NFO-27 (AV10434): Town and Country

[music] Town and Country a program of ideas for the home yard and farm presented by the Institute of Agriculture and featuring associate professor Ray Wolf Extension information specialist now here's Ray Collective Bargaining is a term much discussed these days and agricultural circles considered to a relatively new thing in order to find out more about it the disquiet is of so much concern i've asked George Donahue professor of Sociology at the university to discuss this topic so George first what essentially is collective bargaining and just where and how is it used in our society Ray collective bargaining the first thing about collective bargaining is that many people think of the word collective immediately and somehow I know the word collective in our society has gained sort of a negative meaning to a lot of people because we associated with something other than a so-called free democratic society not realizing of course that many of the behaviors in American society or any society as a matter of fact society itself is a form of collective behavior and collective bargaining to rural people particularly farm people also has another connotation because they usually associate collective bargaining with unionism and I think if we're to be honest with ourselves and if would it be rather forthright about it we would say that real people generally have anti-union rather than pro-union in our society now collective bargaining itself means joining together and part of a number of people to make a concerted effort to get their point of view across to develop mechanisms both social economic and political which would bring forth a greater achievement of their goals what they want what they desire what they'd like to have so it means joining together I'm a part of a number of people in an interest group so that they can put forth their point of view with as much power with as much strength as can muster collectively rather than individually good good now what recent events would you say George contribute to its current popularity well I would say that as far as the current popularity among the rural people is concerned it's undoubtedly associated with the development of a National Farmers Organization which has as its main thrust you might say the idea of collective bargaining of joining together farm operators so that they will have control of their product and in that fashion have some determination of the price structure in agriculture people will say of course that the cultural bargaining on collective bargaining existed in agriculture long before the existence of the National Farmers Organization true as that is through the medium of agricultural cooperatives both production cooperatives and servicing cooperatives and distribution cooperatives of various types the fact remains that it has become more or less an acceptable term and even a feasible process that is collective bargaining has become feasible because of the efforts and organization and education and development of the NFO since about 1955 particularly in western states so I would say that that is one of the recent events that has given considerable impetus to it there are some other events there are some social trends which are occurring for instance the depopulation of rural areas the increasing demands made upon real people for educational and other facilities in the light of a decreasing population have made people in rural areas consider very seriously what they may do in order to increase their bargaining power the rather general low level of return to farmers for the investment over the past decade and the expectation of a low rate of return over the next ten years is also made them think twice about how our economy happens to be structured and what is their role in our economy relative to other vested interest groups in our economy those are a few of the things that have been recent events both in terms of economic social trends in terms of organizational developments that have given rise to a good deal of discussion a good deal of concern about collective bargaining as possibilities what would you say are some of the factors are some things that are considered to be factors that that might inhibit collective bargaining or they'll be working further the grid of oh I'm thinking maybe now agricultural speaking number of farms and diversity of farming and how that might fit into the picture this is often one of the arguments given by let's say well let's put it frankly again given by the individuals in agriculture who are anti collective bargaining they say there are so many farmers in the economy for instance over three and a half million how can you organize three and a half million people into any type of concerted effort through a organizational structure which tends to be rather abstract they say that if there were a hundred people or there three or automobile manufacturers or a half a dozen steel manufacturers such may be a possibility but not with three and a half million independent producers well we ought to take a look at that rate we have in the labor force in excess of 70 million people now and not over 20 million of those people or possibly 25 if you included all types of union organization 20 to 25 million would be organized into unions which a collectively bargain and of course unions more or less collectively bargain on the basis of national and state legislation such as the National Labor Relations Act or they what is commonly called the Wagner Act which permitted collective bargaining and legitimize that so to speak in our society made it an acceptable thing for labor but this anti attitude of farmers and real people towards unionism more or less results in there blocking mentally to the acceptance of the concept or the idea of collective bargaining you see because one thing they have in their mind about unionism is that it's alien to the so-called rugged individualism the free enterprise system which they have in mind their concept of it and they have not fully appreciated the changes in our industrialized economy and the interdependence of our economy therefore they're still less black mentally on the part of rural people of accepting collective bargaining so they do not associate collective bargaining as it occurs in cooperatives where producers band together to market their product or to buy input services for their production units they do not see this as a form of collective bargaining which is in that in any way