An opinion on wages

An opinion on wages

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
In a labor dispute and subsequent lawsuit over whether to pay fruit pickers an hourly wage or by piece work, Yakima based Dovex Fruit Company’s response to an inquiry I made was "We don't want to comment”. In a conversation with Pres. of the Yakima Valley Farm Bureau, Frank Lyall, I heard some interesting information. “If you got just a minute, I can comment about that. One is Dovex is a subsidiary of the biggest fruit company in the world. I find it deeply ironic that a relatively small grower like myself is willing to comment on this and they are trying to, well I don't know, keep your head down. In the end, they are not helping themselves, I don’t believe. The second thing I wanted to comment about concerning this issue is that a couple of years ago I was on the governor's ag labor work group and I negotiated with Farm Worker Justice and the United Farm Workers people about this particular issue and that they would admit, even though they hated piece rate, as a way for employees to be paid, all the people that they represented were very much in favor of it. It is just a measure of how far our country has gone wrong that management and labor can't work this out on an individual basis. The judiciary would interfere and ruin it for everybody.”
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