Sour Grapes

I spent the last week of July in California's Central Valley reporting on the lives of farm workers. While I was there two workers died from heat exposure. A third had expired a few days before I arrived.

That's all included in my feature-length report which has just been posted

at L.A. Weekly. Please take the time to read it. It's long, but I think you will find it worth your time. This article now appears on the 40th anniversary of the great Delano grape strike led by the late Cesar Chavez and his United Farm Workers (UFW). In my article I argue that the mythic nature of Chavez' legacy unfortunately blinds most of us to the deplorable realities that still characterize work in the fields. I wrote:

There’s a prevailing popular assumption that superexploitation of the state’s farm workers is a closed chapter in some deep, dark past. And that while immigrant fruit pickers and packers might not be getting rich, somehow the struggle of the late Cesar Chavez and his UFW had “solved” the most pressing problems of these workers and forever curbed the worst abuses of the growers.

But exactly 40 years after Chavez’s UFW exploded into the national consciousness by leading the great 1965 Delano grape workers’ strike and forced America to recognize the plight of those who put our food on the table, nothing could be further from the truth. The golden years of California farm workers lasted barely a decade and then sharply began to fade. “Since the late 1970s, it’s all been downhill, it’s all been on the defensive,” says Oxnard-based CRLA attorney Jeff Ponting.

The landmark 1975 Agricultural Labor Relations Act (ALRA) that passed during the Jerry Brown administration promised a New Deal for farm workers. Today it is little more than a historical asterisk. Wages among California’s 700,000 farm workers, 96 percent of whom are Mexican or Central American, more than half of whom are undocumented, are at best stagnant, and by most reckonings are in decline. With almost all workers stuck at the minimum wage of $6.75 an hour, it’s rare to find a farm worker whose annual income breaks $10,000 a year. “Twenty-five years ago, a worker made 12, 13, 14 cents for a bin of oranges,” says economist Rick Mines, until recently research director at the Davis-based California Institute for Rural Studies. “Today that same bin pays maybe 15 or 16 cents — in spite of 250 percent inflation.” Virtually no workers have health insurance or paid vacations.

The cyclical nature of the crops throws most out of work for two or more months per year. In a pattern that one academic calls “ethnic replacement,” succeeding waves of ever poorer, more marginal Mexicans, many of them from indigenous communities where Spanish is a foreign language, increasingly constitute the field labor force. The downward-spiraling Mexican economy feverishly churns those waves to the degree that, at any moment, as many as 20 percent of California’s agricultural workers have been in the U.S. for less than a year.

Again, please take the time to read my entire piece. The extraordinary photos are by Slobodan Dimitrov.

Comments

[michael yates]

I enjoyed (probably the wrong word) your piece on farmworkers and the UFW. I worked for the UFW in 1977 at the old tb sanitorium which serves as union headquarters in Keene, CA. I wrote a critical piece about the union in Nov. 1977 published in the Nation (A Union is Not a Movement). The unions lawyers, not long after purged along with a lot of others, including officer Gilbert Padilla, threatened suit. And I was an expert witness in the first ALRB cases in which the union and the ALRB General Counsel demanded monetary penalties for employer refusal to bargain (Ernest Perry and Adams Dairy cases, hearings in Stockton and Santa Maria). We won those cases, a tribute to the skills of the legal staff.

I witnessed some pretty bad things in the UFW, such as an alliance with Synanon (and some good ones too)and widesprad nepotism. I have written a good story about this, which I will email to you if you would like to see it. BTW, the Village Voice had a series about the UFW a number of years ago, similar to the one in the Bakersfield paper.

Monthly Review has a piece coming up in the October issue by Elly Leary on the successful efforts by a workers' center in Florida to get Taco Bell to pay more for tomatoes, the money to go to the farmworkers. Might be a model for other farmworkers.

Michael Yates

[jim hitchcock]

Thanks, Marc. You're right; how easy has it been to use Cesar Chavez to shift out attention away from the reality of migrant workers.

OT: Congratulations, Kansas School Board. You've singlehandedly given your kids the opportunity to opt out for ignorance and superstition. I hope their smart and inquisitive enough to overcome you.

[rosedog]

Terrific and important piece, Marc. (Will be back later with a more substantive comment.)

[Jim Rockford]

Great series Marc. No question Duke and Wilson really gutted enforcement, did not know Schwarzenegger was at least not as bad as those guys and signed some bills the growers did not like.

Enforcement will help prevent more deaths, but won't change the basic economics. You nailed it Marc. Lots of immigrants, chasing low wage jobs with low skills needed, for what is basically commodities.

