Thread: Why Chavez was bad for US

From,"In Florida Groves Cheap Labor Means Machines" by Eduardo Porter, NY Times

In 1979, the farm worker advocacy group California Rural Legal Assistance, with support from the United Farm Workers union of Cesar Chavez, sued U.C. Davis, charging that it was using public money for research that displaced workers and helped only big growers.

The lawsuit was eventually settled. But even before that, in 1980, President Jimmy Carter's agriculture secretary, Bob Bergland, declared that the government would no longer finance research projects intended to replace "an adequate and willing work force with machines." Today, the Agricultural Research Service employs just one agricultural engineer: Donald Peterson, a longtime researcher at the Appalachian Fruit Research Station in Kearneysville, W.Va.

"At one time I was told to keep a low profile and not to publicize what I was doing," Mr. Peterson said.

As the government pulled out, growers lost interest as well, refocusing on Congress instead. In 1986, farmers were instrumental in winning passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which legalized nearly three million illegal immigrants — more than a third under a special program for agriculture.

Farmers' investments in labor-saving technology all but froze, and gains in labor productivity slowed. From 1986 to 1999, farm labor inputs fell 2.4 percent, after a drop of 35 percent in the preceding 14 years. Meanwhile, farmers' capital investments fell 46.7 percent from their peak in 1980 through 1999.

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"The rest of the world hand-picks everything, but their wage rates are a fraction of ours," said Galen Brown, who led the mechanical harvesting program at the Florida Department of Citrus until his retirement last year. Lee Simpson, a raisin grape grower in California's San Joaquin Valley, is more blunt. "The cheap labor," he said, "isn't cheap enough."

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So what do we have today? As a recent article here pointed out American produce suppliers are dropping the $100/day illegal aliens and outsourcing
to third world countries where the labor may be as little as a few dollars a day. Or farmers with enough money might be able to buy machines built by overseas manufacturers. But in the meantime, since these landmark events in 1979, we have let millions in to do farmwork---and still we are told we need more. It seems the farmworkers have wandered off to greener fields in crafts and manufacturing!

When Senators like Diane Feinstein cry and whine that we need more agricultural visas for farmworkers I would say WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE TWENTY FIVE MILLION FARMWORKERS WE HAVE ALREADY LET IN TO THE USA?

So that is why I have no high regard for Cesar Chavez. It was his organization which brought the suit---no matter what Chavez's intentions were--that has brought it all down.

Maybe the phrase is true that the " Capitalist will be hung by the very rope he manufactured " !

We have had alot to do with our fall . We have sold out our nation to make an extra buck or save one by hiring illegals .

This is greedy and selfish .

While our spoiled fat kids play on computers or play in mud naked at Woodstock ,we take advantage of the immigrants . And in doing so lose our own and our kids future .

Some of us didn't do these things, but we have to pay for others mistakes just the same .

Capitalism is a good thing, if it is practiced by good citizenry . One that has morals, principles and family values with dissapline .

honestly, I can't hardly wait for machines to take over the picking. Look how many Americans lost thier jobs to automation...

Back in the 80's when hi-tech was still new, I worked on a project that showed how many people could be replaced by a computer system and how much it would save the company. When I expressed my feelings about taking jobs away, I was assured that hi-tech would also create new jobs. Little did I know then that those new jobs would eventually be outsourced.

There are so many American jobs that have been lost to technological advance. It's just a fact of life when you live in a technologically oriented society. Bank tellers have been replaced by ATM machines; ticket sellers by ticket machines; traffic cops were replaced by stop signals.

So why do farmworkers get a free pass and along with it a means to flood our country? The answer I see is that our legal education system is turning out graduates with nothing better to do than find new privileges for their favorite "oppressed" groups. I've always been fairly liberal; never thought I would be saying such a thing!

They succeeded heavily in stopping research at California Universities and colleges. The James Earl Carter Administration is behind this a great deal.