|
Mercnbeth -> RE: Happy Cesar Cahvez Day (if it applies to you) (3/31/2008 1:38:19 PM)
|
~ Fast Reply ~
Were it not for Cesar Chavez, there would be less exploited illegal workers in California toiling for the betterment of the Corporate Farms. I think we should all be grateful and give thanks to Casar providing us with cheap wine, grapes, and of course lettuce.
WARNING: Only those able to read a different perspective should continue.
The impact of Casar Chavez on the state of farm workers today...
quote:
Despite the hosannahs of the nation's liberals, and the coercion supplied by the state of California, Cesar Chavez's entire life turned out to be a floperoo. Whereas he dreamed of his UFW organizing all of the nation's migrant farm workers, his union fell like a stone from a membership of 70,000 in the mid- 1970s to only 5,000 today. In the UFW heartland, the Salinas Valley of California, the number of union contracts among vegetable growers has plummeted from 35 to only one at the present time. Only half of the meager union revenues now come from dues, the other half being supplied by nostalgic liberals. The UFW has had it.
What went wrong? Some of Chavez's critics point to his love of personal power, which led to his purging a succession of organizers, and to kicking all savvy non-Hispanic officials out of his union.
But the real problem is "the economy, stupid." In the long run, economics triumphs over symbolism, hoopla, and radical chic. Unions are only successful in a market economy where the union can control the supply of labor: that is, when workers are few in number, and highly skilled, so that they are not easily replaceable. Migrant farm workers, on the contrary, and almost by definition, are in abundant, ever-increasing, ever-moving, and therefore "uncontrollable" supply. And with their low skills and abundant numbers, they can be easily replaced.
The low wage of migrant farm workers is not a sign that they are "exploited" (whatever that term may mean), but precisely that they are low-skilled and easily replaceable. And anyone who is inclined to weep about their "exploitation" should ask himself why in the world these workers emigrate seasonally from Mexico to the United States to take these jobs. The answer is that it's all relative: what are "low wages" and miserable living conditions for Americans, are high wages and palatial conditions for Mexicans--or, rather, for those unskilled Mexicans who choose to make the trek each season.
In fact, it's a darned good thing for these migrant workers that their beloved union turned out to be a failure. For "success" of the union, imposed by the boycott and the coercion of the California legislature, would only have raised wage rates or improved conditions at the expense of massive unemployment of these workers, and forcing them to remain, in far more miserable conditions, in Mexico. Fortunately, not even that coercion could violate economic realities.
As the pseudonymous free-market economist "Angus Black" admonished liberals at the time of the grape boycott: if you really want to improve the lot of grape workers, don't boycott grapes; on the contrary, eat as many grapes as you can stand, and tell your friends to do the same. This will raise the consumer demand for grapes, and increase both the employment and the wages of grape workers.
But this lesson, of course, never sunk in. It was and still is easier for liberals to enjoy a pseudo-religious "sense of belonging" to a movement, and to "feel good about themselves" by getting a vicarious thrill of sanctification by not eating grapes, than actually to learn about economic realities and what will really help the supposed objects of their concern.
The real legacy of Cesar Chavez is negative: forget the charisma and the hype and learn some economics.
Source: http://www.mises.org/econsense/ch38.asp
|
|
|
|