similar to collective bargaining as practiced by unions therefore I think one of the big difficulties is the mental block and the a sort of a rationalization for this mental block is the numbers the number of units that exist they say with as many unit you can the organizational labor sort of puts this argument I'd say in question at the very least whether or not you can organize how many people that many people have been organized don't you know the point about diversity mhmm well I don't- I think there's a lot of diversity to soybean farmers there are dairy farmers and they may be in competition with one another soy bean farmer provides the basic product from which the oil is developed for oil margarine whereas a dairy farmer provides butter fat which goes into butter now they may compete and be substitutable products and people say well when you have that much competition among producers it's virtually impossible to get them together this is not necessarily true they can have common goals as a sector of the economy which they will band together around or and have let's say competition within the group for the market available for these two products this is very frequently done by late but for instance labor is that a much labor is substitutable for other labor and as a matter of fact labor has a great competitor in the form of capital equipment which can Ken and has been substituted for labor over the years so I would say that there is some question about whether or not II can stop organization the best illustration of this I think is the CIO which has vertical organization where the janitor in the plant is organized along with the engineer in the plant now these people certainly have bright diverse interest quite diverse skills quite diverse roles in the plant yet they can organize to bargain collectively with management for their particular share of the rewards of production so diversity while it may be a limiting factor just as numbers may be a limiting factor there no way prohibit entirely development of a collective bargaining unit what effect you think the perishability of products have on collective bargaining for example let's take wheat maybe or soybeans versus a fruit that can't keep a very effective argument because it appeals to I think a again a notion a value an attitude which is present in the foreign population for instance how many times when you were a young person when you were sitting at a table and you were eating and you couldn't finish it and you wanted to leave the table did your mother or father say to you don't waste that food you must sit there and eat it often well why do we say that I mean if you satiated your hunger why do we say eat it I mean I found myself doing that to my children and I've wondered sometimes whether or not I'm correct in doing this maybe their ever eating we're worried about overeating today but there's this negative value towards waste you see therefore people believe that you can't waste product once it is created particularly let's say plow under a crop or let's say dump milk and so forth because this is sinful to waste this well the empirical facts are quite contrary to it in new York in the thirties they had a milk strike and they did dump milk they dumped milk by the millions of gallons there we have plowed under crops and we have like butter go rancid in storage and we have a sense wasted many crops in an effort to maintain a price level or to agree on a price level i think the real question comes in such things as taking a life of livestock for other than shuttering purposes for eating who's gonna go out and shoot livestock you may ask we don't mind shooting deer we don't mind let's say knocking the livestock in the head when they're in the ends about to go out and shoot them and not utilizing it seems very graceful so this mental attitude this value is what is behind the perishability of product the reason i say that it the perishability is not a prohibitive factors because there's nothing that's perishable is labor if you don't usually but right now it perishes instantaneously it's gone you can't recover it right now- yeah that's right- i don't know of an agricultural product in the abstract which is more perishable than labor yet labor is perishable as it is was indeed sacrificed during the organization of labor unions in the united states for years by individuals in terms of an ideal they were thinking of the dignity of the work situation in which they would operate and their share of the rewards for production i think agriculture will come to this for instance you recently had a program where they had left droppings in grain sometimes they get so high the grain is contaminated and can be only used for other than food purposes right why we don't mind wasting they'll be good under those conditions because somehow I know that becomes legitimate to waste it so I think there's a moral value here in terms of the sinfulness of waste that is one of the bigger box rather than the question of perishability and again we rationalize we say the perishability a product is the most important thank you would you speak on or substitutions of products or competition between products and how that might fit into this full thought of collective bargaining for the good or the bad of society all right I think this is another argument that's very frequently used in agriculture about the substitute durability of one agricultural product for another uncertainty the substitute ability of let's say imported goods for domestic goods in agriculture and they indeed it has some validity there's no question about it substitute- substitutability is very high but as I point out before there's great substitutability of capital for labor to get labor has been able to successfully organized in the face of a very efficient substitution for labour limits I think we should look at all of these factors as limiting factors but not prohibitive factors that is making it impossible for collective bargaining to occur in agriculture and I think for that matter these attitudes and values are changing there's another thing Ray about the number of farmers and the diversity and the substitutability of product which is not clear in the minds of many people in rural areas and that is we have let's say three and a half three point seven million farmers in the nation we have about a hundred thirty-five thousand in the state of Minnesota of these how many do you think produce- what percentage use them produce about 80% of