LABOR: California Compromise

When Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal pushed through the nation's labor legislation in the '30s, one group of workers remained conspicuously unprotected: the farm workers. Last week California's Governor Edmund Brown Jr. won initial legislative approval for a bill that would finally give farm workers in one of the nation's richest agricultural states the protective legal umbrella they have long sought.

The difficulties go back to 1962, when Cesar Chavez, the union leader, started organizing farm workers; his grape boycott compelled many California growers to bargain with his United Farm Workers. Only a few years after Chavez had won that victory, however,...

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