Word: grapes
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...lettuce workers make as much as $12,000 a year rarely less than $5000 or $6000." Richard McGinnity, research assistant to Professor Ray A. Goldburg, Harvard Business School, confirmed as reliable a figure given in a recent study done by him of $8500 in annual earnings for Coachella valley grape workers. Payroll records also show that full-time Gallo winery farmworkers earned $7785 last year...
These studies and the ones given in my article are the original sources, not yours; most are made from the actual payroll records. Secondly, my studies are specifically for the grape and lettuce workers in California, your studies are national averages of all farmworkers. About your $10.90 figure, the study does not make it clear whether it does include piece rates. But in the particular chart to which you refer, the greatest number of farmworkers, 38 per cent, are in the last column marked simply "over 13.00" which would not contradict my figures, especially since $10.90 is the median...
...article, where poverty among farmworkers does exist. Now compare this to the figure of $1400 for a whole year's work given by the UFW. My contention was that the UFW was distorting the facts to gain public support. You seem to have proven my point, especially since grape and lettuce workers earn much more than your national median figures. And it's not just income that they have distorted, but migrancy, farmer's incomes, UFW support among farmworkers, UFW's record on violence, Teamster contracts, the nature of the UFW hiring hall, Chavez's record on secret ballot elections...
...Cornett, the labor contractor system to which you refer was in declining use among the grape and lettuce workers until Chavez brought it back in the form of the hiring hall which is really the same thing, except in monopolized form. For example, Gallo company has never used labor contractors...
...California had 30 per cent of the large-scale farms of the United States. Now, the ratio of family labor to hired labor is one to four in California and one to six in Arizona. Three or four companies have gained control over the lettuce industry in California; the grape and wine industry has been recently merged into large multi-national corporations (such as Nestle...