.F.W.A.'s side, but the second, until last week, had made little impression on a public that seems to have grown tired of causas great and small.

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