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3 Economic Organization, Labor Force, and Labor Process in the Lettuce Industry
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3
Economic Organization, Labor Force, and Labor Process in the Lettuce Industry

The public already knows all it needs to know about the lettuce industry.
—California lettuce grower


While the growth of "agribusiness" and the large-scale vertically integrated agricultural enterprise have received great attention in the media, few attempts have been made to analyze how the structure of the enterprise, the labor system and the labor process interact with one another. For the most part, studies in the tradition of rural sociology have avoided such topics (Friedland, 1979). Other works have focused on elements of the production system, such as farm labor (Weiner, 1978; London and Anderson, 1970), farm worker unions


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(Taylor, 1975; Levy, 1975; Jenkins and Perrow, 1977) and corporate agriculture in general (Fellmeth, 1973; Hightower, 1972; Perelman, 1976). Though of considerable value to understanding change in the agricultural sector, these studies fail to provide a cogent analysis of how agricultural enterprises go about organizing and utilizing labor or what impact or advantage noncitizen labor has for particular labor processes.

A recent work by Friedland et al. (1981) makes some headway in broaching these issues with its emphasis on the potential social consequences of technological change in agriculture. However, even this work (which focuses on the lettuce industry) leaves aside the critical dimensions of labor force organization, controls over production, and political intervention in the labor market. Thus, for a study concerned with projecting the conditions under which technological change will take place, the labor system and the labor process variables are largely absent.

Here I will focus on elucidating the structure and characteristics of the economic organization, labor force composition, and labor process in the lettuce industry. While part of the purpose of the chapter is description, three central features of the production system will be emphasized. The first section will show that the dominant firms in the industry are quite sophisticated and complex organizations that exert considerable influence on the functioning of the system. In the second section, it is argued that, despite the increasing concentration and stabilization of production in large firms, the labor force continues to be overwhelmingly noncitizen. Equally important, I will show that labor regularly circulates between the United States and Mexico. The third and final section turns to an examination of the harvest labor process. I will argue that the two predominant forms of harvest organization—the skilled ground crew and the unskilled wrap machine crew—represent two fundamentally distinct labor processes. The examination of these two organizations will subsequently inform the analysis of citizenship and gender and their effects on income determination and control over the labor process.


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Economic Organization of the Industry

The lettuce industry is a thriving one. National production of "Nature's Concentrated Sunshine," as it was described in a 1930s advertisement, amounts to some 6 billion pounds annually. The most common variety, "iceberg" or head lettuce, is grown commercially in fifteen states, but lettuce acreages are concentrated largely in California and Arizona. Close to 80 percent of the lettuce consumed yearly comes from a handful of production areas in one of the two states (Federal-State Market News Service, 1980).

Growing lettuce is big business. In 1981 gross returns to the industry in California and Arizona surpassed $500 million, accounting for nearly 25 percent of total fresh vegetable sales in the two-state area (Salinas Californian , Jan. 23, 1982). Ninety-five percent of the lettuce was consumed in the United States, with the remainder exported to Canada and Western Europe, along with regular airlifts of lettuce to McDonald's franchises in Tokyo and Hong Kong (Boas and Chain, 1976: 149–158).

As table 3 shows, the lettuce business is big in another way. The three largest firms (or 3.2 percent of all firms) account for nearly 35 percent of lettuce production. The top seven are estimated to control over 53 percent of the crop. I have segmented firms in the industry into three tiers: bottom, middle, and top. This analytic division is based on two factors: (1) market position, that is, the share of total production and sales accounted for by individual firms; and (2) production activities, that is, the range of activities carried out by the firm in the production-to-market process, including growing, harvesting, shipping, and/or sales.

Two notes should be made with regard to production activities. First, the classification of firms refers primarily to those enterprises that organize and supervise the actual production of lettuce. Though there are separate firms that specialize in the transport, sales, and final marketing of lettuce (and other commodities), the principal concern here is with the organization of production from the standpoint of the manufacturer and the labor force. Thus, shippers, brokers,


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Table 3. Concentration of Production in California/Arizona
Lettuce Industry (1978)

Tier

Number of
harvest
workersa

Number
of
firmsb

Percent
of
firmsc

Percent
of
volumed

Cumulative percent volume

Top

1,000 or more

3

3.2

35.0

35.0

 

500–999

4

4.3

18.0

53.0

Middle

300–499

7

7.6

14.0

67.0

 

200–299

5

5.4

9.0

76.0

Bottom

199 or less

73

79.5

24.0

100.0

Total

 

91

100.0

100.0

 

a Data obtained through interviews with and mailed questionnaires to growers and interviews with industry representatives and union officials.

