GIANNINI • FOUNDATION OF AGRICULTURAL UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS AAE CALIFORNIA Hired Hands in California's Farm Fields Varden Fuller Giannini Foundation Special Report • June 1991 DIVISION OF AGRICULTURE AND NATURAL RESOURCES CALIFORNIA AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION WAITE MEMORIAL BOOK COLLECTION DEPT. OF AG. AND APPLIED ECONOMICS 1994 BUFORD AVE. - 232 COB UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA ST. FAUL. MN 55108 U.S.A. -1 19 s / ,e'd\ HIRED HANDS IN CALIFORNIA'S FARM FIELDS Collected Essays on California's Farm Labor History and Policy by VARDEN FULLER CONTENTS Foreword Harold 0. Carter Editor's Note Introduction: A Few Personal Notes of Explanation and Reflection Part I: Historical Background 1. Land, Labor, and Farm Enterprise, 1850-1900 1 2. Anxieties and Uncertainties, 1900-1920 21 3. Inheritors and Guarantors of the System, 1920-1964 45 Part II: Farm-Management Relations, 1955-1964 4. Labor Relations in Agriculture, 1955 57 5. Economics of Migrant Labor, 1959 91 6. A New Era for Farm Labor? 1967 100 Part III: The Struggle for a Farm Labor Policy 7. Farm Labor and National Labor Relations Law 116 8. Toward an Agricultural Labor Relations Law in California 131 9. Constraints on California Farm Labor Unionization 158 (with John Mamer) Bibliography 169 Foreword The author of this volume, Varden Fuller, has achieved national recognition as an authority on agricultural labor and for his many contributions in the area of agricultural policy and rural development. His work has been distinguished by its scholarly content, its objectivity, its high degree of perception with respect to emerging socio-economic developments, and a vigorous and persistent concern for social change through governmental action. Born on a farm in Utah in 1909, Dr. Fuller received his A.B. degree in Eco- nomics in 1934 and Ph.D. degree in Agricultural Economics in 1939, both from the University of California, Berkeley. He worked for the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, U.S. Department of Agriculture from 1939 to 1943, rising to senior agricultural economist and head of the Division of Farm Population and Rural Wel- fare, Western Region. From 1943 to 1948 he held the position of economist and statistician for a San Francisco law firm specializing in labor relations. After a short appointment with the U.S. Department of Interior, he joined the University of California, Berkeley in 1948. Dr. Fuller's doctoral dissertation, The Supply of Labor as a Factor in the Evolution of Farm Organization in California, attracted nationwide attention as one of the first objective analyses of agricultural labor supply. The dissertation refuted the long held belief that the growth of large-scale farming in California was due mainly to favorable soil and climatic conditions. Dr. Fuller provided convincing evidence that an abundant supply of seasonal labor preceded rather than followed the development of large-scale agriculture. Fuller's analysis revealed that with the completion of the transcontinental railroad and the layoff of thousands of workers employed in its construction, the California labor supply was rapidly augmented, so much so that it was possible to recruit large numbers of workers to perform the seasonal farm work generated by large-scale labor intensive agriculture. This landmark study was published in Hearings before the Subcommittee on Education and Labor, U.S. Senate. Dr. Fuller's subsequent work with the BAE while stationed in California was concerned with the plight and economic well being of displaced migratory labor from the southern Great Plains and their assimilation in the western states. Much of this research was sought and used by congressional committees. His continued work in farm labor and rural development has produced a flow of highly regarded research reports and articles and service to many national and regional bodies. This has included service as Executive Secretary to the President's Commission on Migratory Labor in 1950-51, membership on the National and the Western States Manpower Advisory Committees, chairmanship of the Wage Board, State Industrial Welfare Commission, and consultive advice to the U.S. Department of Labor, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and many other agencies. Dr. Fuller did pioneering studies in collective bargaining and labor relations for agricultural workers. His expertise, writings and consultation contributed sig- 1 nificantly over a period of years to the final enactment of the California Farm Labor Act, the first of its kind in the nation. Many of his early proposals for improved management-labor relations and for worker fringe benefits and rights are now em- braced as standards. He was among the first to call attention to the need to deca- sualize seasonal farm employment for the benefit of both employer and employee. Many of his suggestions, which were originally received with some hostility by agri- cultural employers, are now regarded as efficient and effective personnel policies by leaders