Interview with Baldemar Velasquez

Basically like a lot of people a lot of you look like they didn't really do things and confusing people. Like I think like you kind of give an overview of what's been going on 60 years out of the way I approach this problem as you see the situation in California and the same thing as Ohio that's why we were really an independent group we're not part of the United Farm Workers and we have our own organization dealing with our own problems here in Ohio but we work a lot with the boy kind of people you know and lend them assistance and support whenever they need numbers of people and stuff like you would tell we bust on the bus or such comes to Cincinnati because it's not you can stand there to a picket line in a big demonstration at the department store downtown and poems. And. The thing is that usually when I talk about it in a sense I'm I'm talking about as an outsider but I've been to California

several times and every time Caesars come to. The Midwest it's usually manage a stop in business and of their own Toledo. So we were still very much just that I have big conflict about it personally because you know sometimes when I read a crap that is happening out there I want to. You know clean up the lettuce and also with the HIA But first things first I mean in a sense like we have a lot of people that that have committed themselves to the work that we're doing and it's kind of hard for me to say well I'll leave that and go we're going to boycott you know it's just not fair to the people who are really involved and like what's the difference between you know like on here you can let me since it's mostly tomatoes here in Ohio us not really as a matter of fact not even the same group of migrants. The California group the Muslim eat out of seasonal farm workers and live the around are in the valleys where the lettuce is grown or they may come in from other parts of the

southwest. The migrants we get in Ohio are mostly soft Texas and Florida farm workers. There's you know different streams of those different we call migrant streams throughout the United States and the one that we're concerned with is the migrant stream in the Midwest. Cesar is organizing the people in the west right now. But we hope eventually is that. Maybe our efforts will come together soon. You know hopefully and we do develop some kind of really national strategy only strategy only national strategy seeders got is to win the fight in the West and in fighting California. The situation in. Well if you go back to even before 1965 it's the Teamsters are claiming now the Teamsters are claiming that they've been involved with farm workers since the early 60s in the 50s even but of course the strategy for organizing farmers in Florida just various. So the very simple cause but it's very important it's a very difficult one that historically

you go back to farm labor organizing back in the early 1900s it's thirty one thousand one thousand one hundred two and their farm worker movements in the southwest and in California the Wobblies the I.W.W. and so on they made some efforts in other independent groups historically to China but all the strikes have been broken mainly because of the location in the environment that existed in terms of real low. I mean you know an over abundant workforce and also the border being so close were Mexican nationals would come over from across Mexico into the United States do a lot of that farm work. So make farm labor organizing extremely difficult and of course back in 1963 I believe when the. Passed the public law or the kind of repeal that the public was 78 Mexican nationals a come over and do farmers in this

country but made it even more advantageous for anybody organizing to organize because it means that Mexican nationals can come across the border. But farmers and growers even up here in the Midwest in Ohio found a way to get a run at Public Law 78 at least when they repealed it or something and that the way they did it was having people come over what they call green cars temporary citizen temporary citizenship papers as if they were going to come here and things like that rented a post office box on the side of the border and then from there shipped them all over the country known tomato plants and tomato plants here in Ohio still have like a bus service that bring a Mexican national appears really against the law. And the same thing in California. So it's one of the things Caesar has fought there. Apart from that what is the people who are recruited to scabs you know to break

early great strikes and so on. And this is the other reason one of the reasons Caesar had to turn to a boycott mainly because you could strike you could pull all the people out. But being such you know having such an abundance of labor free labor and cheap labor coming from Mexico bring cars we want to call them farmers could find could find strikebreakers and scabs almost at will. This is really a bad situation because you can't really blame them for coming up with the final word because the conditions that they live in in northern Mexico are so bad that anything even if even if they would come to the United States if they were getting 75 cents an hour that's that's a tremendous wage to be receiving. If they were working in Mexico and of course they're going to go back there live anyway. So it's going to cure them a lot further than any work they would have done in Mexico. You can hardly blame them and it's a really bad situation. But you're going to make some sacrifices you're going to have to you know

find out how to cope with that if you ever wish to win a strike in the southwest in California Caesar's train there but the people our own people of lend assistance to the growers so like historically and migrant. Situation you have what farmers have always utilize what you call crew leaders or other people the crew leaders usually had trucks and things like that and they kind of doubled their activity in farm work when they came up for not only acting as an advisor of the crew. He's he was kind of like the person the liason between the farmer and there the workers and he'd be there with the crew were chief. You'd also be the person that would pay them in many instances and the farmer would pay him and the people would pay him too for his services like in Ohio for example the cruelty of what he usually did migrant workers get paid 16 cents saying this on the average now 16 cents for a 33 in a 30 pound hamper of tomatoes.