b The number of firms involved in producing lettuce during any season or year will fluctuate according to projected prices. For example, in 1978–79 industry sources reported that many firms "rushed into" lettuce production in anticipation of a shortfall in supply due to the United Farm Workers Union strike (Salinas Californian , May 1, 1980).

c This includes all firms known to produce lettuce. Harvesting, shipping, and/or sales may be handled by another firm or cooperative under prior agreement (see Moore and Snyder, 1969).

d These figures are based on data supplied by the Redbook for 1978 (an industry financial rating guide), the Packer Produce and Merchandising Availability Guide , and Drossler (1976). All production figures are approximations provided by the companies themselves. Figures for the larger companies (500 employees or more) have been corroborated by industry representatives in confidential interviews and by the FTC (1976:1671–1676).

and retailers will be left aside except where they directly affect the organization of production (for a further discussion, see Friedland, Barton, and Thomas, 1981:chap. 3).

Second, the two main types of firms engaged in lettuce production are "growers" and "grower-shippers." Growers are those firms that deal primarily with the growing and harvesting of the lettuce crop. Grower-shippers will generally grow, harvest, ship, and market a crop, that is, they will control the crop from "seed to supermarket" (Segur, 1973). Both growers and grower-shippers may also produce a variety of other agricultural commodities and, in doing so, assume


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different roles in those crop-industries. Finally, while the amount of land owned by a firm generally serves as a good indicator of its size, many of the largest firms (particularly those in the top tier) actually own less land than they lease. Therefore, land ownership does not necessarily provide an accurate indicator of the size or scale of an organization (Villarejo, 1980).

Bottom tier firms are largely small farming operations whose production is dwarfed by that of the Goliath firms which dominate the lettuce industry.[1] Such operations are commonly family owned and operated and hire relatively small numbers of field laborers (generally 50 workers or less). Few, if any, have the necessary capital supplies or sales apparatus to finance the harvesting, transport, or distribution of a lettuce crop. Many are heavily mortgaged in their land and grow lettuce as a means by which to increase the cash-flow for their small enterprises. In many cases, they produce lettuce under contract with a larger firm (either another grower or a shipper from the middle or top tier). The small grower contracts to grow lettuce under the supervision of the larger firm. The larger firm will generally supply the major means of production (capital, machinery, labor, and seed) and the landowner provides the land and a certain amount of his/her labor and expertise in return for a predetermined price (per unit of output, e.g., cartons of lettuce), a fixed rate per acre, or a percentage of the profits from sale of the crop. This arrangement allows the contract grower a reasonably certain source of income (from all or part of his/her land) while at the same time it provides the larger firm with the capacity to expand or contract production without bearing the burden of maintaining unproductive or unused land.

The middle tier largely consists of smaller grower-shippers. There are basically two types of firms in this category: (1) large firms rooted in one production area and (2) partnerships of firms operating in disparate production areas. In the first instance, a company may own and/or lease considerable acreage in a single production area (e.g., the Salinas or Imperial valleys of California) and thus produce and market a high volume of lettuce during only a portion of the year.


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Many of these firms are closely held, family-based corporations. In the second instance, individual firms rooted in different production areas will form limited partnerships for the purposes of establishing year-round production and marketing. The express intent of these alliances is to establish regular marketing channels for their product. Some small marketing cooperatives operate in similar fashion—bringing together smaller producers for joint sales—though they are usually limited to less than twenty members.

The top tier lettuce firms (the top seven) are the most powerful and organizationally sophisticated companies. Of the three largest firms, two are wholly owned subsidiaries of multinational corporations that have extensive holdings in agricultural, fast food, luggage, banking, and other industries domestically and internationally. One entered lettuce production in true conglomerate fashion in the 1960s with the purchase and consolidation of six lettuce firms into one large firm, Verde Lettuce, Inc.

The other multinational firm acquired the second largest lettuce producer, Miracle Vegetable, in the late 1970s after the latter had already established itself as the leading lettuce manufacturer in terms of volume and innovation (Fredricks, 1979). With earlier aid from a major chemical company's financial subsidiary, Miracle Vegetable had pioneered the field-wrapping of lettuce in plastic film, as well as having established inroads in international agricultural production and sales. Stock in the third firm, Salad Giant, Inc., is divided among members of the founding family, managers, and a major insurance company. As part of a larger holding company, Salad Giant grows, ships, and markets lettuce, produces and distributes lettuce seed, and manages vast tracts of grape vineyards and cattle range. Verde Lettuce and Miracle Vegetable will be discussed in greater detail in chapter 5.