in California agriculture. Although a major portion of Dr. Fuller's activity has been in the field of agri- cultural labor, it has by no means been his only area of study. An astute observer of the political content of agricultural policy, he has written widely on farm policy issues and the subject of rural development. He was editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics from 1968-71 and was a member of the editorial board for Industrial Relations. At the University of California Dr. Fuller has had a distinguished career on two campuses. Serving at Berkeley from 1948 to 1970, he taught courses in agricultural policy noted for their emphasis on the political issues of agriculture. He also partic- ipated heavily in the affairs of the University, serving on the Graduate Council and a wide variety of Academic Senate and administrative committees and, for a time, as Vice-Chairman of the Department. In 1970, he transferred to the Davis campus where he continued to teach in the areas of agriculture policy and farm labor and expanded his early interest in rural community development. He retired in 1977. Dr. Fuller has enjoyed a long and productive career and is a teacher and a scholar in the truest sense of the words. HAROLD 0. CARTER Agricultural Issues Center University of California, Davis 11 Editor's Note The nine chapters in this volume are a retrospective collection ofsome of Varden Fuller's insightful research and analysis of the California farm labor scene over nearly half a century. Most of the included essays have been originally published elsewhere; they are here collected for the first time. Taken together they represent a fairly complete historical treatment of the evolution of farm labor-management relations in California agriculture from the state's earliest days until shortly after passage of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act in 1975. The volume is divided into three parts. The first three chapters are condensed from Dr. Fuller's 1939 Ph.D. dissertation, "The Supply of Agricultural Labor as a Factor in the Evolution of Farm Organization in California." This pathbreaking study was published in 1940 by the La Follette Committee in its Hearings under Senate Resolution 266 (Pt. 54). The document is long since out of print; although it can be found at most major research libraries, the revised condensation appearing here provides a more accessible and concise view of the historical antecedents of today's labor system. Part Two includes three chapters on California labor-management relations during the 1950s and 1960s. These essays appeared originally as part of the mono- graph Labor Relations in Agriculture (Berkeley: Institute of Industrial Relations, 1955); in Social Order(January, 1960): and in Industrial Relations(May, 1967), re- spectively. They are collected here both because they are not now readily available and because they serve as bridges over time, discussing the issues underlying the long struggle for equitable farm labor legislation. Part Three contains two original essays on the historical development of na- tional and state farm labor policy and a reprint of one co-authored (with John Mamer) article on the outlook for unionization following the passage of California's Agricultural Labor Relations Act. Students and scholars of farm labor should find the collection a useful addition to their resources, putting many of today's ongoing issues into perspective and providing valuable insights into the evolution of California's farm labor-management relations. It has been a pleasure to be associated with Dr. Fuller in the completion of this project, and to make a small contribution toward preservation of his work. ANN FOLEY SCHEURING Davis, California May 15, 1991 111 INTRODUCTION A Few Personal Notes of Explanation and Reflection My interest in the California casual farm labor system could scarcely have started with less sophistication. It was 1937, and my need was for a Ph.D. disser- tation subject. The Department of Agricultural Economics at Berkeley, however, was not then deep in experience with such needs or with any other aspects of its quite new Ph.D. program. My efforts to engage faculty members in discourse about my problem brought only meager response. Graduate students who had been there longer than I tended to shrug off my concerns by remarking. "You can work on anything you want to, provided you entitle it "The Farm Management of ..." or "The Marketing of ...." The most senior and most advanced of graduate students in agricultural eco- nomics at that time was John Kenneth Galbraith. We never became well ac- quainted; he was only a coming and going very tall shadow to me. As I afterwards became aware, this was unfortunate. Many years later I learned from his autobi- ography that he was then in his third year of graduate work at Berkeley, during which he commuted to Davis to be "in charge of teaching economics, agricultural economics, farm management and accounting and, apart from assistance from an elderly dean, provided all the instruction in these subjects ..