That's a lot of tomatoes you know that's about what you pay for the real tomatoes in the store now. And the crew leader would take two or three cents for every hamper as migrants picked for his services and then the farmer would also pay him maybe an hourly or wager on when the work is completed on contract and thirdly of all the other way of income and that is by. For every migrant worker that he would recruit the farmer or the processing company this. Two different things if the grower in the processing company hires two different things. So the processing company says well I'm going to need so many acres of tomatoes this year to cancer you know that maybe Campbell Soup or Libby's or the living camper Hans or H.J. Heinz. All of them exist here in northwest Ohio. They say I'm going to so many acres of tomatoes for this year's processing so you'll contract so many farmers are grow so many acres of tomatoes and many instances those farmers are responsible getting their own labor or the high employment service or so

on but whether they're recruiting or the high employment service or the present company has a suit on recruiters or the farmer does the recruiting that in every case they all use that crew leader and a crew leader kind of rips off from all of them. Like for example like us saying like you'll get so much from the people you get so much from the farmer that it in the farm that he actually works from and many cases if you brings up extra workers. He will delegate them out to other farms that need actual workers that the company has informed them of the farm labor service employment services inform them and then the company also pays him in instances. So many so much money for every worker that recruits that time to you know $15 $20 a worker that if you recruit bring them up that's a lot of times in the past the way he's brought them up with these trucks as well. All these trucks so he just load up all these families in the back in this truck us away my family and used to come up to Ohio to pick tomatoes in the back of a truck a whole bunch of people you know and you bring him up there

and one course load it off the people in the camps. He'd use this truck as a kind of like a bus service type of thing you know like in the week in the go he would take the whole crew to a town and buy him so they can buy their groceries and things like entering and back. But as soon as tomatoes are finished then he uses truck for another purpose to make more money like for example he would use them to haul sugar beets. The farmers would pay him so much a ton of financially to haul the sugar beets for every load. And so you see in all these ways of income that that crew leader has a lot of times when the farmer says well I got a migrant tomato a thousand dollars last year this is the guy that talking about Usually this migrant worker is really the cruel leader was exploiting the hell out of everybody and they're not talking about the typical migrant to who annually even in Ohio even Department of Labor Statistics shown that the way a farmer can make anywhere from two thousand twenty five hundred dollars a year you know doing farmer

can the piece rate picking that he does whether it's in the grapes or tomatoes or what have you that's that's not really a national average. And so a lot of times when you're talking about we're dealing so much when you talk about a true leader was getting back to the situation about the strike in California is that this is the guy that are utilized to recruit workers and so on. OK now if we get into this this interesting problem the savaging in California now that Caesar just has another person to add to his headaches and that's that the Teamsters have come in now trying to represent the workers that he had in the contracts in grapes in the previous years and they also moved in on the lettuce growers and some time ago. Frank FITZSIMMONS The big wheel for the Teamsters made a big speech for the National Farm Bureau Federation which is really dominated in the interests of agribusiness and yeah very very much like that.

And yeah actually the speech that he gave was it was an actual invitation to crawl in bed with the Teamsters. And I didn't really know what what the consequences that would be but just shortly after that then of course the Teamsters announced right after Cesar had demanded a contract from the lettuce growers teams moved in and signed backdoor agreements with the with the with the lettuce growers. Now the Teamsters claim. Before I give her the claim of this interesting thing about the crew leaders that the Teamsters announced first they had signed the the crew leaders have an association I forget what it's called the contractors the national Contractors Association like that. And really the contractors are these guys that recruit farm workers and things like that really these cruel leader type of people and women. Exactly. And the Teamsters announce that they had organized them into the Teamsters. And

what really what that really means is that all the teams are said that there are over 800 contractors recruiters and that those 800 recruiters really represent so many thousand farm workers you know but they don't really represent them as the people that they actually recruit. So you really were talking about the Teamsters contracting or getting under representation like the slave drivers of these crews. But I think it's going to work to their own destruction in the end because if you talk to any farmer any real farmer growing the fuel and I haven't met one farmer that in some way hasn't despised that whole system of cruel leaders and things like that and you know I don't the government might do that than have a really bad experience with a crew leader. So the Teamsters in Santa Cruz said secretly this represents. Well that was a first step. You know and they did that in conjunction with