Together, these three firms market over 30 million cartons (3/4 of a billion heads) of lettuce each year. Estimated total sales for the three (in lettuce) in 1978 came to nearly $275 million. Most of the top tier firms own or lease acreages (up to 23,000 acres annually) in several production areas in the states of California and Arizona. Figure 2, below, shows the


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Figure 2.
Major Lettuce-Producing Areas in California and Arizona


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major production areas in the two states. Verde Lettuce, for example, grows and harvests lettuce in the following areas: Salinas-Watsonville, San Joaquin Valley, Imperial Valley, and Arizona. Salad Giant spreads its production across a wider terrain, including Salinas-Watsonville, San Joaquin Valley, Santa Maria, Oxnard, Imperial Valley, Arizona, and New Mexico.

The mobility of these and other grower-shipper organizations is founded on the contract and lease arrangements they make with smaller landowners throughout the Southwest. In particular, the rapidly climbing price of land has made additional acreages difficult to acquire. Urban and suburban growth has resulted in skyrocketing land prices; for example, formerly large lettuce-production areas in Los Angeles, Orange, Santa Clara, and Alameda counties in California have practically disappeared in the post-World War II era as residential and industrial uses pushed up land values and property taxes (Fellmeth, 1973). Thus, land leasing and production contracting with small firms serve two important purposes: (1) they enable lettuce firms to expand acreage without tying up large amounts of capital in fixed assets; and (2) the arrangements make it possible to harvest and market lettuce on a year-round basis. The top three firms, for example, lease over 60 percent of the land on which they produce.

Quite simply, the major lettuce companies have become as migrant as the workers they employ. Following the seasonal changes in weather, production operations—tractors, trucks, buses, equipment, phones, salesmen, managers, and workers—travel the "loop" through California and Arizona in the manner of a traveling circus. The lease/contract system thus frees large corporate agribusiness from the traditional constraints of the farming enterprise: immobility owing to landownership and vulnerability to short-run market fluctuations.

The creation of the mobile production operation has been a major advance in the rationalization of the industry; but the large firms are by no means loose assemblages of men and equipment marshaled together for the purpose of producing


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a crop. Rather, they are the most visible elements of organizations with sophisticated and complex managerial hierarchies, diverse staff and line activities, computer-assisted marketing staffs, and well-financed research operations. The truly remarkable accomplishments of these firms are reflected in their capacity to assemble and coordinate land, labor, and capital to market an extremely perishable commodity on a daily basis. Thus, with the exception of retail sales, the dominant firms have the industry covered from seed to supermarket.[2]

The Labor Force

As was demonstrated in the previous chapter, noncitizen (alien) labor has historically played a major role in southwestern agriculture. Though the lettuce industry only began to emerge as a significant segment of southwestern agricultural production in the late 1920s (with the advent of refrigerated rail and long-distance transport), lettuce firms have actively engaged in the recruitment and use of alien workers (see Lamb, 1942). With the increased production in California and Arizona, individual firms and industrywide labor supply organizations were thoroughly enmeshed in the politics of labor supply. In the 1920s and 1930s, Depression and Dust Bowl refugees, and Japanese, Filipino, and Mexican immigrants harvested the crop and lived on ditchbanks and in shanty towns surrounding Salinas, Watsonville, and El Centro. When Mexican nationals were brought in under the bracero program, the industry switched heavily to that supply (Smith, 1961; Glass, 1966). Within a year Mexican workers dominated the harvest in California (Galarza, 1964:119).

The use of bracero labor was intensified in the early 1950s with the introduction of a new cooling technology. The new process, vacuum-cooling, eliminated the need to ice lettuce crates before they were shipped. Instead, a vacuum-cooling process could be established separately near the fields but without requiring the availability of ice or ice storage facilities. The new technology enabled growers to shift trimming, packing, and refrigerating operations from centralized packing


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sheds to integration with cutting operations in the fields (Glass, 1966). Packing shed activities had been dominated by Anglo (citizen) "fruit tramps" and their unions (United Packinghouse Workers of the AFL-CIO, and the Teamsters). Application of the new technology resulted in the dismantling of the sheds and the dispersal of the shed unions (Watson, 1977). The shift to field-packing integrated the harvest and simultaneously made the labor force overwhelmingly alien.

The termination of the bracero program in 1964–65 precipitated a shift from a bracero-based labor supply to one based on a mixture of citizens and documented and undocumented immigrants. Interviews with lettuce workers carried out in this study revealed that many who had been braceros received, purchased, counterfeited, or ignored legal documentation in order to come back to work in the fields.

