Agricultural Labor in 1980: A Survey with Recommendations
Author: Agricultural Employment Work Group
Date Published: 1980
The U.S. agricultural employment system is largely casual, which means that management and labor have relatively few continuing ties able to provide both an assured quality work force on one hand and adequate farmworker livelihood on the other. This stands in contrast to other industrial systems today where, for the most part, public and private sector mechanisms exist to strengthen bonds of mutual commitment between workers and employers in order to maintain a satisfactory supply of able and willing workers. The agricultural employment situation is appropriately viewed in two perspectives, one critical and one optimistic. There is, first of all, little disagreement that traditional practices are rapidly becoming outmoded, which causes serious trouble for employers and workers alike. In general, the traditional reliance on a casual system of labor management and labor market practices is not well adapted to new situations resulting from the massive economic, technological, and legal environment changes that have shaped agriculture in recent years. The optimistic perspective is that agriculture has managed to generate within itself a core of innovations and resources for attacking these difficult and complex human resource problems, and in a few isolated instances public programs have experimented with ways to expand those innovations and resources.
Date Published: 1980
The U.S. agricultural employment system is largely casual, which means that management and labor have relatively few continuing ties able to provide both an assured quality work force on one hand and adequate farmworker livelihood on the other. This stands in contrast to other industrial systems today where, for the most part, public and private sector mechanisms exist to strengthen bonds of mutual commitment between workers and employers in order to maintain a satisfactory supply of able and willing workers. The agricultural employment situation is appropriately viewed in two perspectives, one critical and one optimistic. There is, first of all, little disagreement that traditional practices are rapidly becoming outmoded, which causes serious trouble for employers and workers alike. In general, the traditional reliance on a casual system of labor management and labor market practices is not well adapted to new situations resulting from the massive economic, technological, and legal environment changes that have shaped agriculture in recent years. The optimistic perspective is that agriculture has managed to generate within itself a core of innovations and resources for attacking these difficult and complex human resource problems, and in a few isolated instances public programs have experimented with ways to expand those innovations and resources.
