KTLA News: "Cesar Chavez announces advertising campaign for grape and lettuce boycott" (1974)

[Cesar Chavez:] We feel that, that, that with these programs, it's a lot easier to involve, to involve more people when we can go to the media and or rather to the paid advertisement on, on, on boycotting something that the, that the other side has done against us, but we never been able to do it. Thanks to Brother Erowitz [?] Brother Rodriguez, the, the L.A. County Federation. They are, as you know, supporting and paying completely and totally for the, for this project. To launch the bus advertising program, which is being sponsored by the AFL-CIO Unions in Los Angeles County, urging the public to boycott grapes and head lettuce and to look for the Black Eagle which would indicate that the grapes and the lettuce were harvested by members of the United Farm Workers Union. And Cesar Chavez is in Los Angeles. He's going to spend some time here visiting with the union leadership throughout the county to build up the union participation in support of the boycott program. Mr. Chavez is here with us now. Farm Workers of America, Sir Cesar Chavez. Thank you very much Brother Erowitz [?], Brother Rodriguez. We have... This is the beginning of a, what we hope will be a nationwide campaign to, to do the boycott. To add another dimension to the boycott the, the bus sign program that we're starting here and similar programs have never been done by the union mostly because of lack of money. We've done, we've done it in, in different ways, mostly the picket lines and the leafleting. But besides doing the leafleting and the picketing and the things that, that we did in 1970 to win, we're now adding this dimension which from all accounts, we feel is going to be extremely beneficial to the boycott, but also, we now have requests from many of the people throughout the country who have heard of this program that want also to try something like that. ...be here for three days to meet with... boycott and getting a union back. We're also will be going... major recruitment drive. We have to have, we hope to have over 100 full... We're encouraged. We just ended a, an executive board meeting of the Farm Workers Union last Friday and the statistics that we're able to gather tell us the following. On the - you know, we also have a boycott on Gallo Wines. On that one, definitely, we've cut sales by at least 15%. And that's just as, of at least 45 days ago. Now on lettuce, you may be interested to know, that on lettuce, we've had now for almost ten and a half months, the market on lettuce has been very poor. And many of the, of the people working in lettuce have not, in fact they haven't worked one, they haven't worked one single Saturday in many, many, many, many weeks, many months. In fact, they're not even working 40 hours a week in many cases. Now the response that the, that the growers, that the lettuce growers are giving to the workers when they're asking, "How come we're not working more hours? I used - we used to work 60 hours a week, you know." And the growers are telling them that they're not working more hours, because there's a shortage of railroad cars. We know that the, that that market is, is weak. And we know that if you, if you take the span for ten and a half months you can see the - It's staying in the three, two dollars, $1.75, going up to four dollars, five dollars for two, three days coming right back. And so, we were not - we did not want to claim any, any, any credit for the market, but we have to now. We think that we're, that we can claim credit and, and not be, you know, and be right about it. On the grapes. It's too early to say except that the, that the price on grapes has declined at a very accelerated pace, for instance, if you compare last year what took place, the price stayed up to eight, nine dollars consistently. Now, the report on Friday was that they're selling grapes in Coachella for seven to eight dollars, mostly seven dollars. If, if the, if our experience in boycotting tells us anything, we're pretty sure now that it's just a matter of time. We need, just need time and we'll be able to the boycott and the help of the strike is going to force the growers to, to come to terms with the Farm Workers Union. And that's not - I mean we're not - We're saying this because we're - we have enough statistics now, to prove it. [Man in audience:] Cesar, what's the latest on the Larsens[?] ? I'd be very surprised if there were, if there were in any one area, if there were more than two or three growers, or where the workers working with those growers wouldn't vote for the union. There's no question about the support from the workers. The question is, how do we get them... How do we get - see we know, and the Teamsters know, and the growers know, and the workers know what the score is in terms of who the workers want. How do we get it so that it's done in such a way so that all of you will know that what we say is the truth? And we think the only way to do it is by having the, by having the elections so that the people will be able to, to demonstrate that. But, we're - last year in...