Salad Bowl Strike - Impact - Enactment of CALRA

Enactment of CALRA

The ongoing fight between the Teamsters and UFW and its effect on UFW's organizational viability led César Chávez to seriously consider and advocate for legal reform in 1974. Although Jerry Brown had been elected Governor of California in November 1974, Brown's election was not enough to win passage of legislation. The UFW knew it had to make a strong political showing in order to push the California State Legislature to act.

Although it considered mass picketing, rallies, and more boycotts, the UFW worried that it had lost the support of farm workers and that such events would only highlight the union's political weakness. Instead, the UFW settled on a 110-mile (180 km) march by a small group of UFW leaders from San Francisco to the E & J Gallo Winery in Modesto. The march would be dramatic, but not require large numbers of participants. Although just a few hundred marchers left San Francisco on February 22, 1975, more than 15,000 people had joined them by the time they reached Modesto on March 1.

The dramatic success of the Modesto march energized the farm labor movement in California, and Governor Brown quickly began pushing for labor law reform. The march may have been the capstone, but it was the Delano grape boycott's success which brought the growers to the table. "The grape boycott scared the heck out of the farmers, all of us," said one major grower. The march brought politicians and the Teamsters to the table.

Broad agreement on a bill was reached on May 7, 1975 just sixty-eight (68) days after the Modesto march. The California State Senate passed the bill on May 26, and the California State Assembly passed the bill two days later. Governor Brown signed the legislation into law on June 4, 1975. The act went into effect on August 28, 1975.

After hundreds of elections under the law in its first two years, the UFW and Teamsters finally signed a long-lasting jurisdictional agreement in March 1977, and the UFW ended its boycotts of lettuce, grapes, and wine in February 1978.