Word: migrant
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...citizen who has little need of or desire for a union such as the UFW. It is hard to square this image with even a minimal knowledge of the realities of farmworker life. Our own very different experiences (one of us spent many years in a community regularly employing migrant labor and the other worked for two years as a legal services attorney among farmworkers in Delano, California) only confirm what has been said and observed by countless others who have researched the farmworker problem. The farm laborer's existence has been and continued to be characterized by poverty, insecurity...
...doesn't make that fate any better. Interstate migrancy has diminished due partly to mechanization, and partly to other forms of labor exploitation such as day-haul programs, which make it possible to tap the large pool of unemployed in the cities. In any case, being a seasonal laborer, migrant or non-migrant, means dangerous work (farm work is the third most dangerous occupation in California), low wages, abysmally low yearly incomes, unemployment and poor or nonexistent housing...
Oehen's proposal was not exactly new; a similar but less sweeping measure was narrowly defeated in 1970. But by playing on the deep resentment many Swiss feel toward migrant workers, who are blamed for everything from the housing shortage to overcrowded nurseries and schools, Oehen's "over-foreignization" campaign struck a surprisingly responsive chord. "They take our jobs, and they work too damn hard," declared a middle-aged lathe operator in Bern who vowed to vote for the constitutional amendment. "All they care about is putting in overtime to make more money...
...fourth of the farm wage workers in the United States are under 16 years old." The AFSC and the Department of Labor concur in estimating that 800,000 children work in agricultural labor. The Department of Labor found that nine out of ten migrant children fail to keep up with school work, and repeat grades. Dr. Robert Coles, of the Harvard School of Public Health, has summarized the consequences of child farm labor: "When a child is ten, he ceases to be a child." UFW contracts forbid child labor, while providing wages and benefits that allow a family to survive...
Finally, a trivial point, but one which characterizes the article: contrary to the reporter's assertion, Chavez is indeed a migrant worker, the son of farm workers...