A Salinas grower and the union bet that a new contract
will become an alternative to employing guest workers
By David Bacon, The American Prospect
July 11, 2018
Up and down the Pacific coast, many of the largest growers
are rapidly increasing their use of guest workers recruited in Mexico as
temporary harvest labor. Farm labor, in their view, is unskilled. The workers
who perform it should show up at harvest time, work as hard as possible, and
then effectively disappear until the next season.
This has been the common view for over a century. It is the
justification for a renewed Republican push to establish a vastly expanded
guest worker program. But is the road to improving the lives of farmworkers to
legislate even more massive contract-labor programs? Or is it to treat farm
labor as skilled and permanent work, and provide security and decent wages to
those who do it? […]
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| Farm workers in Salinas protest immigration raids. Photo: David Bacon |
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