4
Citizenship, Earnings, And Work Organization
The analysis of southwestern agricultural production presented in chapter 2 argued that political intervention in labor market processes historically abridged both labor market competition and market determination of wages. In other words, the political construction of the agricultural labor market enabled employers to (1) avail themselves of a steady supply of low status, politically vulnerable labor, and (2) exercise arbitrary authority over the wages received by those workers. Yet, as was noted in the preceding chapter, two sets of circumstances now need to be considered.
First, the end of the bracero program took away from employers administrative control over the labor supply. Presumably, therefore, employers can no longer directly control the volume of labor available for employment nor act in bureaucratic fashion to determine wage levels. Has this meant that labor market processes have been freed from political controls? Have nonmarket statuses, particularly citizenship status, lost their salience as far as occupational attainment and earnings are concerned? The second set of circumstances
bears more directly on the empirical case of the lettuce industry. As described in chapter 3, lettuce production is divided into two different organizational situses: the skilled ground crew and the unskilled wrap crew. Yet, the wages received by both ground and wrap crew members are very low (see table 6), especially when one considers the seasonality of production and the costs associated with migrancy. In particular, the ground crews do not seem to be able to transform their collective skill and organizational potential into higher wages, higher status, more secure employment, or less destructive working conditions. Why do wages remain so low? Why does labor supply and control over production seem so nonproblematic?
In this and the following two chapters, I will focus directly on the issues of earnings and work organization in the lettuce industry. In doing so, I will make two related arguments. First, I will argue that citizenship status continues to be a central variable in labor market and wage determination processes. Using data collected from the lettuce worker survey and interviews, I will demonstrate that citizenship and, to a somewhat lesser extent, gender act to specify the relationship between skill and income. While an individual's earnings are most strongly related to his or her position in the labor process and the skills required for work, citizenship status and gender strongly affect the allocation of individuals into crews. Thus,
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I will argue, market variables reflecting individual characteristics—age, experience, job tenure—are of secondary importance to citizenship status and gender in terms of their ability to explain the distribution of income.
Second, I will argue that the relationship between citizenship status and crew organization can be explained in terms of the relative advantages to employers of distributing workers with varying degrees of political vulnerability to different positions in the labor process. I will show that the concentration of undocumented workers into the ground crew has two important effects: (a) the subjection of productivity levels to political manipulation, and (b) the denial to both undocumented and documented workers of the capacity to claim higher status or reward for their skills. However, the concentration of documented and citizen workers, especially women, in the wrap crews has the effect of ensuring the availability of low-skilled workers, and using the social and economic restrictions associated with gender roles and alien status to ensure work force stability. I will suggest, therefore, that citizenship status and gender—variables that are politically and socially constructed—are economic and organizational in their consequences.
These arguments will be elaborated and supporting data presented in the next three chapters. Survey and qualitative data will be combined to illuminate the arguments made at the level of the labor market and at the level of the labor process.
Citizenship, Work Situs, And Earnings
Citizenship is a key variable in the allocation of individuals to the positions in the labor process and, subsequently, in the allocation of rewards associated with those positions. The critical dimension informing the citizenship variable is political vulnerability. Each category of citizenship—citizen, documented, and undocumented—represents a different level of vulnerability or susceptibility to external influence based on the formal legal mechanisms for controlling and legitimating claims on the polity. Thus if citizenship were to
be redefined in terms of the level of political vulnerability, the categories would be ranked in the following fashion: citizen = low; documented immigrant = medium; undocumented immigrant = high.
In the analysis of the politics of labor supply presented in chapter 2 it was argued that the bracero program (1942–1965) introduced a new category of citizenship status. This program was developed in a period in which both the political and the economic rights of citizenship were being extended. In the case of political rights, increased claims on the polity for nonwork support were being institutionalized in the "welfare state," for example, increased federal allocations for welfare and general assistance medical care programs for the unemployed and underemployed and federally financed public housing programs (Piven and Cloward, 1971; Marshall, 1977). Eligibility for these programs depended on nonparticipation in the economic sphere. At the same time, the economic rights of citizenship were being extended. Guarantees of "market freedom" and rewards for participation were bolstered in such measures as the extension of New Deal legislation regarding the right to join unions and to bargain collectively over wages and working conditions; the growth of job-related rewards such as private pension and medical plans; and the establishment of federally mediated low-interest loans for home ownership.
The bracero program, by contrast, made an entire group's right to be in the country entirely dependent on participation in economic organizations. In other words, where citizens had the option (both voluntary and involuntary) to withdraw from economic organizations and exercise their political rights of citizenship or remain employed and enjoy the benefits associated with it, braceros had neither.
