Word: chavez
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...example, most people believe America's farmworkers are migrants, following harvests from state to state. Chavez and his supporters have continually repeated this to the public. "Most farmworkers are members of families who scrape together marginal livings by following the crops around the U.S.," reads a pamphlet distributed by Chavez boycott organizers in Phoenix...
...truth is that very few farmworkers are migrants. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that migrant workers comprise less than 8 per cent of all farm-workers in the country. In California, where Chavez has concentrated his unionizing efforts, less than 9 per cent of the work force is migrant and less than 4 per cent comes from out-of-state...
Another source of misrepresentations by Chavez and his supporters has been the subject of farmworkers' wages. In 1972, UFW vice president Dolores Huerta reported on public television, "The average earnings of a farmworker in the U.S. are only $1400 a year...
...will get a distorted, meaningless figure for annual incomes. Averaging the annual farm income of some one who works two weeks in the fields with someone who works all year would hardly give you an accurate picture of their wages. But this is precisely how Dolores Huerta and Chavez's supporters get their figures for annual farm incomes...
This is not to deny that there is some poverty among farmworkers, but the poor workers are a small minority, not the starving masses Chavez has depicted. It is particularly interesting to note that Chavez has not sought to unionize these poor workers, most of whom are in the South, but the well-paid $8000 to $12,000 a year workers in California instead...