Twenty months after the boycott began the two unions and the winery agreed to support a compromise labor relations bill that California Governor Jerry Brown proposed to the legislature. Gallo had been endorsing an extension of the National Labor Relations Act to cover agricultural workers, but the UFW did not want to be subject to the national law. "When it (the federal act) was first passed it was a strong law, and the unions grew. But now it has been amended and if we were covered by it, it would be harder for us to organize. If they want to subject the UFW to the bill they should give us a twelve-year period of grace like the other unions had before the amendments were added," Johnson says.

The federal law prohibits secondary boycotts, but the California bill, which took effect August 28, 1975, allows secondary boycotts at farms where a union has won an election but has not been able to reach a contract agreement with the employer. The state law also created a state board to supervise secret-ballot elections, allows currently employed workers to petition for a decertification election that could bust a union and nullify existing contracts, and gives striking workers the right to vote in union certification elections.

As soon as the bill was passed there was an election at Gallo. The results were inconclusive and contested. The Teamsters got 223 votes and the UFW received 131, but an additional 295 votes were contested by one of the other two unions, or by Gallo.

The UFW claims that workers were harrassed and intimidated. Gallo had hired a private force of unarmed guards about a year before and Joynson says these guards all "marched" to vote together, although they were clearly not agricultural workers. The mere presence of guards on the Gallo property indicates the "insidious" nature of the Gallo dealings, he says.

Solomon says the guards had to join the Teamsters when they were hired and that the Teamsters had forced them to vote. These 28 votes have already been ruled void by the board, Solomon adds. But Johnson says it does not matter whether the guards were told to vote by Gallo or the Teamsters because the Teamsters are "a company union, they're in it with Gallo."

The election hinges on the fate of the votes of 130 "alleged economic strikers," Solomon says. Johnson is confident that if justice prevails the votes will count and the UFW will win. The board has interviewed each of the 130 and will decide sometime in the future if they are Gallo employees on strike for economic reasons.

There was a delay in the process last February, though, when the board ran out of money and was unable to receive emergency funding from the legislature. Solomon says most of the 62,000 growers opposed funding the board because it had been sloppily run and was biasedtoward the UFW. But Gallo did not support either side politically or financially.

The UFW organized a drive last April to get a proposition on the ballot that would permanently fund the board. But the proposition was defeated earlier this month, by a vote of 61 to 29 per cent. Again, Gallo did not take a side, although other growers reportedly admitted to spending at least $1.6 million to defeat the proposition. The UFW spent about $300,000.

Now Gallo is waiting for notification from the state board, and is legally forbidden to negotiate with any union until they have won an election. The UFW is still urging a boycott of Gallo wines until the election is settled and Gallo has signed a contract with the Farm Workers Union.

Why boycott a company that is legally restrained from any action? "We are boycotting unfair Teamster practices. Gallo can determine how much they will harass us with goons, and besides, you can't just turn a boycott on and off," Johnson says.

Most of Harvard's activists still support the boycott, but have moved on to other causes because the work was hard and the progress slow. Jon Grossman '78 says he worked two years ago but decided "it was more important to educate myself politically than to spend hours and hours doing work like that. It was a lot of effort with few results."

And Peter Hogness '76 says the reason to continue the boycott, despite Gallo's legal restrictions, is to try to pressure Gallo into "a cooperative attitude."

Solomon says he has his own, personal, Machiavellian views of the UFW boycott, but emphasizes that he is not speaking for Gallo. "It is hard to boycott generic things--lettuce and grapes. Gallo is an easily identifiable product, clearly labeled in stores all over the country. We're also the largest winery so we make a prominent target."

Johnson says the Gallo boycott is based on rational reasoning and is a response to Gallo's cooperation with the Teamsters.

Its size is a factor, of course: first things first.