The termination of the bracero program in 1965 meant, in effect, the generalization and intensification of that status. As table 2 suggests, the closing of the bracero pipeline coincided with the opening of the undocumented floodgate. More important than the question of the volume of that flow is the status of its members: where the bracero had some minimal degree of protection from employer abuse, the indocumen-
tado had (and has) none. Less dramatic, but equally important, the undocumented worker does not have the rights with which to make claims for higher status or reward for skills acquired through participation in economic organizations or independent of them. This is not to suggest, as for example Burawoy (1976:1051) does, that these workers can somehow be paid less than the value of their labor. Rather, it is to argue that they are severely hampered in their ability to make and enforce claims for higher status and reward based on their labor market position.
Concretely, an examination of income determination processes in the lettuce industry should likely reveal the strong interrelationship of level of political vulnerability (represented by citizenship status), skill, and earnings. There are three arguments here. First, skill levels should be positively related to earnings. Second, degree of political vulnerability should be positively related to both skill levels and earnings. And third, degree of political vulnerability should be more strongly related to skill and earnings than any market-based or individual characteristics of the labor force.
Sampling Procedures and Issues
Data collected from a sample of 152 lettuce harvest workers will be employed in the testing of these hypotheses. The data collection process involved a sampling of residences in the Salinas Valley area during the summer of 1979. Residential locations included private homes and apartments, labor camps (employer, public, and privately owned and administered), and transient hotels. The survey was administered by the author both in English and in Spanish.
Two aspects of the sample and sampling procedure require comment. First, the sample can be considered only partially random since the social situation in which farm workers exist precludes simple identification of areas in which they are to be found. The exigencies of travel, employment, social status, and housing discrimination result in workers being scattered across a wide variety of locations. Therefore, the criteria for inclusion in the sample was more often based on whether
a person simply worked in the lettuce harvest than on a randomized identification and sampling of the universe of lettuce workers. Second, the declarations of citizenship status made by respondents were impossible to verify, even in the case of those who admitted to being undocumented. Because insistence on proof would undoubtedly have precluded the completion of most interviews, no effort was made to verify citizenship status. The analysis of the effects of the citizenship variable therefore may be somewhat compromised. However, as will be demonstrated below, the inclusion of respondents who identified themselves freely as undocumented workers helped enormously in overcoming that obstacle. The undocumented workers were included in the sample as a result of contacts made during the field research but were intially identified solely through their citizenship status. Thus, their occupational situs was unknown prior to interview and their similarity in position to other indocumentados was later corroborated by in-depth interviews.
Precisely because the above factors limit the generalizability of the survey data, the survey results by themselves are not considered conclusive. But the research was designed to take these limitations into account and survey data were supplemented by interviews and participant-observation. Thus, the analysis of survey results in this section is accompanied by the analysis of qualitative data. This form of methodological triangulation, I argue, adds measurably to the confidence with which conclusions can and will be made.
Analysis of Survey Data
The strong positive relationship between weekly earnings and work situs is demonstrated in table 7. As expected, the higher skill levels required in the ground crew form of production result in higher levels of payment than the lower-skilled, mechanically paced wrap machine production.
The central issue to be addressed, however, is the factors that influence distribution of workers into different work situses and income categories. Table 8 summarizes the zero-order correlations between market and individual charac-
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teristics of respondents in the sample of the work situs and earnings variables. From conventional models of income determination (e.g., Becker, 1964) one would expect that variables measuring labor market and job experience would be positively related to earnings, particularly in a labor market featuring a hierarchy of skilled occupations. The general and
specific skills acquired through time in the labor market and job should represent investments that will bear an appreciable return; alternatively viewed, they would represent increments in the marginal productivity of' labor which would generate higher income. However, table 8 shows that for lettuce harvesters none of the characteristics associated with human capital investments is strongly related to either work situs or earnings. Age, general work experience, industry experience, and job experience yield no measurable benefit for lettuce workers.
By contrast tables 9 and 10 demonstrate the role of citizenship status in occupational attainment and earnings. Both the strength and the direction of the relationships between citizenship status and the two dependent variables are as predicted. Undocumented aliens, the most politically vulnerable workers, tend to show up in the most skilled jobs. Citizens, the most politically protected labor, tend to show up in the least skilled, mechanically controlled work. Documented aliens are distributed between the work situses. The distribution of' workers into income categories in turn reflects the occupational distribution. In other words, the termination of the bracero program, that is, of employer administration of
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labor supply, has not introduced market principles of occupational attainment or income.
Citizenship And Gender
The relationship among citizenship status, skill levels, and earnings is clearly documented. However, the impact of gender must also be taken into account. As is shown in tables 11 through 13, gender is strongly related to all three variables: citizens tend to be women; women tend to be found exclusively in the wrap crews; and women tend to be among the lowest paid harvest workers (which follows from the preceding table).