Data on the composition and characteristics of the contemporary force in lettuce (summarized in table 4) were collected

 

Table 4. Selected Characteristics of Lettuce Worker Sample
by Citizenship Status (N = 152)

 

U.S.
citizen

Docu-
mented immigrant

Undocu-
mented immigrant

Percent
of
sample

Percent of sample

12.5

63.8

23.7

100.0 (152)

Percent male

10.5

55.7

100.0

60.5

Permanent resident
in Mexico

0.0

69.0

100.0

67.7

Family in Mexico

58.0

93.8

100.0

91.0

Projected place of
retirement

       

U.S.

73.7

1.0

0.0

9.9

Mexico

0.0

64.9

77.8

59.9

Don't know

26.3

34.1

22.2

30.2

Intend to become
U.S. citizen

3.0

0.0

2.0


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through interviews with a sample of 152 harvest workers. Those interviewed were workers contacted through a residential sampling in the communities of Salinas, Greenfield, Gonzales, and Chualar in Monterey County, California. The state of California does not regularly report on the characteristics of the agricultural labor force; rather, in an illustration of the politics of labor supply, the only data collected by the state refers to the general estimates of labor demand (reported by employers) for particular crops and production activities. Census efforts often fail to enumerate farm workers because they are migrant, temporarily residing in the United States, and/or Spanish-speaking.

The labor force in the lettuce industry remains overwhelmingly noncitizen, as table 4 demonstrates: 87.5 percent of the workers in the sample were Mexican nationals. The three major legal statuses in the sample are citizens, documented immigrants, and undocumented immigrants. Each of these will be considered in turn.

Citizens

The relatively small percentage of citizens found working in the lettuce harvest coincides with estimates made by other researchers. For example, Zahara et al. (1974) suggest that less than 20 percent of the lettuce labor force are citizens of the United States. Of the citizens I interviewed, all but one were Mexican-Americans born either in the United States or Mexico. The majority were children of immigrants who had settled in the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas or in the border areas of Arizona and California. Though most of the citizens considered the United States their home, over half had family still in Mexico and nearly a quarter were undecided as to whether they intended to live in the United States when they or their spouse retired.

Table 4 also shows that citizenship status is strongly related to sex. All but two (i.e., 17 of 19) of the citizens in the sample were women. Among the women, 70 percent were married to men who worked in the fields or related agricultural employment; the remaining 30 percent were single or di-


89

vorced with at least one member of their immediate family working in agriculture.

Documented Immigrants

Documented workers, frequently referred to as "green-cards," constitute nearly 65 percent of the sample. This category includes only permanent immigrants.[3] Interviews with industry representatives and researchers suggest that 80 percent of the labor force in lettuce comes under this classification. Such conjectures, however, fail to take into account the presence of undocumented workers; thus, the actual percentage of the labor force which is documented is likely to be less.

The permanent immigrant classification has several stipulations attached to it: first, workers are only allowed into the country under this classification when the Department of Labor has declared a "labor shortage" with respect to either a particular industry or profession. Thus, lettuce workers may be admitted into the United States in much the same fashion as foreign doctors, actors, or athletes. Second, applicants for a green card must have an offer of employment in writing before entering the country. Legally, green-cards may be deported if they cannot find employment or have been disemployed for a long period. Third, green-cards must establish a permanent residence within the United States. Aliens admitted under this classification are not, however, expected or obligated to seek citizenship. Finally, permanent immigrants are not eligible for state or federal welfare assistance before five years of continuous residence in the United States. They may, however, receive job-related benefits such as unemployment and workmen's compensation (Sosnick, 1978:402–420). Thus, though green-cards may enjoy some of the benefits associated with citizenship, their status is clearly contingent on active participation in the economy. Green-cards may legally join and participate in unions, but their inability to make full claims on the state for nonwork support means they are only minimally better protected than the braceros.


90

Since 1965, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has restricted the allocation of new green cards in accordance with new immigration quotas established for many countries, including Mexico. This move has increased the value of valid documentation—such that workers interviewed in the course of this study revealed that substantial bribes and lengthy waiting periods must precede acquisition of immigration papers. Not surprisingly, immigration restrictions have created a thriving industry in counterfeit documents (e.g., drivers' licenses, green cards, social security cards, among others). The price for counterfeit documents varies with the quality of the forgery: from less than $100 for drivers' licenses to over $500 for professional counterfeits of green cards and forgeries made on stolen, but valid, green card blanks (Portes, 1977).

