The Chiefio reminds us about today:
Mechanical Grape Harvester Day!
Today we are celebrating National Mechanical Grape Harvester Day! (AKA Cesar Chavez Day).
For anyone who might not know, especially those living in other countries where our peculiar political holidays might not have currency, Cesar Chavez is that brave soul who through petty bickering, targeted destruction of individual farmers, and great political theatre ( mostly in the form of posed for TV “marches” and a “grape boycott”) single handedly brought about the invention of the Mechanical Grape Harvester and the destruction of jobs for hundreds of thousands of Hispanic farm workers.
Obama recognized this great contribution in 2014 when he declared the Politically Correct Token Hispanic Holiday in the name of Cesar Chavez.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesar_Chavez_Day
Cesar Chavez Day is a federal commemorative holiday in the U.S. by proclamation of President Obama in 2014. On March 31 of each year, it celebrates the birth and legacy of the civil rights and labor movement activist Cesar Chavez.
Yes, we owe this great day to Our Dear Leader Obama’s great sensibility to all things exploitable for “the cause”.
Cesar Chavez lead a great movement to abuse farmers, cause a ruckus, and generally attempt to repeal the law of supply and demand in Farm Labor. He succeeded at the first two, but nobody bats 1000 and “2 out of 3 ain’t bad”… Forming and organizing the United Farm Workers Union that at the peak had a membership of about 80,000.
http://articles.latimes.com/2002/jun/10/local/me-laufw10
UFW Member Total Is Questioned
Labor: The union says its accuser is basing the accusation on incorrect set of numbers.
June 10, 2002|FRED ALVAREZ | TIMES STAFF WRITER
[…]
Rob Roy, general counsel for the Ventura County Agricultural Assn., has long accused the union of inflating its numbers, but he now believes he has proof in the form of an amended federal document in which the UFW lowers its membership estimates by nearly 80%.
From 1995 to 1999, the UFW claimed membership of 26,000 on reports filed annually with the U.S. Department of Labor. The union upped that figure to 27,000 in 2000. But last month, in response to an inquiry by the Labor Department, the union revised its membership to 5,945, according to the amended report.
“Here they are portraying themselves as the voice of California farm workers, and yet they represent less than 1%,” said Roy, who fired off a letter in February prompting the Labor Department probe.
A lot more at the site - my ex's family grows grapes in the California Central Valley and I was talking with her Dad about Mr. Chavez. His complaint that although it was all well and good that they were Unionized, they failed to uphold their end of the bargain. The Union is supposed to train their workers - after all, those workers are paying dues to the Union for this. Pete was expecting to go to the Union Hall, ask for 120 experienced grape pickers and have them arrive at his fields. They were not trained and damaged the vines limiting next years crop.
There is a lot more at the site - this basically put a whole bunch of pickers out of business, changed the way that grapes are grown, forced us to adopt a mono-culture and prevented us from commercialy harvesting heirloom grapes (the ones with real flavor) and made a couple of people (the inventors of the grape picking machines) very rich. A perfect case of unintended consequences - what Chavez was saying sounded good to the progressives in New York, Boston, San Francisco, etc... but it did not work in actuality and wreaked havoc with the system.
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