Are the observed correlations between citizenship, skill, and earnings really masking the effects of sex segregation in the labor market? The situation is too complex to respond simply "Yes" or "No." Though chapter 6 is devoted to an examination of the role of gender in work organization, it is possible to assess here the independent and combined effects of citizenship
and gender. This argument is supported in two principal ways. First, when one looks at the distribution of workers into work situses and earnings levels by citizenship status, it is clear that even when women are removed from the sample the effects of citizenship are visible (tables 14 and 15).
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Second, briefly summarizing material to be presented later, the role of workers' citizenship and political vulnerability both with regard to general labor market functioning and the operation of the skilled crews is separable from the effects of
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gender. As will be shown with regard to the ground crews, in particular, the capacity of employers to affect productivity and enhance managerial control on the basis of political vulnerability cannot be explained by gender differences.
The importance of gender in terms of' labor market and work organization, however, shows up in the creation and perpetuation of' a large and stable supply of workers in the wrap crew situs. It is in that locale, I argue, that the combined effects of' citizenship and gender must be considered. The effects of citizenship and gender overlap and act to create, through different circumstances, a set of consequences similar to that found in the ground crews (chap. 6). In essence, citizenship and gender inequalities are used to construct an abundant supply of labor, to increase the stability of the work force, and to enhance managerial control over work organization and wages.
In summary, data collected from the farm worker survey strongly support the hypothesis that citizenship status acts to specify the relationship between skill and income. Citizenship status, beyond all other variables (including gender), influ-
ences how individuals are allocated into positions and, furthermore, what the level of rewards is for those positions. The combined effects of citizenship and gender, in turn, even more strongly influence occupational location and earnings.
Three additional points should be made in this connection. First, to argue that human capital variables seem of secondary importance in explaining variations in earnings is not the same as denying their importance. Indeed, among male lettuce workers differences between the skilled ground crew workers and the unskilled wrap crew workers are substantial. The greater experience of the former group is reflected in their earnings. Yet, the clear correlation of citizenship status and earnings cannot simply be explained by the kind of work background these people bring to the job. Close to 80 percent of undocumented and documented workers had worked in agriculture before taking their present jobs in the lettuce industry and, while undocumented workers tended to have spent more of their working lives in agricultural employment, a roughly equal share of documented and undocumented workers (35% vs. 28%) had worked at one time in a nonfarm job. Thus, as Bustamante (1977) has demonstrated, immigrants with a rural background tend to find employment in agriculture. But work backgrounds in this case do not explain why undocumented workers should be more likely to work in the ground crews than documented workers.
Second, it might be possible to argue that undocumented workers are somehow better suited to the physically arduous work of the ground-pack if there were some indication that they possessed special characteristics other than their political vulnerability. However, the survey data revealed no such special characteristics. As mentioned earlier, undocumented workers had the same general backgrounds as other male workers. Both documented and undocumented workers were attracted to work in the lettuce harvest by the expectation of higher earnings than those available in other pursuits, but motivations cannot explain why the sorting process implied by the distribution of workers into jobs operates the way it does. If, as I argue in the next section, undocumented workers push themselves harder than others, that is a product of
their inability to effectively protect themselves from external pressures.
Third, and finally, the preceding analysis of earnings data underscores a major contention in this study: there is no reason why immigrants should be better suited to do this kind of' work than any other workers. The growth of' large-scale agribusiness firms has dramatically altered the economic structure of' the industry. Employment opportunities, for ground crew workers in particular, are no longer highly unstable. Minimum wage laws have been applied to agricultural labor. The work, though arduous, can be compared to many factory jobs and is probably less physically impairing than other livelihoods, such as mining or foundry work. Moreover, during the time of this study and afterward, domestic unemployment was climbing to record levels. What accounts for the predominance of immigrant workers and women in the harvest labor market is the construction of an enclave wherein the vulnerability of these workers is employed as a device for pushing wage levels down below a level acceptable to domestic workers, and a means by which to attach the lower status of' aliens and women to the work itself—making it appear as a livelihood beneath that which other, higher status workers should accept.
Citizenship And The Relations Of Production
As was suggested at the beginning of the chapter, citizenship can also be considered an organizational variable. Previously the labor market effects of political vulnerability were emphasized. Here I Will turn to the consequences of citizenship for the relations of production in the ground crew situs. In this analysis I will make three major points: first, that the political vulnerability of undocumented workers enables employers to train and/or employ them as skilled workers without ceding control over the labor process; second, that competition between undocumented and documented workers for higher paid work (in the ground crews) acts to diffuse their common organization against employers; and third, that
undocumented workers are used as a category of "rate-busters" to increase the productivity of all ground crew workers. Each of these arguments will be dealt with in turn.
