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AMENDING MIGRATORY LABOR LAWS 373 Ouoe must firat understand that a farm labor contractor does not contract work in the full sense of the word, He contracta, actually he buys and sells, human beings. His profit is based on the sweat and toil of the workers and not on any special skills or business acumen of his own—as would be true ip the building trades tield, Ail the farm labor contractor does is to prumlse hourly workers at the lowest price he can find men te work at The sum of his job is to say: I promise 40 men for 20 days at $1.15 an hour, or the lowest be can get them for. Senator Wuuiaus. That’s pretty strong language. Now, in the theatrical agency we have the agent. Senator Murpur. Yes, we do, the same type of fellow, and I had lots of experience with him, because I found in one case where the ge. agent became the producer and also the distributor, so he had a com- reir plete monopoly. as long as 15 years ago I went to work on that one, es So thatwas broken up. Columbia Broadcasting System set up a Colum- bia a ed Bureau so they became the contractor, and they represented the wéfker, George Murphy in that case, and also the producer, Colum- bia Bipedcasting System in that case, and we decided that that was impra@@ical and not ethical, so that we broke that up, too. Mr. Cuavez. You had a union to do it with, I imagine. Senator Murruy. That's right. Mr. Cuavez. We don’t havea union. Senator Murruy. I was one of the founders of the union. Mr. Cuvez. Iknow. I’ve read about that. Senator Murriry. We had a good shop. Mr. Curavez. Now, the other thing is that —— t Senator Mcrruy. You indicate by your remark that you don’t have a union? Mr. Cuavez. At least not one that’s recognized. Now, of course, the labor contractor provides many services to the grower. He is a recruiter, he is a supervisor on the job, he provides transportation, does the bookkeeping, and so forth. And we found in some cases we were able to talk to growers, not the growers in Delano that we hare a strike with, but other growers In the vicinity of Delano, and we talked about wages and many other things to some of the sym- pathetic growers, some of the growers that were not afraid to come and talk with us, And there was some agreement. Most of them agreed that as long as we get a union powerful enough to bargain with, he will do it, on wages and so forth. But when we came to the subject of the labor contractor we found immediate opposition, very, very hostile opposition to the idea of replacing the farm Iabor contractor. Well, what’s happening in Delano on this strike, the farm labor contractor becomes the professional strikebreaker, You see, the grow- er does not know—— Senator Morexy. You put him out of business, in other words, you think! se MT Mr. Cuavez. We'd love to, yes. The grower directly doesn’t know Pr en oor the work force. He will know those who are employed by him year ae ane v4 around, which amounts to perhaps 2 or 3 percent of the total work. teense —apiareiamaeraes Now, the labor contractor, being that he was a worker once upon a TT ee time, does knew the labor force, and so in Delano we have the farm ee Ra Tabor contractor being the biggest recruiter of scab labor or strike- ye Fe a. breakers, with one exception, DiGiorgio Fruit Corp. They do their Cen po. own recruitment. _ $e 2 Fe NH 51-634—06———25 . a ln al a ed . .