COLLECTIVE BARGAINING OF FARM WORKERS IN NORTHWEST OHIO, 1968--1984 (LABOR, POLITICAL ECONOMY, UNIONS, STRIKES, ARBITRATION)

The primary objectives of this case study on collective bargaining on modern agriculture are to explain why a union of tomato-field workers in Ohio's northwest region does not have enough collective bargaining power to remedy its members' low wages, irregular employment and harsh and abusive working and living conditions; to examine the feasibility of present and future attempts to achieve effective collective bargaining, and to provide recommendations for attaining such powers.;Craypo's collective bargaining matrix suggests that the type of collective bargaining structure needed to establish collective bargaining in this farm labor market must reflect the employers' weak bargaining position and the tendency to centralize organizational and operational management and directional control in the hands of the processors. The failure to have the industry structure (characterized by spatial, relative oligopsony market structure and contractual vertical integration organizational structure) reflect the collective bargaining structure in the 1968-69 labor negotiations explains why the union of field workers met with little success in its attempts to remedy the memberships' lower wages, irregular employment, and harsh and abusive working conditions. To effectively reflect the existing industrial structure, it is necessary that processors be incorporated into the collective bargaining structure. Vertical unionism and public legislation that would grant farm workers organizational and collective bargaining rights plus legislation that would change the type of contracts between farmers and processors from contracts to produce and sell to contracts to produce and deliver are recommended to accomplish this end.;To accomplish these objectives I employed the conceptual framework for collective bargaining outcomes developed by Dr. Charles Craypo at Notre Dame University. In context of his framework, I investigated the marketing system for tomatoes for commercial processing, as a component part of the broader contemporary marketing system for agricultural commodities, to draw inference regarding the farmers' ability to pay greater farm labor costs. I also investigated the union's activity in the region's agricultural labor market to draw inference regarding the union's ability to make the employer pay. In both of these inquiries, industrial organization, changing technology, and public policy were key variables.