Undocumented Aliens as "Special Workers"
Even during the period of the bracero program, the stream of labor from Mexico consisted of both certified contract workers and indocumentados. The resulting pool of undocumented labor was also fed by braceros who overstayed their temporary work certifications. The majority were, however, workers who bypassed the bureaucratic red tape and bribes (mordida) necessary to obtain their certification as braceros (Galarza, 1964:119).
While there are no reliable estimates as to the relative size of these two groups—braceros and undocumented aliens—certain advantages were associated with the use of undocumented workers. They could be used in occupations from which braceros were restricted, for example, tractor and bus driving, packing shed work, and landscaping. Often these were occupations that required more skill or that necessitated longer periods of employment than were allowed under the time limits imposed on bracero work certifications (e.g., irrigation work, seeding, and even maintenance). According to Galarza, undocumented workers even showed up as low-level management in the fields, such as row bosses or foremen's assistants (Galarza, 1964:169). Many were used to form a stratum of "special workers" in relatively permanent positions within agribusiness firms. This stratum of undocumented workers was especially significant within the lettuce industry, particularly in the creation of stable, experienced harvest crews. Crews of undocumented workers existed during the period of the 1950s and 1960s in two forms: those organized by labor contractors and those organized by individual firms.
Crews organized by labor contractors operated in much the same fashion as custom harvesters in other crops, such as custom harvesting teams found in the grain industry. The labor contractor, an individual entrepreneur who traded in the labor of undocumented workers, would recruit and super-
vise the production operations of the harvest. For a contract fee negotiated with the grower, the contractor would provide sufficient labor to harvest the crop and would, in turn, organize housing, food, and transportation for the crew.
Hiring a labor contractor and a professional crew enabled smaller firms to externalize the recruitment and supervision of production to another agent. While direct labor costs were higher for the employer, the system as a whole offered an efficient and less complicated alternative to the use of braceros. A retired lettuce grower from the Imperial Valley in California, whom I will call Burt Tuller, described the situation thus:
Using a labor contractor and his crews wasn't strictly legal, of course, but as far as I was concerned, it saved me a lot of headaches.... I hired braceros out of the Labor Supply Association like everybody else did for thinning and lighter chores. Those were chores that didn't need a lot of supervision and all I really needed was bodies.
But, when it came time to harvest the crop, Tuller and other growers turned to labor contractors:
There were two big advantages to hiring a labor contractor. One, he handled all the dealings with the workers. I was out there just to make sure they gave me a good pack. The contractor, though, he brought them together. He was to see to it they got fed and all. The second thing was that those guys were fast. They'd go through a field like a buzzsaw. Real teamwork. See, the difference was that the braceros we got worked pretty hard, but they didn't have that teamwork. A lot of them were just interested in drawing their pay and that's it.... They weren't getting rich, not at 86 cents an hour. On the other hand, they had no incentive.
Problems associated with training workers to perform the individual tasks and, subsequently, keeping them together long enough to acquire "teamwork" derived from the bracero program itself. According to Tuller and other employers I interviewed, undocumented workers alleviated the problem
of trying to contract the same group of workers year after year through the bracero apparatus. According to Tuller:
In the first place, it cost you money to train them (braceros). That meant you had to be out in the fields all the time. By the time they were working good together, the season was practically over. Then where were you? ... The other problem was that it got damned expensive when you tried to get the same guys back the next year. Either you had to spend a lot of time down at the border when they came in [when braceros were processed through the certification stations] or you had to pay a lot of bribe money—they called it mordida—to this and that guy to make sure they got funneled to you. I figured it cost me $20 in bribes per guy! That was just too much. In the end, using a labor contractor cost me maybe a few pennies more a carton.
Taking into consideration the combined costs of training, supervision, and recruitment, Tuller (and other employers he named) opted for a system that existed alongside the bracero program but was far more productive and efficient. The use of a labor contractor and undocumented workers precluded the organizational task of constructing a training program within the firm and provided a regular supply of skilled labor.
A parallel system developed within a number of large grower-shipper firms as well. Unlike the seasonal hiring of labor contractors and crews, however, some larger firms sought to incorporate the system. That is, foremen (some of whom were former labor contractors) were used to create crews of undocumented workers to accomplish the same ends desired by employers like Tuller. Low-level managers and functionaries assembled the crew and then ensconced them physically within the organization. Interviews with Tuller (who revealed the process while arguing that the use of undocumented workers was widespread even during the bracero program) and retired lechugeros elucidated the operations of this system.
