Agricultural Personnel Management Program
University of California

6/9/99 News Report -- Sacramento Bee

WATSONVILLE -- Come along now to the California strawberry fields and watch a man at work. I do not know his name or anything about him. Like most strawberry workers, he appears to be of Mexican descent. I do not know his immigration status; in government surveys, though, four out of 10 California field workers will admit to what might be termed politely as paperwork problems.

 Nor do I know how much he is paid. In strawberries, generally considered entry-level employment for farm workers, the pay can be a mish-mash of hourly wages and piece-work. Wages for pickers can range from $5 to $10 an hour, depending on the month, the grower, the speed of the worker and so forth. A good day might bring a picker $100, which, according to one state study, is roughly a penny for every berry picked.

 What I do know is that this man can work. For two hours, I have sat in my car and watched him from across the road. His faded red shirt makes him easy to track against the green strawberry plants. He is one of a crew of about 50 pickers, moving in bunches across a hillside field. The field offers a panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean, less than a quarter-mile away. The picker in the faded red shirt does not seem interested in the view.

 In fact, he rarely looks up at all. Like the others, he stays bent over at the waist most of the time, head and hands down amid the berries. He works with a thrashing movement, creating the impression of a poor-sighted man forced to grope in the dark for eyeglasses dropped on a bedroom floor. He lunges this way, then that, takes a lurching half-step to his right, to his left, then forward, all the while reaching, reaching with his hands. Grabbing for pennies.

 This was late Monday afternoon. I had come to Watsonville in the wake of a much-watched farm labor election. The United Farm Workers, as part of an effort to organize California's $600 million strawberry industry, had sought to represent the 1,500 field hands and packers of the Coastal Berry Co. Instead, after much contentious campaigning, it appears to have lost out to a rival group organized by company workers. A review of challenged ballots is under way, but at this point UFW defeat seems mathematically inevitable.

Agricultural representatives crow that the upset demonstrates the UFW is long past the prime of the early Cesar Chavez era, that its leaders have failed, as one put, to win "the hearts and the minds of the workers." Union officials, in turn, note that before this setback the UFW had won 18 straight elections. And if anything, they maintain, the Coastal outcome suggests they are needed as much as ever -- to battle against forces so stacked against farm workers that they can be bullied into voting against their own best interest.

 This spinning, like the long struggle over California farm labor itself, will go on. It can be difficult for outsiders to fathom what takes place within the seemingly placid fields and orchards. Sometimes, it seems, this is by design. Other times, it's more a matter of benign neglect. Better to enjoy the sweet, firm strawberry than ponder what went into the making of it. Which is what drew me to this strawberry field, to the picker in the faded red shirt. I wanted to move beyond the abstract.

 I wanted to see the work. . . .

 It took awhile, but eventually the pattern emerged. For 10 minutes -- and always 10 minutes -- he would pick, filling a cardboard flat with 12 pints of strawberries. Then he would straighten up and carry the berries to a flatbed truck parked nearby. He held the tray the same way every time, always tucking it under his left arm. His gait tended to be awkward for the first few steps, like a cowboy finding his legs after a long stretch in the saddle.

At the truck, he'd hand the flat up, grab a fresh one, march back, bend over, resume picking. There were only a few variations. A couple of times, he picked from a crouch for a minute or so, presumably resting his back. Once, he trudged a short distance to a portable toilet. He pulled open the door and went inside. Seventeen seconds later -- I timed it -- the door swung open again, and back he went into the berries.

 Later, I would do the math. Reliable as a machine, he had picked 12 pints every 10 minutes -- 144 pints for the two-hour period I watched. At, say, $2 a pint, he would have picked $288 worth of strawberries and earned, what, $20? The calculations are crude, but he would seem to pencil out, this man in the faded red shirt.

 The work ended at 6 p.m. I walked over and watched from a distance as he scrubbed berry juice off his hands. Then he squeezed into the back seat of a Ford compact with two others, slumping down for the ride to wherever was home. We briefly established eye contact as the car pulled by. I nodded, he waved back, and then was gone -- an anonymous hand that fills the $2 basket of strawberries. Eat them with reverence.

©1999 Sacramento Bee