Organizing will help some, but I don't think "fair prices" is a solution, consumers will always go for the cheaper head of lettuce since one head of lettuce is the same as another. Commodities, that's always a problem. Growers compete on cost. That's just reality.

Comprehensive solutions IMHO must embrace enforcement by the State, organizing (yes it seems UFW has not done much here), and yes more mechanization to reduce rote labor and make harvesting a mechanized affair requiring skills and higher wages with enhanced cost reduction.

[steve]

David Bacon has also contributed some excellent journalism and photo series on the situation of immigrant farm workers in California.

http://dbacon.igc.org/

[steve]

And here's an article by David Bacon in Monthly Review on labor organizing strategy:

http://www.monthlyreview.org/0605bacon.htm

[jim hitchcock]

"Commodities, that's always a problem. Growers compete on cost. That's just reality."

You know what bugs the everlasting hell out of me? The South used the same bullshit argument when claiming slave labor was absolutely vital to their economic survival. Well, guess what, dem ole cotton growers adjusted pretty quickly after the Civil War.

And so would consumers. Sure, we'd bitch and moan, but that's pretty much human nature. We'd get over it.

I guess it would be fair to say that those in Congress from farm states who voted for CAFTA would be first in line to vote for repeal, and I think that would be a good thing.

[Mavis Beacon]

Thanks for the great article, Marc.

[GM Roper]

Jim: "Sure, we'd bitch and moan, but that's pretty much human nature. We'd get over it."

Jim, I don't know, are you still bitching about the price of gas? When if you adjust for inflation, it is still pretty damn cheap. And what about the food costs of the less fortunate? Or do we add more subsidies for them to afford a few luxries like grapes or vine ripened tomatoes? If we do that, what middle classers (conservative, liberal, etc.) will begin bitching about taxes?

Folks that get my food to the table deserve to be compensated, but not any more or any less than others who do things that keep this economy going.

Cheers!

[Michael Crosby]

Excellent piece, Marc.

My perceptions of the farmworkers' life [the word "plight" was fighting to escape from my fingers just then] was impacted when I was dating a woman who had grown up in the vineyards and orchards in the early 60s. She had a number of bizarre allergies, most significantly to sunshine. Also alcohol...yikes! She was not born with them. Whether it was extreme exposure to the sun or to the chemicals they were using [I note the surgical mask in the picture above] or something else, she doesn't know. Or wouldn't say.

The point is that she grew up, moved away, went to school, graduated from law school and all that, but she carried this residual physical memory of a very grim childhood within her. Her family survived and moved out and remained [obsessively, oppressively] close. I don't think her view of the American Dream was ever quite as sunny as that professed by some other people, though.

[Lover of humanity]

Excellent point! We must stop illegal immigrants at the border! It's for their own good. Stop the bloodletting!

[jim hitchcock]

GM, I honestly don't bitch about the price of gas, for the reason you name as well as the knowledge that Europe has been paying over $5.00 a gallon for as long as I can remember. It's not like current prices are a big surprise.

As to your other contention, here's the salient part of Marc's article:

" “A head of lettuce costs a dollar in the store, and only 3 or 4 cents go to the farm worker. We could double that to 6 cents, not feel it at all, yet it would make a huge impact in the lives of the workers."

Seriously, is that extra 2-3 cents added to the consumer price even going to be noticed?
-------------------------------

Another strange contradiction strikes me; back in the slaveowning days, it would have been anathema to work a valued property to death in the hot sun. Now it's like, oh well, there's plenty more where that one came from. So much for progress...

[reg]

Great piece, Marc.

And terribly depressing. The idea that anyone would even quibble about improving significantly the wages and working conditions of these folks is, to me, shocking. That the gains that were made by farmworkers under the old UFW and most especially with the advent of the Jerry Brown era CRLA were deliberately destroyed by the growers' lobbies and craven politicians is a tragedy. Stuff like this seems like a line that one can clearly draw between those among us - nuances of political ideology aside - who are fundamentally humane and those among us who lack even the most basic decency or compassion. This is very difficult, dangerous work that deserves compensation well above minimum wage.

(I'm reminded of the commenter in a previous thread - obviously some moron who migrated from Instapundit's link to that post - who, at the mention of Marx by the MR guy, glibly and cluelessly proclaimed, "Ayn Rand explains capitalism." No...Ayn Rand explains selfish, soulless scum who are bereft of humanity and compassion and indifferent to suffering. Agribusiness is one of those brutal terrains of unbridled capitalism where old man Marx ranting about exploitation still strikes a resonant chord. That agribusiness also finds ways to rob taxpayers at the "corporate welfare" end of the larger economy makes the whole dance doubly disgusting.)

I won't go into the immigration debate at length, but the description of successive waves of ever more impoverished "replacement" workers flooding the agribusiness labor market reinforces my negativity on the matter of illegals.