Crews were assembled from two major sources: from workers in Mexico who were unable to get certification as braceros and from the ranks of braceros who overstayed their certifica-
tion once in California. As one retired worker who joined such a crew in 1961 explained:
The mayordomo [foreman] came up to a bunch of us one day and wanted to know if we wanted to keep our jobs. We knew he meant to stay around after we were supposed to go back home (to Mexico). It was so hard to get work as a bracero that most of us decided to stay.
Once in the job as an indocumentado, work was more permanent but gone were the meager legal protections afforded braceros. As the same worker remembered,
We got paid better than we had before as braceros, but it was like we were in prison. They kept us out of sight, away from the other workers. We couldn't leave the camp except to work. Any time we complained the foreman would just say, "You want to work someplace else? Go ahead and try."
Physical isolation was only part of a strategy used by employers to construct and control their teams of skilled harvesters. Threats of deportation were alternated with reminders of the worker's superior earnings to keep undocumented workers in line.
Undocumented workers played a specific role once they were internalized or made a more permanent part of the labor force: they were the special workers, the firstline crews in the harvest labor process. According to interviews with retired workers, undocumented crews worked apart from the braceros, harvesting the first-grade or top quality lettuce.[1] Skilled and stable teams of undocumented workers, according to Tuller, were more efficient and produced a more uniform quality pack compared with the uneven, heavily supervised bracero crews.
The construction and internalization of crews of undocumented workers provided the efficiency of skilled production teams. At the same time, however, it virtually ensured the attachment of that labor to the firm while denying workers the means by which to claim greater status based on skill
or organization position. It is not clear how generalized a practice this was across the industry since employers interviewed in the course of the study, with the exception of Tuller, denied having done so. Most suggested that such a practice would have been illegal. Interviews with workers who had participated, however, indicate that the practice was not uncommon.
This form of labor organization, as I noted earlier, was constructed alongside a labor program that had already proven remarkably efficient in supplying and controlling large numbers of agricultural workers. The bracero program, however, proved inefficient as a means by which to establish skilled, stable production teams. For the bulk of firms (including many lettuce firms), the bracero program provided what was wanted: a stream of largely unskilled labor. As lettuce producers, particularly the larger firms, moved to increase the productivity of the labor process, the bracero program failed to fill their needs. The unregulated supply and negatively privileged status of undocumented labor became the means by which to fill those needs.
The thrust of the historical data from Tuller and other informants is that the use of indocumentados as special workers provided an important incentive to high productivity and stability at a very low cost. Employers were able to turn the investments undocumented workers had made in getting across the border (as well as their fear of apprehension) into an attachment to the firm. Considering the value of ground crew labor, the costs associated with employing a labor contractor or organizing company-specific crews were (and, as I will show in the contemporary period, are) relatively small in comparison to the incentives presently embedded in internal labor market structures. The coercive control exercised through manipulation of citizenship status allowed these firms to capitalize on both workers' independent investments in training and those of the organization without having to bargain over the price of labor. Furthermore, the ready availability of more, equally disadvantaged labor meant that even if workers sought to organize for the purpose of price bargaining their replacements could be obtained relatively easily.
Relations Between Workers
The end of the bracero program removed the restrictions that had, at least officially, bound those workers to temporary, unskilled work. What followed, as I noted in chapter 2, was the construction of a labor market filled by documented and undocumented workers. However, differences in citizenship status produce different kinds of careers within that labor market. Documented workers tend to be distributed between work situses and undocumented workers tend to show up most often in the skilled ground crews.
In analyzing the consequences of the citizenship variable, it is important to consider its effects on the relations among workers, especially as they pertain to the organizational potential of the crews. I will begin by analyzing employment strategies from the workers' point of view, that is, how workers from different categories of citizenship status interpret their position and outlook on the work they perform. I will, subsequently, raise the analysis to the level of organizational strategy and practice to show how citizenship is used to construct the work orientations and strategies of lettuce workers.
In the survey interviews, respondents were asked why they worked in the lettuce industry (as opposed to other crops or types of employment). In fairly uniform fashion both documented and undocumented workers cited two major reasons: potential earnings and the possibility of working a greater portion of the year (see table 16).
Despite the similarities in response to the general question, however, differences in the employment strategies of documented and undocumented workers emerged from the in-depth interviews and fieldwork. Undocumented workers expressed a sense of urgency in describing their work experiences and plans. Documented workers, in contrast, focused on the monetary and organizational advantages of work in the lettuce harvest. The origin of these different orientations appears quite openly in terms of categories of citizenship status, as the comments below demonstrate. Typical of many of the undocumented workers, a young cutter summarized his position this way:
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Anywhere I work I take chances of being picked up and sent home. Sure, it's easy to get work in the strawberries or with the (lettuce) machines, but you don't make much money.... In the contract crews (ground crews) you work very hard, but you earn a lot more. The foremen tell you that if you get picked up they'll give you your job back, but sometimes you don't get it back. So, if you have to take so many chances, you better make as much money as you can.