the signing of the lettuce growers and they were just backdoor agreements without the knowledge of the farm workers up the knowledge of anyone working in the fields and of course Caesar's organized had been active you know recruiting them and selling them and educating them about the union and all of a sudden these workers find out that they already have a union the Teamsters you know and naturally when that happen one of the biggest walkouts in labor history thousands of farmers walked out of the fields in and out of the lettuce fields protesting the protesting those backdoor agreements. That was in. 60 believe it was 69 when the big walkout occurred. But the interesting thing about it was that the Teamsters kept on claiming that. They represented all these workers and really they were talking about the crew leaders and the people that they recruit. You know and furthermore the Teamsters claimed that

they were moving in on it the teams have always had always been there as I said as I said earlier that they claim that even as early as the 1950s and 161 the teams had a lot of interest in agribusiness and organizing that fuel. But really what it was that they got interested in the food industry in that sense because of the truck drivers and they went ahead and organized the packing shed workers and things like that because it was advantageous to organize them because the organizing of truck drivers but they never never never actually went out in the field and organize farm workers. They claim that in 1961 they had a they had signed the contract with lettuce growers and actually what it was they had signed the packing shed workers and the people who ran the lettuce wrapping machines in the fields you know the machine that wrapped lettuce and cellophane and things like that. And so Nick always gets more markers

and when they reach the first jurisdictional agreement with the Teamsters. It was agreed that the teams would stay with the packing shed workers and the people that worked on the lettuce wrapping machines in the fields they were operating machinery in a field there were actual farm workers and so Caesar was to stay in the actual organizing of the actual pickers. Well when Caesar asked for contracts for the fuel workers the teams reclaimed that use that as a as a kind of like an excuse to start going in and raiding jobs as people and they were saying that the Teamsters had already had a contract there and they were talking about talking about the lettuce rappers and so on that worked in the field but when actual fuel workers and it Caesar was breaking the jurisdiction agreement was really so ridiculous. And of course what did Caesar do but you know Connor that was striking and so on. So the recent jurisdiction of remounting 64

65 with the Teamsters and there was peace for a while until 69 I think over the year we're talking about when Caesar then after he finished the a grape. The grape boycott in the contracts of the grape growers. He asked the union elections and he asked the representation of the fuel workers for the lettuce growers on the lettuce growers. Then naturally they made some backdoor agreement with the with the growers and instead of allowing Caesar to come in represent the fuel workers the Teamsters extended their contracts not from not only the lettuce reading machine works but the actual farmers in the fields of view itself from the need to send these faxes maybe some people don't know about you know what that's like in terms of how many migrant workers like there are in the country. Really explain like some of the conditions because like I know I've heard that. General age you know longevity risk which is the highest in the general citizen age 70 and some things like that. And in

terms of how the pesticides that you see just general living conditions. And explain how you know these are the Farm Workers Organizing Committee. We're trying to do things to change and review the conditions and then the position of the Teamsters and how they relate I with business and how they really don't that. Well that's that's the biggest And that's the biggest contrast that the area that you're talking about the proof one of the provisions in the contracts that both are offering like the Teamsters in their contracts they have these so called the contracts that they let everybody see I read the proposed contract that they want to sign with the growers but the ones they actually sign of the big sell outs. Like for example I recently went through a whole piece of material that the Teamsters. Son not to the other conferences to show them what they're doing in the farmers in California and it's got all kinds of things. Yeah they do have retirement

pension plan and they have they have unemployment. And things like that. The point is they've never let anybody see the contracts that they actually sign his bag of song will never let anybody actually see. But from what I understand they have no provisions at all and even what I've seen in their proposed contracts I don't see any real protection from pesticides and the general health and living conditions. And I think that's one of the most intolerable things that exist in a migrant's way of life and anybody representing my coworkers and contracting them representing them and in the labor negotiations will have to take that foremost into consideration in many cases even above wages. Because as you know there was a recent type would have been making Florida like that situation exist nationally just a few years ago we tested water in some of the camps in northwest Ohio right here and some tomato farms and found them the bacteria count was higher than us with the supposed admitted by the Department of Health

