Farm Workers Lose Out to Big Business
Forty years ago this summer, social justice activists, labor unions and faith leaders celebrated a historic victory when the United Farm Workers of America ended a grape boycott after growers agreed to sign their first contract with the union. The news from California these days is not as sunny.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ignored calls from Catholic priests, labor unions and workers’ rights groups when he recently vetoed a bill passed by both houses of the state legislature that would have made farm workers eligible for overtime pay if they worked more than an eight-hour day. The bill would have also given the workers the right to take one day off out of seven. (I’m not a Biblical scholar, but even God rested on the seventh day!)
Instead, the governor – who as a newly arrived immigrant in the United States was no stranger to hard labor as a bricklayer – sided with the state’s influential agribusiness lobby, citing his concern that he would put the growers at a competitive disadvantage.
This is another sad example of how a commitment to human dignity is sacrificed for corporate profits, a characteristic sign of a capitalist system that has lost it moral bearings. For more on this, read Pope Benedict’s latest encyclical – a timely reflection on economic justice and the ethical limits of free-market fundamentalism. As Interfaith Worker Justice points out, farm workers have one of the most punishing jobs possible. Exposed to hazardous pesticides and long hours, many live in company-owned labor camps.
Next time you’re enjoying peaches or corn this summer take a minute to remember how this bounty made it to your table.
Farm work, because its nature has been exempt from “manufacturing-type” labor laws. Overtime for a 40 hour work week is the national standard…overtime for more than 8 in a day is one of many union ideas that has decimated the auto industry. Leave the farmers alone. They have enough trouble with the weather and market conditions. As for company housing…that is a case by case basis and too broad to argue. Of course it should be clean. Same for the comment on spray materials. There are governmental standards enough on handling and application . There is nothing that protects a farmer’s child better than a migrant’s child. You sound like the 1960s.