Comparing his position as an undocumented worker with that of documented workers, another lechugero explained:
If I was ten years younger and I had papers, I might look at things differently. But I'm thirty years old and I've been working in the lettuce for eight years. I've got six children and a wife to feed. I need the money.... If I could get papers, maybe I'd work as a tractor driver or something and make less money. Then I could work more years. I can't get papers because I was arrested in Salinas once and besides it takes years to get them.... And I can't afford to buy them either. So, I stay cutting lettuce until I can't do it anymore. Then I go home.
Documented workers tended to concentrate on achieving a balance between maximum earnings and the physical capacity
to continue working. For example, in describing his annual work schedule, a green-card lettuce packer explained:
For the first two years, I used to work for almost ten or eleven months for this company. I made good money but I was just worn out.... Now I work in Salinas for about seven months and then I head home to Cauchitlan and rest. This way, I figure I can work maybe six or seven years more.
A green-card who began working in the field without papers offered an insightful comparison of the differences between his past and present orientations:
Before, I wanted to make as much money as I could when I got work. It was a struggle all the time. If I found a job, I had to lay low and keep out of trouble ... no going to the bars, no talking back to the foreman. I worried all the time about getting picked up by la migra .
Now, it's different. I can walk the streets and not worry. That doesn't mean that the gabachos (Anglos) treat you much different. But for me it means that I can get a job and make money when I want. If I get tired of doing this, I can maybe try to get a job driving a truck. I won't make as much, but at least I'll be able to work.
While citizenship limits the occupational opportunities of all immigrants, the range of choices appears wider for legal immigrants than for the indocumentados. Documented workers at least can choose between higher paying, physically destructive work and lower paying, less demanding work. Undocumented workers, however, are susceptible to apprehension and deportation wherever they work, and thus many attempt to maximize earnings when and where possible. Nonetheless, as was evident in table 16, the promise of higher wages and steadier work in lettuce draws both groups to seek employment in the crews.
It is not surprising, therefore, that jobs in the lettuce industry, and the ground crews in particular, should be the object of intense and sometimes bitter competition between documented and undocumented workers. But the nature of that competition is profoundly affected by the differential
statuses of the competitors. Precisely because green-cards and citizens have neither the legal nor the organizational means by which to close off the flow of undocumented aliens or to sanction employers for hiring indocumentados, they are forced to compete on the same terrain with that most vulnerable category of labor. Thus, the perpetuation of competition turns on the capacity of employers to manipulate citizenship status to their advantage, that is, to reproduce the vulnerability of undocumented workers as control over a labor process that engages both undocumented and documented workers. An important element of that control is the conflict it engenders between workers who share the same national and ethnic heritage but who have a different status in the labor market.
Competition and Control
That the vulnerability of undocumented workers affects work organization and control is quite evident in the assessments made of the "qualities" of different groups of workers. A common assessment heard in interviews with principals in the lettuce industry (managers, workers, and union officials) is that undocumented aliens "work harder" or "put out" more effort than other workers. Thus, among employers, undocumented aliens constitute an attractive labor pool. Similar assessments were heard from many employers, but one Salinas Valley vegetable grower put it most forcefully:
In the thirty years I've been in this business, I've seen four different groups in my crews. The hardest working ones and the ones who gave you the least trouble are the illegals. They're up here because they need work. There isn't a thing for them to do in Mexico but starve.... So, they take the chance and come here, work hard and then live better in Mexico. The green-cards, the Mexican-Americans, and the local Chicanos are all about the same. Some of the green-cards work pretty good, but nowhere as good as the mojados [wetbacks]. They act like you owe them something. It's worse now because of Chavez and his union.
Filipinos were honest, hard-working people ... but there's not many of them left nowadays.
Anglos don't last more than a day or two out in the fields. As long as there's welfare, no Anglo's going to get off his duff and do a little hard work.
For documented workers, particularly union members and supporters, indocumentados pose a significant dilemma: on the one hand, they are countrymen who share a common status as Mexicans; on the other hand, they belong to a segment of the labor force which, because of its vulnerability, has historically acted to undercut both formal and informal worker organization against management. While I examine this situation much more closely in the next chapter on relations among workers in a large unionized lettuce firm, elements of the conflict surfaced in fieldwork and interviews. For example, when looking for work in the fields, I often talked with farm workers in local gathering places such as bars, groceries, and friends' houses. In most cases I tried to tap into the grapevine by asking for an assessment of particular companies: How were they to work for? Was it a good place to learn to cut lettuce? On several occasions I was told that crews at certain companies were inordinately hardworking and that the reason for this was their high percentage of undocumented workers. On one occasion in particular I was warned:
You don't want to work at Salad Giant! They are real real fast. You wouldn't. be able to keep up. They would just chew you up and spit you out.