and a quote course we call for closing the camp down and so on in the health inspector want to make sure that the farmer farmer was a friend of his so he went out and tried to get him to take care of the points he wouldn't get his can close down but the thing is that's one of the big problems in like the Teamsters said there was a recent debate on national television I forget the advocates they call it. And one of the big themes for leaders was was confronted about the fact that their contracts don't call for any kind of a. Improvement in health conditions and bringing up the camps through to a standard that humans can live in. And he said well those are state laws anyways as there's really no necessity to have those in our contracts as those state laws anyway. But the point is anybody is going to tell anybody who knows anything about farmers going to tell you that one of the main lot of times the existing legislation is not the problem is the enforcement of that

legislation. Like in Ohio for example the people who are in charge of enforcing those health standers those camp conditions of the local health inspectors. Right the local health inspector may be relatives or brothers or cousins or own goals or personal friends or neighbors of the farmers that have the camps in the first place. I just remember hearing that you come under the National Labor Relations. Oh yeah that's a very it seems like. Well see like the Teamsters are calling for that now. There they had been kind of reserve the bot in the past and of course the Farm Bureau was strongly against it mainly because it would allow their farmers to organize and have union elections and bring in federal negotiators and things like that you know. But the situation is now that the only thing wrong with that in terms of the strategy the Caesar is falling on is that makes a secondary boycott illegal. And that's one of the reasons Caesar can accept it right now as it is because Let's let's say that if farm workers

were to immediately come out of the NRA then what that means a seat right away would have to give up the boycott and by the time he regrouped his people to a different style of organizing that you know of the Teamsters and the growers would use that period to get into strong positions one seaters got him up against the wall as one of the one let him get away. And that sense actual passing of when a lot of radical reformers would be disadvantaged would be a disadvantage to a form of organizing at this point in terms of Sezer strategy because he's got this national boycott going on everything but now the Teamsters see that if they were included under an ally or a Right now there would be a great advantage for them and given a greater opportunity to move in. And actually go ahead and try to steal a contract to see the sky in which they practically have almost in total like as they moved in recently and signed back door agreement with the grape growers without the knowledge without the workers having any knowledge of any contracts being signed at all. In fact a recent poll that was taken of farm workers throughout the San Joaquin Valley

is that the great vast majority of farmers one tonight a former prison says their job is to represent them and the Teamsters come up with these phony documents that they've got these sign petitions by all these farm workers and most of the crew leaders vilely and people that they recruit. It's it's really a horrendous situation. So but getting back to this health thing and what the Teamsters call for in a contract says that see you going to north to really enforce those health standards and get really humane living conditions for farm workers you're actually going to have to have farm workers be responsible for themselves and all the way to do that is for them to have a committee to represent them to negotiate with those farmers directly and not depend on public in that local health departments to do that enforcing for them because it just hasn't worked in the past. And any teams are afraid of the kind said that it's the law. Anyway there's no need to have in your contract. I think it's quite absurd right.

You don't know what the workers really like I'm hearing you came to a large white house because. Watch on me. Interesting like last remembering your skit last night. I heard once before that during the great boycott when it was becoming that it was obvious it was becoming a state because people were supporting the army increased purchasing rates by something like 300 percent. Yet you sure as that's right. I mean it's as they call that huge military industrial complex. Why the agribusiness is as much a part of that as is anything else and they just find a strategy of the grosses been when they found that their markets are closed up because of the boycott they just find resource and dump them off like the army or the Navy or other institutions like that. And there's no ending

to the kinds of things they dream up. So it's just another obstacle that we come up against and that Caesar comes up against in order to win this and a particular struggle there. So. That does but this. But the strategy remains simple and forceful and that is to boycott and get the message out to the consumers and to the voters and to the people who are really the who really make up this country. And it's a lot of education. But so many times people and huge corporations large institutions and even big time labor is so used to not doing that educating they're just used to bulling their way in and getting it done through political power. That's something that farmers don't have. So we have to rely on actual education of people and the actual action to go on convincing people to what is the real problem and have them make a personal stand in the personal stand collectively hopefully will be enough to bring down these

obstacles whether it's the military complex or whether it's some other industry where the over the growers dump off the grapes and the lettuce and. And striking striking picketing and boycotting it just a very simple strategy but it's the only right strategy. I also think a lot of people aren't really aware of how bad the conditions are in the mining towns could you tell like how many migrant workers there are in the United States and maybe describe the situation. I can't because I I know I seen a film on what was going on live in Cannes last year. I sort of can't put a film over the show graphically what's going on I think it's a lot of the situations like people have a tendency to romanticize people working outside you know somehow into the romantic tradition going back to the early pioneers in American cities same situation and in fact it has a 10 year old working in a factory there would be an outcry that somehow 10 year olds in a field people tend to romanticize always nice cute kids working out their parents