In the subsample of permanent immigrants shown in table 4, nearly 70 percent reported that their permanent residence was in Mexico—despite the visa stipulation that they establish a permanent residence in the United States. Those who would comment on this inconsistency said they (a) alternated in residence between the United States and Mexico, that is renting in the States for the period of their employment and then returning "home" to Mexico; (b) worked alone in the United States (without family) for a specified period while their family remained in Mexico; or (c) maintained only a mailing address in the United States to meet legal requirements but did not establish a permanent residence.

In-depth interviews with other workers confirmed that these three practices were common among green-cards. Furthermore, returning to table 4, 94 percent of the green-cards reported having close family (i.e., brothers or sisters, wife, husband, children, and/or parents) still living in Mexico. Of the men, nearly 60 percent were married and worked alone in the United States while their wives remained in Mexico. Of the women, over three-fourths were married and working in the United States with their husbands. The majority of that group worked for the same company as their husbands (though often in different capacities). Only a very small per-


91

centage of the women green-cards (2.2 percent) worked and traveled by themselves.

Undocumented Immigrants

Commonly referred to as "illegal aliens" by press and politicians, undocumented workers are an important but shadowy presence in the fields. No one quite knows how many are working in agriculture (or other sectors of the economy) or what percentage of the lettuce labor force they account for. Actual interviews with undocumented workers (called indocumentados or sindocumentos in Spanish) have been few and largely limited to samplings of apprehended workers (e.g., North and Houstoun, 1976). Industry representatives and union officials in the lettuce industry generally refuse to guess about numbers since they are wary of the public's reaction. Workers interviewed in this study estimated that between 10 percent and 50 percent of the labor force lacked papers, but those conjectures reflected the number of friends or acquaintances workers knew to be undocumented. Since more reliable figures are unavailable, I will suggest on the basis of my own observations and counts that between 25 percent and 50 percent of the labor force in lettuce is undocumented. This range is sufficiently large to include that portion of the work force which claims to have legal documentation but, in fact, does not.

For this study, a total of thirty-six (self-identified) undocumented workers were included in the survey group; with an additional fifteen interviewed in-depth separately. Access to this "invisible" sample was developed through contacts made in the field during the participant-observation stage of the research. The importance of the undocumented worker group for the analysis of earnings and work organization will be demonstrated in chapters 4 and 5. Here, however, it is sufficient to point out the utility of the participant-observation methodology in making those interviews possible.

Undocumented workers differed from the others in the sample in two important repects. First, indocumentados are


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more closely tied to Mexico than either the documented immigrants or citizens. None has established a permanent residence in the United States, nor has any concrete plans to settle there. Second, the undocumented workers are exclusively male. That is, in contrast to legal immigrants and citizens, indocumentados work across the border without wife or family—though over half these men reported that they were married. These two factors, in particular, lend credence to the argument that undocumented Mexicans, in contrast to earlier waves of immigrants, view their participation in the U.S. economy as a temporary venture (Piore, 1979).

This brief examination of the lettuce labor force has highlighted two important factors. First, the harvest labor force in the lettuce industry remains overwhelmingly noncitizen. Despite the end of managed migration with the bracero program, noncitizens carry out the majority of harvest work. When citizens do show up, they are primarily women of Mexican descent. Second, the harvest labor force tends to circulate between the United States and Mexico on a fairly regular, if not seasonal, basis. Furthermore, the larger part of the labor force maintains strong social and economic ties to Mexico. In particular, undocumented workers (and male workers generally) manifest the least attachment to permanent settlement in the United States.

The Harvest Labor Process

Lettuce production is highly labor-intensive. Despite the increasingly intensive use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and energy-intensive machinery, hand labor remains the overwhelming force in cultivation and harvest operations. Approximately 12,000 to 15,000 workers weed and harvest the crop each year. Of that number, 7,000 to 8,000 are employed annually in the California and Arizona harvest.

Harvesting is carried out in two organizational forms: the ground or piece-rate crew and the wrap machine crew. Close to 80 percent of the lettuce shipped from California and


93

Arizona is harvested by ground crews; the remainder is wrapped in the field (Drossler, 1976). I will briefly describe the labor process in each.

Ground Crews

The average-size ground or piece-rate crew (the names are used interchangeably) consists of a total of thirty-six workers (table 5). The major subunit of the overall crew is the three-man team or trio; an average crew will contain nine trios and nine auxiliary workers. Each trio is a team of two lettuce cutters and one packer. The auxiliary workers assemble and distribute cartons for the packers, seal the filled cartons, and load them onto trucks for transport out of the field. Top tier companies (the large grower-shippers) often have in excess of twenty crews working during the peak harvest.