When I asked why they were so fast, I was told by the same worker:
All those guys are illegals. Every one of them. That's all Salad Giant hires. They bring those guys up and work them till they drop.... They [the workers] think they are real tough, you know: real men. But they are fools and idiots. If you go there and you can't keep up? Out you go!
Efforts to more systematically sample comparisons by other workers bore similar results. Most green-cards and citizens argued that undocumented workers did indeed work harder. Those who disagreed most often argued that all lettuce workers worked hard, irrespective of citizenship status. As one lechugero remarked: "We all work hard. That's what this job is all about, no? We work harder than anybody else." Most telling, however, was the fact that no one I asked contradicted the general sentiment.
Most undocumented workers were hesitant to pass judgement on their output or effort in comparison to the others. The majority of those who did respond argued that they did work harder, though never were those sentiments expressed boastfully. Views on the subject ranged from righteousness to apology. One lechugero, apparently sensing that my question was intended as a criticism of undocumented workers as a group, replied:
You are damned right we work harder. We have to. We have no protections and no laws to look out for us. If we did and if la migra would stop chasing us down, we could make a decent living without having to work so hard.... The growers know we have no choices so we have to work hard to keep our jobs.
Another worker, while explaining that he had gotten his first job in lettuce as a strikebreaker in 1970 (though at the time of the interview he worked for a nonunion company), remarked quietly:
A lot of other guys think we're just zopilotes [buzzards]. You know, men who go around stealing other men's work. It's not that way ... we all have to eat and we have families who need to eat. When you have no papers and you have a chance to work, you take it. It's not stealing.... Me and my compadres have to work harder or the ranchers take away our jobs. We all support Chavez and his union, but our stomachs and our children's stomachs are more important right now.
While comments such as these provide evidence of the effects of citizenship status, my own field experience lends
further substantiation. My first attempt to gain a position in the ground crew took place in a company-organized "tryout" (prueba ) for a new crew. The tryout began with a week of general training for all the men who showed up (70 for 30 positions). The second week constituted the trial period. Individuals chose a position for which they wanted training and stayed in it for the duration of' the tryout. I chose to try out for the cutter's job, feeling that would provide the best vantage point for observation.
After a sixty-hour week of cuts, bruises, and pulled muscles from the work, and relentless cajoling from company foremen, we (15 trios and 25 auxiliary workers) were told to go all out by the field supervisor. To everyone involved, it was clear that speed and endurance were the determinants of success. The routine of amphetamine-stimulated performance was inculcated very early on, though the practice of taking drugs was neither expressly encouraged nor prohibited by foremen or supervisor.[2] Tallies of daily output (in cartons of lettuce accepted and rejected) were kept for each of' the trios but were never reported. On the final day, the workers selected to make up the new crew were notified by the foreman. My trio was among the six rejected.
Sensing that my status as the only gabacho (Anglo) in the tryouts might have preordained the outcome, I offered an apology to my trio-mate, Umberto. Before I could finish delivering it, however, he interrupted:
Your being gabacho did not help us, but what was more important was that none of us (Umberto, Pablo, or myself) was indocumentado. Most of those other guys don't have papers.... I know maybe twenty of those guys don't have papers. We live in the same camp. They can't hide it. That's what the mayordomo wants: guys he can step on.... If they know you don't have papers and if you're any good, they'll take you. I know we were just as fast as the others.
Though he did not have specific evidence that the foremen knew the chosen workers were undocumented, Umberto argued that it was common knowledge that some companies, this one included, often hired indocumentados over green-
cards, especially when starting new crews. An informal survey conducted by Umberto afterward in his camp revealed that five of the nine trios hired were made up of undocumented workers. In the remaining four trios, he found that at least two workers were undocumented. Thus, parallel to the survey findings, undocumented immigrants were concentrated in the lead jobs and green-cards were spread across crew positions.
The remarks of workers both with regard to their job strategies and their assessments of performance reflect consciousness of the effects of citizenship status. For undocumented workers, vulnerability is a fact of life. Potential political sanctions get translated into strategies of work and performance which are designed to acquire and maintain employment in an unstable labor market. In other words, the accessibility of work and the ever-present threat of deportation are viewed not so much as contradictory elements of a larger labor system, but as invariant conditions of employment. For documented workers job strategies are constructed within the limits imposed by constrained job opportunities. However, the presence of undocumented workers acts to further constrain their degree of freedom both in job choice and in performance on the job. The differential effort displayed by indocumentados and the greater "desirability" of those workers in the eyes of employers are translated into competition for work and, ultimately, into competing norms of performance. These differences show up most forcefully within the context of crew organization and relations between workers and managers.