you know I think there's there's a tenant in here. Well interested to comment on that first this whole romanticism I would say like like Personally myself I like working in the fields. I like I really enjoy my GET A pleasure out of I get all the physical pleasure out of doing it and. But there's a big difference between really liking to work in the fields and the situation of powerlessness that you exist in there. It's the same thing is this whole question about poverty. As I said many times you see I've been poor all my life I really don't mind being poor. It's a matter of fact I prefer it. But see it's not poverty that that is such a traumatic experience. I mean poverty just simply many times are inconvenient. But I think the traumatic part of it is when you're poor and you're powerless to do anything about it. But I think that the same situation that many other people are in whether they're poor whether they're middle class or song when they're powerless to change the

conditions that are in their lives that affect them in a negative way you see. And I think it's that powerlessness that's the problem is not so much the poverty persay. And so when you talk about these happy migrants in the fields. Well you know like I enjoyed working in the field but I sure as heck didn't enjoy the situation of being messed over all the time the powerlessness of the whole situation or but also all the other. They really are things that a person needs to survive the people you come into contact people are always trying to take advantage of in things I remember just talking about describing the situation in migrant camps and just let me tell you like this. We go into summer times after school was out all the time here in Ohio we go to Michigan and do for strawberries and then we do the sweet cherries and sour cherries and we say we move up into the middle part of Michigan is do strawberries and right away like we would go early and we would go shopping and then one of the great blocks of the migrants would come in. We'd go shopping again. And let me

tell you once those store owners those little rural store owners once you know those migrant workers are coming in those prices zoom on the food. And I could tell the difference I mean these those prices were just ridiculous in some cases. Essentials that people need milk you know and things like that. And but the it is you go on a lot of times like we were forced a lot of times to to live in intolerable type of situation because there was just nothing else. It's either living in the car or living in you know what the farmer gave up for us. There was one time that my dad refused to actually stay. There's only one time in my life that I remember refusing to stay in one place and the situation of it was a barn and it was you know these are the stalls you know they keep horses in a house like that. The farmer wanted us to stay one of those and there was still strong stuff laying all around and they had these gas and gas you know stores in the flaming high and everything like that is to really fire truck when I say I

expected that to happen as he wanted to burn burn down or something. But the situation wasn't right next to the right next to the stall. There was a hog pen there. You could hear the hawg screaming and yelling and slapping around you know and and it was just a little soft like out on the other side it was on one side it was the hogs and on the other side is where all the farm machinery would drive back and forth and on through there you know I just refuse I think we settle for a chicken coop where the farmer had cleaned out before we we arrived there and the chicken coop one of those long buildings that was separated and the three compartments are just a piece of plywood halfway up towards the ceiling and put three families in there and so you have to do all your cooking or your sleeping or your living in all your bathing and all your everything in just that little room and in our case there was 10 of us in the family and we had to we had to make do with two double beds and of course a stove and just a little walking space we

could often in there most of the time except when we were all laying down to sleep. And so it's it's hard to survive that way. It's it's hard to live that way and it does no good either to. To have the such. You know with other families so nearby like that and just really living on top of each other it's very difficult to live though it's very difficult to live just within the family itself that close without having other families compounding the problem and being part of the same thing. And furthermore the facilities of water and you know a lot of the can even trust with the water was in good enough you know what I do. What I'd like to do is I go to the well where the farmer saw it was and even if I did I was probably pretty sure that that water is good to drink at least. So I would go there and get the water and. You know start Dana morning 6:00 o'clock in the morning for picking cherries and you

know five or six o'clock in the afternoon we did it after 6:00. Well see like the piece rate it depends on what part of the season it is also because in the first few pickings like tomatoes for example the first few pickings are still a lot of green tomatoes. So you're going to make very much. I remember working some pretty good days only making three or four dollars the whole day mainly because tomatoes are all green you know the farmer but he doesn't want to let those early tomatoes go to waste so he has to make you know do a couple pickings like that they're really no good. And usually the third fourth pickings are really the peak of the season where I would I could go out I could make 20 dollars in one day $25 in one day but I would have to pick really really hard in those days were only getting paid 10 11 cents for one of those 33 pound hampers. And so you see you have to pick a couple hundred hampers to make 10 20 dollars.