the total commercial saleable product in agriculture today twenty percent you knew the statistic before I [unclear] about twenty percent one of the farmers produce about 80% of the product and the fact of the matter is if you don't have to organize it 100% of them you can organize 20% of them and you've been organizing by commodity groups as well as by the industrial home so I think that what is happening here is that there is a changing attitude a changing value as we begin to look at agriculture more directly to see what makes up agriculture why these conflicts if they are there, why are they there and what might be done about the diversity in the conflict which arises from the nature of the agricultural industry I think that right now there's a struggle for power for instance you might say that the NFO as important as it has been in developing an attitude towards collective bargaining among foreign groups it has also moved a farm groups such as a Farm Bureau the Farm Bureau as you know recently suggested that they integrate and that go through some type of assessment of their membership or membership dues get enough funds together from their membership to purchase a controlling interest in the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company one of the largest supermarket retailers in the country and by this combination of the retailing and as well as the production and possibly the processing end there would be more control of the product and consequently the price of agricultural product so you see that the idea is becoming acceptable even to the Farm Bureau in which from a different approach perhaps but nonetheless acceptable that there has to be some gathering integration is really affirmed developing resources so that you can develop power which is the basis of collective bargaining mhmm we hear this term vertical integration - would you clear that up and then how it relates to collective bargaining is it the same is there a difference or which is what well collective bargaining can be based the pond vertical integration it doesn't necessarily follow that you have to be vertically integrated but vertical integration let's say does give you a sort of a an exclusive use of a series of processes from production through retailing let's say and this in turn gives you more exclusive control over the production and distribution process which in turn leads to power which in turn leads to bargaining power on the part of whoever who happens to control these resources you really need two or three things you need organization and vertical integration is a form of organization you need numbers of people acting in concert with one another and then you need resources physical financial and human resources they get these three combined the organization the resources then you have the basis of power and you have the basis of Department the unions have this in labor agricultural cooperatives have bargaining power and what they're proposing now is a further extension of the bargaining concept to involve producers control the overproduction and consequently oversupply in turn over the return to agriculture for the product which agriculture provides to the market mhmm apparently there's still a lot of sociological and psychological hindrances or returns to progress in this area people are still a little afraid of this that's what goes back to this Union thought you talked about what are the factors that have a place here a part of it I think one of the big hindrances up until now I've really effectively considering collective bargaining has been that agriculture has had its power in a form of collective organization through political representation now that this form of representation is being chipped away at for instance right now this state as any of having to having a commission which you're aware of and I'm aware that the governor has appointed to considerate reapportionment the courts have ordered that the legislature must reapportioning again and there's no question about the fact that whatever the reapportionment is there will be fewer rural representatives than there have been in the past not only in the state but in this nation as a whole so some means of organization other than political organization and political representation becomes necessary to people in agriculture that's one and I think they are more seriously considering organization along an industry line or a commodity line as has been true of labor so that their voice will be heard as a special interest group in the society I think the real argument now is not whether or not collective bargaining is possible if people are honest with themselves this question of how shall we achieve this collective bargaining and there's also a struggle for power among the various farm organizations to see who will come out with the most power as a result of a reorganization of the agricultural sector of our economy and of course there are vested interest in the processing whether you so called output industries and also when you put in industries associated with agriculture so the struggle which is going on now it's not an unusual struggle it occurs constantly in society among vested interest groups and we can expect it to continue but the fact that collective bargaining will grow now I purposely say will grow in agriculture rather than will come to agriculture because it's already present and cooperative it will grow in agriculture because we are a pluralistic society based upon vested interest group each of which organizes itself so that it may be heard and as a result of being heard present its case for a fair share of rewards in our economy agriculture is looking for a fair share of which rewards it maybe getting a fair share it may not apparently most of them in agriculture feel they are not therefore they tend to move in the direction of collective bargaining how fast it moved I think depends a lot upon the economics of the situation are they- are farmers making money are there pests are there droughts or so on or other sources of food from other countries that might hurry up or advance action in this area of collective bargaining is this part of the picture you've made an interesting point you're saying it depends upon economic factors how rapidly collective bargaining will occur i question very seriously whether or not economic factors are the single most important thank you as a matter of fact I would say the social-psychological factor is the concept of rugged individualism