Working Poor: Farmworkers in the United States

Monthly Labor Review, May, 1996 by Michael Wald

By David Griffith and Ed Kissam. Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1995, 335 pp.

Reading On Different Planes and Working Poor is like a viewing a large 1930's Federal Works Projects Administration mural depicting Americans at work. The two books focus on Americans in two very different sets of occupations, while providing a broader view of some of the problems that confront U.S. workers. On Different Planes is a structured, organizational study of the highly organized American airline industry, while Working Poor is an extensive study of how farmworkers and farmers in the United States cope with the transient nature of agricultural labor.

David Walsh captures the complicated relationship among airline unions as they deal with fellow unions at their own carrier and with unions at competing carriers. Walsh charts the activities of national unions and their locals by describing their level of cooperation on common labor issues and their degree of interdependence. Looking at past issues, he demonstrates the strength and limits of union solidarity in the industry. For example, the crisis that was created by the troubles at Pan Am Airlines and Eastern Airlines tested the limits of carrier-based coalitions. At the same time, the creation in 1984 of the Joint Council of Flight Attendant Unions demonstrates the possibility that union solidarity can succeed among carriers when unions identify common interests. Walsh's subject lends itself to this type of institutionally based analysis because the U.S. airline industry is composed of a relatively small number of large employers.

Because of their size and the large number of passengers they carry, these large carriers are very visible to the public at large. Operating expensive capital equipment in a highly regulated environment designed to maximize safety has fostered an educated work force of in-flight workers who have developed specialized skills with the help of significant investments in training. As a result, employer policies encourage labor stability and low turnover at the cost of above-average salaries and benefits. These same policies have benefited unionization: low turnover gave unions a stable work force to target for unionization, while difficulty obtaining qualified replacements makes employers vulnerable to strikes from key occupations such as pilots.

Compared with the highly concentrated commercial airline business, agriculture remains a diversified industry. The number of employers remains very large despite the growing concentration of farms. Job skills for farmworkers rely more on practical experience than on formal schooling.

In addition, the seasonal nature of farm work creates a large, geographically diverse work force whose labor needs change throughout the year. This requires many workers to change jobs and employers regularly throughout the year over a wide geographic area because few jobs are available in any one area for more than a few months each year. Most importantly, the large number of immigrants--legal and illegal--creates a steady supply of labor at low wages and relatively poor working conditions. As a result, organizing farm-workers is difficult. A changing work force with easily replaceable labor in an industry with a large number of employers also has frustrated efforts to unionize and mount effective job actions.

The differences between the two industries also reflect the methodology used by these books. Walsh relied on a mail survey and follow-up interviews with union leaders to document inter-union activities. Applying classic economic and organizational behavioral theory to airlines, he primarily has studied the institutions that affect this industry. As a result, his book focuses more upon organizations than individuals. Leadership roles are subordinated to an organizational analysis of how rational interests of different parties arrest relations. For the more general reader, Walsh's book may seem a little dry. One wishes he had added a more "human face" to his discussion of union relations.

Conducting an institutional-cantered study would have been less useful in the farm industry in which both employers and laborers are less institutionally organized. Instead, David Griffith, Ed Kissam, and their researchers focused on how individuals operate in complex labor markets that offer few economic rewards. Because farm communities are scattered across the country, Griffith, Kissam, and their team of researchers focused on four winter and three summer farm communities. The researchers followed farmworkers' migration patterns of several hundred miles each year, determined by the demands of local crops. They talked to farm owners and contractors, documenting living conditions and learning how workers with meager resources try to maximize their incomes. (A particularly good touch was the decision to include photographs of farmworkers at various locations throughout the 20th century. The photographs demonstrate clearer than any documentation could that farm work has been remarkably unchanged in the United States.)