Productivity And Earnings In The Ground Crews
Undocumented workers constituted a category of special workers during the period of the bracero program. They supplemented what was already a highly elastic and tightly controlled labor system. Unaffected by the constraints of limited work certifications and occupational restrictions, indocumentados were organized into what became the precursors of the modern harvest crews. But these workers remained
largely separate from competition with the braceros—both in terms of crew composition and in terms of the distribution of' occupations. In the contemporary period, however, the presence of the indocumentados has a direct effect on the organization and conditions of work for all lettuce workers, documented and undocumented.
More than simply being vulnerable labor, undocumented workers represent an identifiable and reproducible category of rate-busters within the agricultural labor market. Rather than being randomly distributed across a labor pool, these rate-busters can be identified and actively recruited by lettuce firms. Thus for industry managers they serve to maintain high levels of productivity and to undermine the organizational potential of the ground crews. Unlike the classic rate-busters depicted in the literature on output restriction (Roy, 1952; Collins, Dalton, and Roy, 1946), however, undocumented workers do not comprise one or two deviates within an informal network of workers. On the contrary, the location of' undocumented workers in the most influential positions in the crews—cutting and packing—tends to shift the balance in the opposite direction: toward the imposition of sanctions against those who cannot make the rate.
Limitations on the availability of productivity data make this argument difficult to support directly. Industry representatives and employers refused to provide such information; the unions representing lettuce workers either did not have the data themselves or would not admit to having it.[3] Therefore the arguments in support of the assertion that indocumentados play a rate-busting role will have to be made indirectly through the survey and fieldwork data. The analysis of survey data, which constitutes the core of this section, will demonstrate that documented and undocumented ground crew workers achieve rough parity in earnings despite different levels of experience and patterns of employment. The analysis of data collected in the field will be approached from a slightly different angle, but with the same intent: to illustrate the consequences of the citizenship variable for productivity and control over the labor process. Because the field data is quite lengthy, it will be presented separately in chapter 5.
Although it might be inelegant to use "negative" findings to support an argument, the importance of the argument makes it necessary in this case. To be more precise, if the null hypothesis is made that the political vulnerability of undocumented workers makes them more likely to achieve higher levels of productivity than other workers, then (assuming equal piece-rates for all workers) indocumentados should earn more than any other workers in the same category of work. If, however, indocumentados do not show up in segregated crews (or crews are mixed by citizenship status), then both undocumented and documented workers should earn roughly equal wages (again, assuming equivalent piece-rates). Data presented in table 17 demonstrates that, for the workers surveyed, the latter case is more correct. In other words, citizenship status does not have an appreciable effect on earnings among workers in the same work situs.
Citizenship status, however, remains strongly correlated with the human capital variables, that is, undocumented workers in ground crews tend to be younger, less experienced in lettuce harvesting generally, and less experienced in the jobs they occupy (see table 18). Despite the fact that ground crew earnings are not directly related to citizenship status, occupa-
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tional and general experience definitely are. This parallels conclusions drawn in the earlier analysis.
It stands to reason, therefore, that the effects of citizenship should again be revealed through examination of' income determination for the different categories of citizenship status. The computations from those tables are reported in table 19. While the small sample size tends to make generalizations a bit risky, several important elements can be suggested:
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workers, by contrast, stay in the harvest for a shorter period, that is, they are either burned out earlier or rotate through the industry at a much higher rate. | |
2. | For green-cards, earnings increase with greater experience in the harvest (up to the point where age and physical endurance counteract). For undocumented workers, harvest experience has no effect on earnings; they reach a level and maintain it. |
3. | For documented workers, increased job experience has a small but positive effect on earnings, suggesting that with time in the job documented workers come to achieve slightly better pay. Once again, undocumented workers gain nothing from increased experience, suggesting that levels of earnings are achieved fairly early on and maintained irrespective of job tenure. |
The survey data demonstrate that despite different levels of experience and different patterns of employment, documented and undocumented workers achieve roughly equal levels of earnings. Since documented and undocumented workers reported earning equivalent piece-rates, such a finding cannot be explained through some process of pay
discrimination, that is, a situation where undocumented workers may actually outproduce documented workers but are paid a lower piece-rate. The conclusions drawn from this analysis can only indirectly render support for the original argument—that indocumentados are used to affect productivity levels for all workers. However far from conclusive the data may be, they do illustrate that differences in work experience are related to citizenship status.