And that's that's a lot of hampers for for a worker I think I think a typical worker could pick over a hundred in a day. Hundred fifty under 40 and that's a good strong worker and both that and his above average and of course most people are just going to be you know especially little kids and so they're working in the fields below that average. But you get down towards you know the season of farmer you know the all the tomatoes are rotting then. But the late tomatoes he doesn't want to let them go to waste we do another picking for him you know. A lot of times what he do we hold back these so-called bonuses if we're getting paid say 13 cents a hamper he keep two cents out of every hamburger you picked all year so that you make sure that we stay towards the last ping because some farm workers would say well I got all my money I know that last picture I can because I'm going to take off to Texas to get into their early crops on their farm in order to keep this farm workers there to detain them there he'd take this so-called two cents away from each camper and he'd call it a bonus and a bonus that you really you've already earned it's not really a

bonus at all. And so many times the farmers would use this method to really exploit the hell out of you know like for example he would remember one case that we stayed and finished all the tomatoes the last in the last pickings really bad because you're sitting there for a whole week. We're going to have spending the money that you've earned. Just trying to do those last pickings you know. And the farmer kept a stall of tomatoes and did. The processing plant turned on and taking in more tomatoes but he was still having us pick a few tomatoes that were left to sell on the little roadside stand. And I furthermore you said before we left we had the whole his corner is something these beans or something where the whole beans before it before we left for we got a bonus now isn't even in the work agreement with the tomatoes you know but he would use that to detain us to do this job and his job in this job that we got so frustrated just left anyway without the bonus. And the farmer farmers would use this technique a lot to. To to actually he would of course you telling the public these pain in the 13 or 14 cents. But taking the

two cents away and then kind of frustrating them by not paying in the board by having to do more more work and have them leave out of frustration and of course you've been talk of these days with that so-called bonus money in the form of his or out of it. Just simple things like that could could be resolved with a contract the first contract we signed with tomato growers. We had a specific clause relating to that that the farmer had to pay them the whole strict wage and we raised we raised the minimum hamper. To a certain minimum that's two 17 cents a hamper plus an extra penny for transportation and a real bonus to the end of the year for every hamper that they pick So if you get a whole family to pick the lot of tomatoes while they're going to come to a substantial leads to pay or gasoline back to Texas. And but we also we also have the clause that you couldn't detain any money from them from the workers you had to pay them all straight and the union would decide when the season was going to end and use that we ended the season when the tomato plant closed because I was really right after just right after the peak season and there was no

need to pick those rotten tomatoes anyway. And after that. So yeah I mean I would resign. Well you know there's been a great change in that in those numbers and like several years ago they were reporting a million and a half farm workers from all over the country migrant workers that is pretty difficult to come to seasonal farm workers because many of them do different types of jobs in the winter months especially in the Midwest and in like for example my parents like my father works in a factory right now. But in the summer all the kids and mom they're all working in the fields the tomatoes or potatoes or something. In the summers was very hard to count that but in Ohio there's been a big change in that migrant population due to the fact that there's a lot of mechanization taking place and I refer to this in my talk last night. This mechanisation process just doesn't last five years the migrant stream. The numbers that are reported by the Employment Service and the actual

statistics of health inspectors in the different counties have to inspect all the camps and count the number of occupants in each camp. That is decreased from anywhere from 50 to 60000 to a little over 30000 just in the last five years four years and a lot of those through the mechanisation and some of the crops in the Midwest the workers come up to do like for example in Traverse City Michigan five years ago there was hardly any. There was just experimenting going on with the cherry shaker machines. And now with a cherry shaker what it actually does is you have this big canvas that spreads out underneath the tree. The cherry tree and you may have arms of the machine that are hooked onto the different main branches of the tree. And when you course when you electrically you just shake the tree very quickly. Shock and the cherries fall down the canvas and rolled into

into kind of like a drain and the whole right there you displace you know four or five workers. I would take a four five good four five workers to anywhere from two hours or so to pick that tree an hour and a half two hours and you know you did in about five minutes. And but now as I was saying five years later Traverse City Michigan for example the sour cherry is probably the main crop that workers go to Michigan to do the sour cherries in Traverse City Michigan by 95 percent mechanized and all the stuff that there's a little bit of sweet cherries some sour cherries and if you want to if you want to do strawberries which is really not a money crop the workers just go up and do it dirty strawberry cross for you know something to keep them going to survive on while they're waiting for the cherries to ripen. So what that actually means that if the same amount of workers could be coming up. See they had the workers usually come to Ohio to do the cleaning and hauling and blocking a sugar beets and which they really don't make that much on and but just

