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By Marie Mulvenna
Atlanta, GA – Close to 300 delegates from the Industrial
Union Department, FFL-CIO, took part last Friday in a boycott walk at
Davison’s Department Store on Peachtree Street, protesting the
store’s continuing sale of Farah slacks. The Farah strike, unanimously
recognized by the delegates, upholds the one-year-old walkout at Farah’s
plant in El Paso, Texas and a resolution on the strike pledged: “We will
not let up the ‘Don’t Buy Farah Pants’ boycott until the Farah
workers achieve the justice, dignity and security they are struggling
for.”
Joining the orderly noontime picket line at Davison’s was
Monsignor George Higgins, Director of Research of the United States Catholic
Conference, and Father John Adamski, chairman of the Justice and Peace
Commission of the Atlanta Senate of Priests. Although a member of the Atlanta
police department contended the walkers had not obtained a permit for their
boycott march, the crowd was orderly and quiet, attracting scores of noontime
shoppers and passersby. Armed with placards reading “Bishop Metzger
supports the Farah Strike,” and a variety of other messages including the
eye-catching “Nixon wears Farah pants,” the scores of marchers handed
out leaflets supporting their cause.
Reaction of lunch-hour viewers was mixed. Some had never heard of
Farah; others said the throngs marching “had nothing else to do but walk
around in circles.” One man told the Bulletin that he had been
instrumental in drafting the Taft-Hartley law but he found the boycott, which
he termed a “secondary boycott”, was improper. He contended the union
should seek to block the controversial slacks at their site in Texas and should
“follow the proper court channels.” His advice to the boycott walkers
was: “stop it at the source.”
Howard Samuel, however, vice-president of the Amalgamated Clothing
Workers Union and the person responsible for organizing the Davison boycott,
stated that the boycott was what he called a “product boycott,” not a
secondary boycott, and was aimed at Davison’s (a division of the R.H. Macy
Company) because the store was the largest carrier of the Farah products in
Atlanta. Samuel further said the Farah strike was “an unfair labor
practices strike against Farah by the workers.” The original walkout at
the Farah plant occurred on May 5, 1972 when 3,000 of the 9,000 workers walked
off their jobs. Samuel said Farah’s volume of over $64 million in sales
was “significantly lowered” by the walkout and he issued an appeal
for all to “boycott Farah.”
Providing background for the noontime Peachtree walk, the 300
delegates at the Regency-Hyatt hotel earlier heard a plea for support of the
Farah resolution, including a 20-minute film giving a graphic portrait of the
fate of the scores of Mexican-Americans employed by Willie Farah. Terming the
controversial Farah as “the big man in El Paso,” the film stated that
14 percent of the town worked for him, living under concentration-camp
conditions and denied all things but poverty. Farah was called a
19th century “patrona,” having total control of the
thousands of workers in the spotless El Paso plant that is surrounded by barbed
wire.
Bishop Sidney Metzger of E Paso has already voiced his strong
support of the strikers, and bishops of the eight dioceses in New York state
called upon the U.S. Catholic Conference to begin a full study of the
continuing labor dispute against Farah. In Boston recently, Protestant and
Jewish leaders joined Cardinal Humberto Medeiros in a signed statement calling
for support of the Farah walkout. They termed the walkout “the sort of
concern the gospel demands of all of us.”
Bishop Metzger has maintained that the average Farah employee has
a take-home pay of merely $69 per week, far from a living way. He said people
at the plant were treated “like machines, with outrageous production
quotas.” The El Paso ordinary held that “under social justice the
worker has the right to collective bargaining and a right to unionize.”
Quoted in the film was Father Jesse Munoz, a parish priest in El
Paso, who stated the walkout was “an heroic act on the part of the people.
They knew it meant hardship.” Father Munoz said the walkout itself brought
“an ecstasy because they know it offers a brighter future for their
children. It is a sort of ‘exodus’ to a promised land. They smile,
laugh and dance because they are brothers working for social justice.”
Father Munoz issued an impassioned plea to all other minority groups who have
faced similar problems to unite and back the cause of the Farah strikers.
A youthful worker who appeared in the film, spoke in person to the
delegates at the hotel ballroom, stating: “All we want is a decent way of
living. Everyone is entitled to that.” Her plea brought a standing ovation
from the delegates who were in Atlanta for the 10th biennial
constitutional convention of the Industrial Union Department, FFL-CIO. The
convention is the policy-setting body of the IUD, which is composed of the
industrial unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO. The delegates represented 56
national and international unions with memberships of five million.
Also on the picket line was I.W. Abel, president of the IUD, who
was later elected to his fourth term at the helm of the group.
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