The cutters lead off the crew and walk stooped through

 

Table 5. Comparison of Average Crew Size and Activity:
Ground Crew Harvest and Wrap Crew Harvest

Activity

Ground crew

Wrap crew

Select-cut-trim

18

14

Wrap

-

9

Pack

9

4

Spray

1

0

Close

2

2

Load

4

3

Carton assembly/distribution

2

 

Machine operator

-

1

Total crew

36

33

Ground crew equivalent
(in terms of output)

 

66

Source: Johnson and Zahara (1976:380).


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the rows of mature lettuce cutting and trimming the heads. Packers follow behind squeezing the heads into empty cartons (24 heads per carton). The cartons are then glued, stapled shut, and loaded for transport to the cooling facilities where they will be stacked on pallets and forklifted onto trucks or railroad cars headed for market.

In the field, all the work is done by hand. With the exception of a stitching machine for constructing cartons, no other form of machine—pneumatic, hydraulic, or electric—is used in the harvest process. Cutters wield razor-sharp knives for cutting and trimming heads. Packers use crude wheelbarrows to hold cartons while they fill them. Closers carry spring-action staple guns to seal the cartons. Loaders lift the fifty-pound cartons over their heads and toss them to the back of trucks for stacking.

Although the length of the workday may vary according to weather, field, or market conditions, the physical exertion required in the work is tremendous. One need only imagine walking stooped for eight to ten hours a day or completing 2,500 toe-touches to get a sense of the endurance required in the cutting and packing of lettuce. The demanding character of the work is only heightened when the fields are muddy from late irrigation or recent rains and workers must slog through claylike soil. The speed and endurance required in harvesting takes its toll on workers. "Careers" in the industry are short: older and retired workers interviewed reported that a worker's career is generally limited to between ten and eighteen years. Most common among the physical complaints (and reasons cited for quitting the harvest) are back injuries, arthritis, hernias, and slipped discs. The age-earnings profile of workers in the survey (fig. 3) shows that earnings peak around age thirty-one and steadily decline thereafter.

The harvest labor process of the ground crew may be quite demanding and destructive, but it is also incredibly productive, efficient, and adaptive. The division of labor among crew members is quite precise and controlled: workers interact with one another in such a fashion as to minimize extraneous movement and establish a routine. A crew of thirty-six workers can, under normal conditions, cut, pack, and load between


95

Figure 3.
Age-Earnings Profile for Male Lettuce Workersa (N = 90)

3,000 and 3,500 cartons of lettuce per day—enough to fill three to three-and-a-half railroad cars. To be more specific, an efficient, experienced crew can produce a completed carton of lettuce every 15 seconds.

In most cases, the trios are paid on a per-carton, piece-rate basis. This means that cutters and packers divide among themselves the total earnings of the trio for production during a given period, usually a week. The auxiliary workers, with the exception of the loaders, are most often paid on an hourly basis. When pairs of loaders are teamed with a set of trios, a joint piece-rate may be established for the trios and loaders. In most cases, however, the loaders will be assigned a piece-rate separate from the rest of the crew. However, efficiency and productivity are based much more on crew coordination than on individual or trio ability. While individuals and trios may be particularly adept at the activities they perform (e.g., cutting and packing), wages are ultimately determined by the overall speed and, therefore, coordination of activities within the crew. Individual workers reported that the time required


96

for acquiring particular skills is relatively short: as little as a day or two. Crew coordination and articulation, however, is much more difficult to obtain. From my own field experience, the crew in which I worked only began to operate with a high degree of teamwork (and therefore earn near-normal pay) after the fifth week of being together.

The coordination of all crew members is quite important in determining the pace of work and, therefore, the crew's earnings. Because the auxiliary workers (closers, carton assemblers and distributors, loaders) carry out services for groups of trios, the timely performance of their jobs can affect the work of the cutters and packers. If, for example, the carton distributors (often called windrowers) fail to evenly or adequately distribute empty cartons, they slow the packers down. If the packers are slowed, the lettuce heads sit too long in the sun and begin to wilt. In the case where cutters must wait for packers to catch up, the output of the crew diminishes. Thus, in order for the crew to work at or near maximum capacity, the coordination between trios and auxiliary workers must be precise. In similar fashion, if the cutters work at an uneven pace (with respect to one another), they will throw off the efficiency of the packers who must pack for two cutters; the windrowers, who must unevenly distribute cartons; and the loaders, who must load for several trios at once. Cutters, in particular, push fellow members to coordinate their activities and to maintain a pace in the crew. For example, cutters may give pep talks to the rest of the crew during the infrequent breaks for rest or food. During one such break, the fastest cutter in the crew to which I belonged berated both the less experienced cutters and the auxiliary workers:

You guys aren't making our job easy. You have to keep up or you mess up the rhythm. My money depends on you getting the boxes closed good. And your money depends on me cutting a lot of these heads. If you [younger packers] start falling behind, then you screw everything up—because Cruz [one of the closers] has to walk back and close your cartons and then run up to close mine.


