The Arizona Ecumenical Council interviewed 71 non-union grape pickers in 1972. Sixty-five said they did not want to join the UFW and bitterly opposed Chavez, although many said they would like some union.

Public sympathy against Chavez and the UFW in Delano is so strong that Mayor Frank Herrara and Assemblyman Bill Ketchum have been elected decisively in recent years while they have openly and bitterly opposed the UFW.

The farmworkers did not support Chavez and his strikes for many reasons. For one, he was not a farmworker himself. Also, he did not offer a substantial increase in wages (the contracts he finally signed in 1970 raised base pay ten cents an hour).

But the most important reason for Chavez's lack of support is that the workers did not want to allow anyone to gain absolute power over their jobs. Under the contracts Chavez sought, the growers would not be able to hire the workers. A grower would have to ask the UFW to send him men when he needed them and the UFW would then assign workers to job.

Because Chavez's strike was a massive failure, he turned to the boycott. If he had the support of the workers, there would be no need for a boycott. The workers would go on strike and there would be no harvested grapes or lettuce for consumers to worry about.

The reason for the boycott, therefore, was that Chavez did not have the support of the farmworkers. The purpose, however, was to force workers into a union they didn't want to join. The strategy was to fool consumers into boycotting grapes and lettuce by misrepresenting the conditions of the farmworkers. The boycott would then force growers to sign with Chavez, and if the farmworkers wanted to work, they would have to join the UFW.

The strategy eventually brought limited success. In the summer of 1970, 26 major grape growers signed contracts with Chavez. They were signed only by Chavez and the growers but they made the workers members of the UFW.

If they wanted to work, the workers had to accept UFW membership because the growers could no longer hire them. Chavez also now had the power to determine which of these workers would work and when. As a result, the growers got an end to the boycott, Chavez got the workers, and the workers got screwed.

The act was a major violation of the civil rights of thousands of farmworkers. The common justice of the idea that no contract signed between two parties shall be binding on a third was disregarded. Without an election, without their consent, and without their signatures, the farmworkers found themselves paying dues to the UFW.

For the farmworkers this was only the beginning. After Chavez got them in his UFW he hurt them both personally and financially, and actually caused their living standards to decline.

So it seems that those who have supported the boycott and are supporting the drive against Harvard Pro are being used to hurt the very people they are trying to help. Misguided public support has been Chavez's only weapon against the farmworkers and those who have given this support are really responsible for screwing the workers.