Why Didn Collective Bargaining Transform Californias Farm Labor Market?
By Philip Martin January 2004 The UFW [in 1979] called a strike in support of its demands, and posted “wet patrols” on the U.S.-Mexico border to prevent unauthorized Mexicans from replacing strikers. The UFW was only partially successful: Chavez complained that “employers go to Mexico and have unlimited, unrestricted use of illegal alien strikebreakers to break the strike.” . . . The UFW went on the defensive, trying to retain contracts in a changed labor and political environment. UFW-called strikes in the early 1980s were frequently broken by farm labor contractors (FLCs) who hired recently arrived and often unauthorized workers, and FLCs gained market share as more farmers decided to use them to obtain workers rather than to hire workers directly. FLCs were often more than just employers and, by offering housing, rides to work, and sometimes loans to the workers they hired to repay smugglers, they ensured that there were no pro-union workers in the crews they brought to farms. State
