They Saved the Crops: Labor, Landscape, and the Struggle over Industrial Farming in Bracero-Era California

5. The Persistent Landscape: Perpetuating Crisis in California

135 CHAPTER FIVE The Persistent Landscape Perpetuating Crisis in California The fallacy of “certified need” is based upon a personal prejudice and subjective interpretation by State and Federal employment officials as to what constitutes “availability,” of domestic workers. This interpretation is set forth by Mr. Edward F. Hayes [director, fps] when he stated that “foreign labor will not be used except as a supplementary force when domestic workers are not available and willing to accept the job offering.” This is substantially the position taken by the uses also. Now, it should be noted that the “job offering” is never described in terms of wages or other conditions of labor. To these officials if domestic workers refuse to pick cotton at $2.50 a hundred pounds that constitutes unavailability of domestic workers and automatically justifies “certification of need” of aliens. This is a myth which the labor movement must pin down without equivocation. There is no such thing as availability pure and simple. Conditions are always inherent in job wages, services, treatment accorded by the employer, etc. Stripping the employer-worker relationship to an economic fig leaf makes the matter simple but not necessarily pure. Ernest Galarza, National Farm Labor Union, 1949 The technical requirements of decasualization are perfectly clear. They have been known ever since the British experiments with the decasualization of dockworkers in the early part of the century. The labor supply must be restricted and registered, hiring must be confined to a single central source, labor must be allocated by a central authority. The central authority may be an employers’ association, a trade union, the government, or some combination of these, but whatever the character of the central authority, the requirements of the program to use trade union terminology, are a hiring hall, job rotation, and preferential employment. Lloyd Fisher, The Harvest Labor Market in California, 1953 136 • chapter five DESPITE NO REAL LEGISLATIVE AUTHORITY to do so (though with much support from members of Congress), and despite Mexican displeasure with the border opening at El Paso in October 1948, the uses began negotiation in January 1949 in Mexico City to forge a new international agreement governing the importation of Mexican National labor. In advance of these negotiations, the federal government established a Special Advisory Committee on Farm Labor, made up entirely of “prominent farmers” and charged with counseling “the Employment Service on matters pertaining to agricultural manpower.” The uses also held a series of meetings directly with employer groups throughout November 1948. In consultation with the special committee, and in response to these meetings, the uses formulated its negotiating position. Only after this position (which included a push for border recruiting and the removal of Texas from Mexico’s blacklist of places ineligible to receive braceros, among many other issues) had been firmly established were representatives of organized labor invited to comment on the proposal, and then they only received the proposal ten days before negotiations were to open.1 Labor’s dissatisfactions were numerous. As Ernesto Galarza, who was quickly becoming nflu’s chief organizer and spokesman in California, summarized in a letter to cfl Secretary Neil Haggerty: No labor representatives, United States or Mexican, have been asked to participate in these discussions.* . . . These proposals are completely unacceptable to the nflu. Here are some samples: the new agreement will be of indefinite duration; the United States Government is made the “agent” for the Associated Farmers; the farm bureaus will fix wages and the Federal Government will confirm them; ten percent of the Nationals ’ wages will be deducted and handed over to the employer under certain onerous liens; only the employers would have the right to discuss grievances with the Mexican consul; the so-called “prevailing” wage is again taken as the basis of the term for which the National signs up; the Nationals will be massed at three border points for contracting thereby creating another illegal mass crossing like that of last October; employers bonds are eliminated from the agreement; no provision is made for labor inspectors. Further, the Mexican Government has stated that they will agree to a ceiling of 60 cents an hour for all types of agricultural labor for the Nationals. * Members of a subcommittee of the (employers’) Special Advisory Committee on Farm Labor were invited to Mexico City for the negotiations to act as advisors to the U.S. negotiating team. Kirstein, Anglo over Bracero, 80n40. The Persistent Landscape • 137...