something to maintain while they're waiting for tomatoes to ripen the main crop and they go up the mission to the strawberries to wait for the cherries and the cherries are going to be limited by those cherry shakers the main crowd are going to come back to do his tomatoes in Ohio and so tomatoes. There's also tomato picking machines have been experimenting every year with now in Ohio and there's there's more and more of them every year. One year we counted. But a dozen of them in northwest Ohio. Those A couple years ago now we find out from 30 to 40 machines working. Daily in the tomatoes to buy this machine will see like this. Here's part of the chain whole changing situation in farm work in the Midwest and that is that. The machines. That being picked up. Is not going to is not going to pick as many tomatoes in the end as the farm workers do. Me Tell You. But before I get into the machine thing I just wanted to finish explaining about the workers what what

effect something on the workers that in order for the machine to work they're developing out tomato plant that ripens all the tomatoes at the same time and the tomatoes get a tougher skin to handle the mechanization. But there's only going to be one picking with a machine because the machine digs into the ground and picks up the whole plant and shakes a tomato off the vine and into the machine. Of course with the workers you could have several pickings of the plant. You didn't have to have them all ripen at the same time. But the point is this is displacing many workers and many workers. That's why you have a declining population of migrant workers and people who settle. Somewhere where there are industry jobs factory jobs and stay there year around. So you having this transition from this rural to urban migrant city very similar to the black situation happened when I started migrating from the rural to the urban areas. So many jobs.

That's true that's true and it makes compounds a problem. But furthermore in terms of this mechanization what effect it's having on the Little Farmer I see a lot of times we find ourselves in sympathy with the small farmer the little grower you know a lot of those tomato growers have been our some of our most bitter enemies in our organizing experiences in Ohio. These guys have 30 to 40 acres of tomatoes now those guys are not going to afford it to the mechanization and I to be able afford it so there you don't have to go big in tomato drawing which is to them would be a pretty high risk because they don't have the capital to really to really base it on. So ill that I get out of business and many of them are just getting out of the business and it's the growers who decide to go big and pretty soon. Now you're finally finding that they're getting more and more into this. We called and alliance of type of alliance with the processing companies and I think what's happening is that you're going to find out in Ohio what's going to develop the same situation have in

California where the grower in the process is the same person or the same group of people. And in business together and you're going to have a nagger business defined more in Ohio as it is in California now so little by little these little farmers are beginning to get squeezed out of that practice like they aren't in any other produce that they produce whether it's meat hogs and cattle or what have you and farmers are in a big squeeze about it has led them to organizing themselves under this national farmers organization Lachelle farmers you know which I think is a good thing. As a matter of fact when we start organizing farmers as the first group that I talked to was the. Worthy of the National Farmers organization I told look we're in the same boat the processing company is exploiting use as much as it is the poor farm workers that live on your farms. They agreed that they were going to work with us and everything but when we actually started going out organizing their farm workers they start getting really paranoid and everything they don't want to take the risk of losing a crop because of a strike because it was their money crop that year and things like that way.

What do we do if we couldn't stop we're going to cause these few little farmers were were angry at us so we just kept on and hope for the best in their relations with them. But we're going to find out as many of these little farmers are going to start losing their their property mainly because they're not going to be able to compete with those big farmers and agri businesses that are developing in northwest Ohio. That's true and that's. And so matter of fact right now many of those guys who grow tomatoes are starting to rent are starting to sell their land to the actual processing companies and the processing coming in turn is leasing it back to them which amounts to sharecropping in that'll system of agriculture and farmers are putting up with this because they can't find any other way to stay up and you find the small farmers closing out every day every day. Can you explain down what's going on now with a lettuce boycott in California so people can know what they're doing. You know specifically down to them like they go into supermarket the supermarket says well this is

union lettuce is there an all out boycott or should they just try and find out whether it's Teamster Union lettuce or whether it's what these united farmers still have contracts with in her harvest in some other lettuce growers and their harvest has kind of gone on record supporting that the only true representatives of the farmers are the United Farm Workers. So the only way you can make sure is look on the. If they don't have the the rap and some of fame with the Thunderbird on it then you can look in the store room and see if it's got the union. You go on the on the crate.