[Michael Crosby]

Didn't realize there was a problem between the Mixtec workers and there others. Hell, I didn't know that Mixtecs predominate in the fields now. I wonder how many of the previous generations of pickers got out and into something/anything better...how many went back to Mexico or somewhere else...how many just, well, died?

Is Dolores Huerta's group in any better communication with the workers than the UFW? I couldn't tell for sure from the article.

On occasion I have donated both to UFW (in response to telemarketing) and to CRLA. I guess in the future I will be more generous to CRLA and less to UFW. I confess that I have always been dubious about their pitches...about fighting sexual harassment by growers, etc. CRLA, on the other hand, keeps grinding...and my wonderful colleague Dolores Leal and her husband hold what I am told is a great fundraiser every year in LA area.

Last observation: I would imagine the least imaginable thing about the "Joads" and their contemporaries to your friend would have been the information that the federal government was their friend and protector. Such a story might as well begin: "Once upon a time....'

Adding to Marc's point on Cesar Chavez:
Here in COlorado a few years back there was a ballot measure to turn Cesar Chavez day into a paid holiday for state workers. Interesting thing is, Chavez and the UFW never had a presence here. It was all about ethnic ass kissing and ID politics. I'm sure the business community would rather give 10 Cesar Chavez days so long as no one tries to fuck with the state's noxious labor laws that require workers to basically win 2 elections in order to certify a bargaining unit...

My 2 cents.

[Jim Rockford]

Jim Hitch -- my point is that economically, market forces make the current model of farm labor unsustainable for a living wage.

EVEN if you raise the wages a dollar an hour by government fiat, consumers still buy on price alone. There is no economic incentive for Agribusiness to do anything other than minimize wages as much as possible and treat workers like garbage. The business they are in rewards the lowest cost producer.

Reg is absolutely RIGHT, loads of immigrants constantly churning through the labor market, unskilled labor needs for the position meaning they are easily replaced, and low productivity means nothing will SUBSTANTIALLY change.

I too would like to see farm workers paid a living wage. How are you going to do that? Have the Governor or Legislator determine their wages at some set-point above min? Even minimum wage is not IMHO a living wage. Which is politically all you'll get, given the realities of the above market.

Cotton farming is a good example. It was automation in harvesting along with better jobs in WWII manufacturing that ended sharecropping (slave labor by another name, essentially). I think it's long past time we ended our own shameful treatment of Farm workers by replacing human labor (a lot of it with little skills) with mostly machine labor (aided by a little of human labor with a lot of skills).

It would be different if consumers could be persuaded to pay more for produce (I think "moral questions" won't move beyond the soy-latte set ala shade-tree coffee). But lettuce is lettuce, "branding" efforts I've seen in my supermarket (organic, co-op etc) seem to have failed. It's a commodity so CONSUMERS buy on price.

THAT consumer behavior drives everything else is my point.

[jim hitchcock]

"THAT consumer behavior drives everything else is my point."

Really? As another commodity, gasoline, has doubled in prioe over the last few years, has it changed comsumer buying patterns (as well as government policy) that much. I don't think so. Why? Because consumers have no choice.

So, say you add 3 or 4 cents to a head of lettuce, use a little government decree to guarantee that money is used to pay a living wage, and people are going to stop buying lettuce? Of course not.

So, you say, there's no political will for this to happen? In the early part of the last century, we pretty much wiped out sweat shop labor in this country, also by government decree, brought on by labor organizing. WHAT THE HELL HAS HAPPENED TO US AS A PEOPLE TO MAKE THIS IMPOSSIBLE NOW???

I'm sorry if I just don't get it.

[Tom Grey - Liberty Dad]

The solution to the terrible conditions of farm workers is obvious, but not at all simple.
Offer them better jobs. Especially in their home areas in Mexico.

Jim H: have you EVER offered a farm worker a better job? If not, why not? (oh, you don't own a business, it's not your responsibility, yada yada.) Invest in Mexican small business.

Marc, there is far too little news coverage on how bad the Mexican gov't is about allowing small business there -- actually they nearly make it impossible. I suspect CAFTA will improve the ability of small businesses to function.

Forcing normal people to pay more for US food, while it may seem to solve the (US only) "problem", means fewer poor workers get more money each. And if min wage isn't "living wage", why not start a business and offer more?

Because starting a business, or expanding one, is really hard -- since it means you have to get other people to cooperate without using force.

Leftists love the gov't because they love using gov't force, to make other people do what the Leftists want. And the idea of INCREASING taxes on the "rich" -- those who DO offer jobs, is obviously counterproductive to the goal of offering more jobs.