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The collective dimension of skill in the harvest crew is, therefore, embodied in the high degree of mutual coordination and experience which shows up among crew members.

In this regard, the ground crews bear remarkable similarities to other work groups that rely on the immediate and mutual coordination of group members in the labor process. Gouldner's description of the contrast in interaction between surface (factory) workers and miners highlights the common features of mining and harvesting crews:

Unlike most workers in the board plant, members of the mining teams worked together in closest association. The size of their work group was larger, their rate of interaction more intensive, and their expectations of informal work reciprocities were more pronounced.... The nature of their work permitted them a greater degree of discretion. Since they themselves determined the speed at which they worked, the rest pauses they would take, and the strategy of digging the gyp[sum] out and propping the roof, the miners were in constant communication with each other. (1954:133)

Whyte's study of glass workers also stresses the individual and collective elements of skill in the performance and administration of glassblowing (1961:220). In his analysis of longshoring gangs, Finlay concludes, "The gang is an amalgamation of different activities, and the element of skill derives from the coordination of these activities—it has no single occupational base" (1980:7). For harvest crews, like the miners, glassblowers, and longshoring gangs, the administration and performance of the activities of production are united.

In addition, most harvest crews are characterized by social interaction beyond the workplace itself. That is, they also exist as relatively cohesive units external to the labor process. This shows up in two ways: in recruitment of new members and in the ways in which they deal with the exigencies of migration. In the first instance, many crews recruit and help train their own members. Though the process of labor recruitment will be discussed in greater detail in chapter 5, kinship serves as an important avenue of entry into a crew and usually involves some real or fictive attachment to one or


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more of its members. Sons, brothers, cousins, or brothers-in-law may be brought in when a vacancy occurs (either at the level of cutter/packer or auxiliary worker). Alternatively, people who are in auxiliary positions may exert a claim to try out for a job. In the crew in which I worked, half the workers were or claimed to be related to at least one other member of the crew. In addition, overlapping ties, such as distant family relations or common village origin in Mexico, served to bind the crew socially and facilitate entry.

The other form of social cohesion involves the migrancy of the crew. For the duration of the harvest, the crew represents a fairly closely knit collection of married and single bachelors. Most, if not all, crew members are away from home for the majority of the season. All retain close family ties in Mexico. Crews often break down into smaller groups (usually two or three close friends) for the purposes of lodging, travel, food buying and preparation, and laundry. These small groups help make life a little more bearable during the monotonous days of the harvest.

Finally, the adaptability of the group crew is an important aspect of work organization in the lettuce harvest. Weather conditions and market prices are the major determinants of the availability of work. Even in the largest firms, where stable marketing and sales arrangements have been negotiated with large buyers, fluctuation still exists in the amount of work available in any given period. Skilled harvest crews, in contrast to capital-intensive machinery, can be activated for varying periods of time, adapted to a wide range of field conditions, and easily transported between production areas or fields at literally a moment's notice.

Taken in combination, these attributes—productivity, efficiency, and adaptability—underscore the critical role played by the ground crews in the harvest labor process. As suggested earlier, these lettuce crews constitute formidable social harvesting machines.

Wrap Crew Production

Approximately one-fifth of the lettuce shipped from California and Arizona is sent out enveloped in plastic film (Drossler,


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1976). Known as "wrapped" or "source-wrapped" lettuce, it is the product of a labor process that differs in several respects from the ground crew organization. Two of the most important differences are: (1) the capital intensification of production, and (2) the restructuring of the harvest labor process.

The wrap machine (fig. 4) and its auxiliary equipment mark a significant increase in the capital intensity of lettuce harvesting. The machine itself consists of a steel frame with hinged wings capable of being folded back for highway transport. The entire device is powered by a large diesel (tractor-type) engine with auxiliary motors for generating electricity. Electrically powered conveyor belts are mounted on the wings and the center section of the machine for moving lettuce between work stations. Hydraulic lifters and steering mechanisms enable the wheels of the machine to be driven

Figure 4.
Diagram of General Wrap Machine Design (Top View)


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independently, thus allowing the contraption to move through damp fields and make turns in a short radius.

