Cesar Chavez, leader of the California grape pickers, thanked the American Jewish Congress today for its support of their two-year-old strike to demand recognition of their union by the growers. Mr. Chavez wrote to Rabbi Arthur J. Lelyveld, AJ Congress president, “I have been very pleased by the recent efforts of Jewish organizations such as yourselves. It is a great source of strength to know that you are with us.”
In making public the letter, Rabbi Lelyveld noted that the AJ Congress has received no reply yet to a letter he sent to Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird protesting the Defense Department’s policy of increased grape purchases. Rabbi Lelyveld said it was “a policy that plainly favors the grape growers in their present effort to defeat unionization of their employes.”
He said the Defense Department’s 1969 grape purchases were up nearly four million pounds over its 1968 level, an attempt to offset the grape boycott so that the growers can continue to refuse to negotiate with the workers. Rabbi Lelyveld urged the Defense Department to maintain “true neutrality” in the labor dispute and cut back its grape purchases to pre-boycott levels.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
