>From the article on Fla farm workers that Tom Kruse posted ...
> The coalition also wants to eliminate a pay system used by some growers
>called "a day and a dime," which it contends punishes the best workers.
>Under that plan, workers are paid the federal minimum wage of $41 for an
>eight-hour day -- they get no overtime, regardless of how long they are in
>the fields -- plus 10 cents a bucket.
> Those who stay here year-round go three months without work, crowding into
>overpriced shanties or trailers that rent for $1,000 or more a month.
This is a little weird. The union and its advocates are endorsing _piece
rates_ ? It seems to me to be a classic example of orgazined labor cozying
up w/"progressive" capitalists who are into relative surplus value extraction
against "regressive" capitalists who are into absolute surplus value extraction
(and who also own and lease the means of consumption -- shabby overpriced
housing, and probably little grocerry stores carrying overpriced canned foods
and sugar cereals). But _piece rates_ instead of a contract w/uniform hourly
wages attending to various levels of seniority, etc. ? It seems like this
is a grower/organized labor strategy for cranking up the rate of s.v. extraction
in order to compete w/winter vegetables from Sinaloa Mexico.
John Gulick
Ph. D. Candidate
Sociology Graduate Program
University of California-Santa Cruz
(415) 643-8568
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