Individual machines cost in the neighborhood of $75,000 to $100,000 each—approximately the price of the largest and most powerful generation of tractors. Variations in price are largely due to differences in design. Some companies purchase their frames from machine manufacturers and then make modifications in their own engineering shops. Besides the machine itself, auxiliary equipment in the form of special trailers for transporting machines between production areas, forklifts for handling palletized cartons, and spare parts boosts the investment necessary to transform production from naked to wrapped lettuce. Given the fact that two machines (Zahara et al., 1974) are necessary to replace the output of one ground crew, investments approach nearly a quarter of a million dollars per ground crew equivalent. Thus, in contrast to the minimal hand tools necessary to outfit the ground crews, wrap machines constitute a sizable increase in fixed costs.

Altogether, only nine firms produce source-wrapped lettuce. Of those nine, the top three, which are also the three largest firms in the industry, account for somewhat between one-half and two-thirds of wrapped lettuce.[4] Miracle Vegetable Co., the industry leader, wraps roughly half of its lettuce; Salad Giant wraps nearly 40 percent; and Verde wraps between 30 percent and 40 percent (interviews with company representatives). In those firms committed to production of wrapped lettuce, therefore, the increase in fixed costs associated with the machine is a major investment. For Miracle alone, the investment in equipment, not including increased investments in maintenance and repair facilities or design shops, approaches $2 million.[5]

The second major element of change in the labor process is the elimination of the critical element of skill found in the ground crew: mutual coordination. In effect, the machine appropriates the mutual coordination of ground crew members while leaving in place many of the activities they previously performed. Workers still cut, pack, and load lettuce but now a machine regulates the pace and coordinates the


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performance of those activities. Therefore, the mutual coordination and experience of the ground crew has been reproduced mechanically as a set of motor-driven conveyor belts.

Like the industrialization of automobile production some sixty years earlier, wrap machine technology has had important consequences for the social organization of production (Chinoy, 1955; Braverman, 1975; Marx, 1975:375–409). First, the elimination of the coordination and skill of the ground crew cutter has transformed the cutter on a wrap crew into a sort of detail worker. Cutters are trained to perform a single, repetitive task. Individual workers in a wrap crew, like the individual workers on the line in an auto assembly plant, need not even have a passing acquaintance with fellow crew members or their work in order to perform adequately. The orientation to the parts but not the whole of the labor process, though not produced by a subdivision of work activities, contrasts sharply with the social cohesiveness and the orientation to the whole of the ground crew. Second, the pace of work has been subordinated to mechanical control, like an assembly line. The volume of lettuce arriving at any one of the work stations is manipulated externally by supervisory personnel. Thus the pace of work is less affected by the actions of any particular category of workers than by the speed of the machine and its conveyor belts. Finally, the pay rate for wrap machine workers has been converted from a piece-rate to an hourly basis. Thus, the variability and the high level of wages which had characterized different crew positions and different crews in the ground pack has been replaced by a flat, hourly wage structure.

These changes, in turn, have important implications for the social organization of the harvest crews. First, while the wrap machine process does not eliminate any of the individual activities carried out by ground crew workers it does, however, increase the demand for labor. Since two crews of thirty-three workers (and two machines) are necessary to replace one ground crew, the volume of labor needed is nearly double (table 5). However, the wage of the average worker is reduced to less than half what workers can make on the piece-rate.


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When the premium paid to growers for wrapped lettuce is added to the total, the wrap-pack method proves quite competitive with the ground-pack method. Second, the elimination of crew-based coordination and the reduction in wages have also undercut the basis for worker commitment to crew and company. Although wrap machines are deployed on a continuous basis, the reward from commitment has been reduced in two important aspects: (1) the connection between crew experience and earnings has been replaced by an hourly wage that is largely unaffected by experience; and (2) the low level of wages discourages migration with crew and company. In other words, in addition to deskilling the crew and enhancing mechanical control of work pace, the transformation of the labor process has actually increased the seasonal demand for labor.

This chapter has made several important distinctions with respect to the social and economic organization of production in the lettuce industry. First, the industry has been transformed from a collection of economically vulnerable enterprises into a system dominated by a small set of highly complex and sophisticated organizations. Second, these organizations continue to employ a largely noncitizen labor force; despite the process of rationalization that has taken place at higher levels within those firms, the bulk of production is carried out by low status, unprotected labor. Finally, production is carried out in highly labor-intensive harvest teams. Even more important than the volume of labor required, production is characterized by both highly skilled and self-regulating production teams and lesser-skilled, mechanically paced crews.

With this examination as background, the organizing questions seem all the more important. How do these firms get such valuable labor at so low a cost? How is the stability and regularity of labor supply maintained?


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