Jim R, in China GM is using lower cost Chinese labor INSTEAD of welding robots, for instance. And the wave of economic growth is migrating inland, looking for cheap labor. [Chinese rapid industrialization is creating HUGE pollution problems.]

The solution is jobs for all, so as to create a worker shortage, but that means more rewards to companies expanding their workforce.

Because the solution of more jobs, for the whole world, is so large, many folk think more gov't is a shortcut. Wrong. When aid-oriented folk are willing to create sustainable organizations based on peaceful cooperation, poverty can be made history. Such organizations DO exist, they're called companies. A sustainability measure DOES exist, it's called profit.

Agribusiness isn't using force to make the desperately poor folk accept those terrible jobs. Lack of better choices, lack of better job opportunities.

And lazy Leftists wanting to use force instead of peaceful, better choices, make the problem worse. (Then blame those who DO offer more jobs.)

[jim hitchcock]

"Jim H: have you EVER offered a farm worker a better job? If not, why not? (oh, you don't own a business, it's not your responsibility, yada yada.) Invest in Mexican small business."

Have you, Tom? If not, don't be an ass.

[jim hitchcock]

"Because the solution of more jobs, for the whole world, is so large, many folk think more gov't is a shortcut. Wrong. When aid-oriented folk are willing to create sustainable organizations based on peaceful cooperation, poverty can be made history. Such organizations DO exist, they're called companies. A sustainability measure DOES exist, it's called profit."

Oh, geez. Companies exist NOW, Tom. You tell me what business model is taking over the world, Walmart's, or Costco's. Get real.

[jim hitchcock]

"And lazy Leftists wanting to use force instead of peaceful, better choices, make the problem worse."

And you base that statement on what, Tom? Union organizers of the early last century who fought against 7 day work weeks, 12 hour days? Oh, okay, sure enough. How lazy was that?

Apologies for the multiple posts, Marc. Tom's simpleminded ecomomic theorizing of `give 'em better job opportunities to create labor shotage' goes no further than `create reward incentives for company expansion'. In effect, Tom is saying that all problems will be solved if we can just get everybody to BUY MORE STUFF! Wow!

[jim hitchcock]

Meant simplistic, rather than simpleminded...don't want to be too harsh on ole Tom.

[reg]

"There is no economic incentive for Agribusiness to do anything other than minimize wages as much as possible and treat workers like garbage. The business they are in rewards the lowest cost producer. (writes Rockford)

Which is why political measures, like a decent minimum wage (which could be "tiered" in order to accomodate teenagers entering the workforce), pro-labor collective bargaining laws, strict enforcement of safety and other labor standards, and national health insurance do everyone a favor by leveling the playing field. Oh, and some controls over imports that don't meet reasonable criteria in terms of labor and consumer protection criteria as well. A fair regulatory environment ensures that the agribusiness employer isn't "forced" by competition to treat his laborers worse than he might, all other things being equal. Regulation is good for business in so far as it rescues them from a race to the bottom in their labor standards in order to protect profits. Over the long term they benefit from having a workforce that isn't constantly being ground down.

Call the above - at least in Tom Grey's silly world - a "lazy leftist who want's to use force". Regulation of unbridled capitalism has been one of the essential conditions for what are effectively the "most free" societies we've seen yet on this planet.

[reg]

TOTALLY OT - But is the Governator's Humvee about to hit a giant IED ???

http://tinyurl.com/akwum

[Jim Rockford]

Jim H -- I'm just pessimistic that even a 3 cent rise in produce would produce living wages. I also don't think as a political matter that white guilt over various new immigrant groups will be a major force, particularly in tough economic times as now.

Reg -- agreed that as a matter of policy and social justice all your measures can and should be enacted. I still do not think that it will change the basic wage structure of farmworkers much because there are just too many laborers chasing unskilled jobs.

One farmworker is much like another, replaceable, whereas a skilled worker is not. To me the greatest advances has been in mechanization and increased productivity of farm labor. Farming is a horrible job, and to the degree that agribusiness here has everything mechanized and overseen by a few, highly skilled, and hard-to-replace workers, to my mind that puts orders of magnitude dollars in workers pockets.

We simply cannot act as the safety valve for Latin America's failure to develop their economies. The solution to low cost labor abroad is increased productivity through capital investment here. GM yes is chasing cheap labor; the alternative is more productivity at home and the ability overall to produce a cheaper set of vehicles to meet nearly instant demand (and get away from the tyranny of Chinese logistics).

The flipside of course of closing down exports from foreign countries agribusiness is that it hurts foreign farmers. Is that worth it? I'd say yes though I'll note Bono and the like have urged the EU in particular to dump subsidies for farmers (particularly the French) to allow African farm exports.