the concept of Independence the concept of freedom which rural people have in their mind not only the person on the farm but also the person in the rural community who owns a business and even a service worker who works in more businesses have these attitudes which to- to them would be destroyed as a result of collective bargaining a concerted effort in other words if you talk to a farmer today he tells you that a man in the union is not free he's not independent why does he say this rate he says this because he feels that this man is subject to a larger force that he's giving up some of his sovereignty to the union as a result he has to behave in accordance with these individuals really doesn't realize that the Union individual may be far more independent of his employer and far more independent of his Union and the farmer is of the market and the forces of the so-called free market unquote see his concept of independence is a abstractly different concept of Independence a different concept of freedom the farmer has is rugged individualism which is associated with frontier type of development and property ownership the laborer has a concept of independence and freedom which is based upon interdependence and upon abstract right of law therefore you will find that rural people's concepts were very appropriate to the development of our economy 100 years ago but perhaps less appropriate in 1960 so these this nostalgia this carry over of tradition that's associated with rural life will have to undergo tremendous revision before we really can have effective collective bargaining because as much as collective bargaining is made up for the three forces we spoke about before organization numbers and resources it is also made up by a mental state you see the way people regard cooperation with one another and how they see the economic structure of the economy as a whole this becomes exceedingly important in other words do I see the economy as a one where there is a group of individual entrepreneurs and the so called classical free enterprise system what do I see the economy as a highly diversified highly specialized concentrated economy in which very few people that say are self-employed and most are employed by others you see the farmer still has a concept of our economic system that was true maybe in 1850 or earlier and therefore there is sort of a selective perception or he wears a set of blinders when he looks at the economy while farmers may object to this and rural people generally may object to this I would say that they live in sort of a world of fantasy in part he's sort of an overhead of their own this is true of the independent merchants on these rural areas as much as it is true of the farmer many of the mental images of society their concepts of society- their concepts of society and its organization are outdated by all at least 50 years right now you may object because you come from a rural heritage would you agree or disagree with that maybe I could put you on the spot do you want to state that question again would I like to state that one again yes I really think that entire I find for instance in talking to people such as yourself not you in particular but people who have come from a rural heritage that really even though they live let's say in the twin cities in a metropolitan district the mental attitude they have is quite frequently associated with an agrarian economy rather than an industrialized agricultural economy you would find attitudes among professors at the University with his background being quite for instance associated with the traditional concepts of unionism and attitudes toward unionism partly because of the conditioning they received very early in life and the fact that they have never reconsidered the structure of society this is not true of urbanites I'll give you an illustration of this ray in terms of collective bargaining many- many people have thought that somehow or another the absence of collective bargaining resulted in greater productivity per individual now why would this be true because they thought individuals were more responsible more willing to work in the absence of collective bargaining they heard about restrictive labor paths this and that and so forth but I think you have to remember that any society and particularly rural society has a restrictive labor practices associated with it too but they're not written down in a form of a contract that you can only put up so many bricks a day you see they're unconscious agreed to norms of production for instance at one time a 15 cow herd what is an acceptable herd and if you started to push towards 30 cows what did people think of you you are real pushy weren't you and what was this fellow trying to do get rich was he trying to put pressure on the rest of us now a 30 count herd would be a small dairy herd by the wrong time that was the acceptable herd and one to be diversified farmer anybody who went let's say into specialized farming was looked askance wasn't he so I think that what we have is a set of norms but our unconscious parts of the mores of the world from you know the rules and regulations of the rural community that tend to be codified and written down in written society where they're explicit where every individual can see them and while they're different from the norms in rural society the norms of the contract situation in unions are not unlike the norms of production in rural areas George it's been real interesting visiting with- with you hearing the story of collective bargaining what it is what it does what it might do we want all of you to keep thinking about that topic problem if you'd like further information on it we have some reading material ever sheet here or several sheets called agricultural bargaining power which ties in it's really the same as we might say collective bargaining at least from the agricultural point of view you'd like to get this material right to me that's Ray Wolf University of Minnesota St. Paul 1 Ray Wolf University of Minnesota Saint Paul 1 and ask for the material on collective bargaining and we'll send this along to he'll be thinking about this if you don't agree with George let him or me know thank you George Donahue professor sociology for this discussion on collective bargaining til next time then so long [music] ray wolf and his guests are brought to you by the University's Institute of Agriculture Ray will be back at the same time next week with another program for Town and Country [music]