The union and the cult

The Los Angeles Times this week ran a series of articles on the United Farm Workers union (UFW) and its related nonprofit agencies. I've made a couple of posts on it at my regular blog, and I won't try to repeat here what I wrote there. I've included the links to those posts at the end of this one.

But I do want to call attention to the article that is Part 3 of the 4-part series. It's about how the UFW in the late 1970s adopted some abusive organizational practices from the Synanon cult and the results: Decisions of Long Ago Shape the Union Today: In the late 1970s Cesar Chavez grew intent on keeping control. He crushed dissent, turned against friends, purged staff and sought a new course by Miriam Pawel Los Angeles Times 01/10/06.

Although the article doesn't frame the story as dealing with a cult phonemenon, it's an unusally good description of the harm that can come from adopting such practices. In the UFW's case, it sidetracked them at a critical time in the union's development. It did what the big California growers and their political allies had failed to do: put effective brakes on the movement to unionized farmworkers.

We tend to think of cults as being religious groups. And many of them are. But there are other kinds of cults, as well: psychological cults, political cults, business cults, even family cults. Synanon was an Age of Aquarius drug-treatment program that evolved into a cult under the leadership of its authoritarian, alcoholic leader, Chuck Dederich.

On the whole, the series reads like an anti-union hit piece, for reasons I explain more fully in the linked posts below.

But that one article deals with an important series of incidents, and describes cult-type dynamics in an unusally good way. And I hate to say that because of the seeming anti-union slant of the series.

These are the two posts from Old Hickory's Weblog:

LA Times series on the United Farm Workers (UFW) 01/09/06

The United Farm Workers Union (UFW) per the Los Angeles Times 01/11/06

The Spanish-language Los Angeles daily La Opinión has a page featuring several articles on the overall legacy of César Chávez and his union: La lucha de César Chávez continúa.