Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
meant negotiation, especially given that advisors were charged with stabi-
lizing the farm labor supply. Growers and advisors did not always share
the same meaning of
stable
, and the closeness with which advisors and the
farm industry worked on such a sensitive problem was likely to create
tension. This tension came out most clearly through the Farm Production
Council's ability to set and adjust wage rates for agricultural labor through-
out the county. The control the council held over farm wages was intended
to stabilize the local farm workforce by eliminating competitive bidding
for labor among growers, but it also allowed the industry-dominated
council to keep wages artifi cially low through what was, in essence, collu-
sion (Liss 1953).
Even before the war, UC Cooperative Extension lobbied growers to
increase wages as a means of averting labor confl icts but the war
years—and the tight control on wages held by the council—often put
growers and advisors at odds over wage rates (Jelinek 1976, 210). For the
local advisors, their involvement with this aspect of the council and its
wartime activities was a tricky balance between their close ties to the farm
industry and their responsibilities to stabilize the local farm labor supply.
As one example, in a presentation given before a meeting of the Monterey
County Farm Bureau, the assistant farm advisor Reuben Albaugh suggested
that dairy farmers would have a more stable workforce if they simply
raised wages:
Reuben Albaugh, assistant county agent, gave a very interesting report on dairy labor
conditions, illustrating his talk with a chart showing the number of pounds of but-
terfat it took to pay various costs of producing milk for the past several years. This
information indicated that dairy laborers are not being paid in proportion to the
price dairymen are receiving for their product. This condition could be extended to
other agricultural commodities. It was pointed out [to Albaugh] that raising wages
of milkers was not the entire solution on the labor problem. (MCFB 1943)
It appears Albaugh received a tepid response during his presentation, but
the wage rates set by the council remained an area of concern. By 1945
growers were becoming worried about the potential for labor unrest, given
the controlled wage rates, and in 1946 the council reluctantly approved a
wage increase to “avoid strikes and strong requests being made from labor”
(MCFB 1945; 1946). During a subsequent meeting of the farm bureau, the
merits of this increase were debated, and the farm advisor A. A. Tavernetti
tried to make the bureau's directors see the wisdom in the decision:
