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« on: December 31, 2020, 11:18:14 AM »
Throughout the 1960’s and 70’s farmworkers in California were being organized by Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and the United Farmworkers. As Governor, Reagan had the opportunity to support the farmworkers on multiple occasions. Instead, he campaigned against the grape boycott, calling it immoral and attempted blackmail and appeared on TV eating grapes in defiance of the boycott. He also vetoed the Agricultural Labor Relations Act which would have given farmworkers the right to collectively bargain.
All of this was just the appetizer for the destruction that Reagan did once he was elected President. Perhaps his most public anti-union effort was when he fired 13,000 air traffic controllers who were on strike in the summer of 1981. The firings destroyed the union, PATCO, forcing the union to be decertified. Reagan also announced that the 13,000 striking members would be banned for life from working for the federal government. While some were allowed to be hired back in 1986, it wasn’t until 1993 that the ban was lifted on the remaining PATCO members. In a column in the Washington Post following the firing, columnist Harold Meyerson said this was “an unambiguous signal that employers need feel little or no obligation to their workers, and employers got that message loud and clear -- illegally firing workers who sought to unionize, replacing permanent employees who could collect benefits with temps who could not, shipping factories and jobs abroad." Throughout the rest of his term, there were no more major strikes.
