NFO-40 (AV10447): US Farm Report: Can Farmers Organize?

[music] this program is brought to you with the interest of Agriculture rural business and the well-being of our nation we have is our special guest today dr. E.W. Muller of the national Lutheran Council professor George Donahue from the University of Minnesota Vince Rossiter president of the Bank of Hartington Hartington Nebraska and Arnold Paulson chairman of the committee for rural economic survival from Granite Falls Minnesota my name is Arnold Paulson from Granite Falls Minnesota this afternoon we are once again going to discuss the rural problem or the farm problem facing rural America this afternoon we hope to put a little punch into this program and to start our program off I would like to call on Vince Rossiter banker from Hartington Nebraska to emphasize briefly on some of the things that rural America is facing because of this farm of this farm problem that exists in rural America today mr. Rossiter well Arnold I don't know that I can see very far ahead anymore than anybody else but I do know one of the disgraceful things that has occurred in the national economy in the last 13 years is the completely negative participation of the farm economy as we know it and I'm thinking now in terms of the farmers economy this negative participation has prevented agriculture from from earning even one little penny more in the last 13 years and it earned in 1951 those of us and other segments of the economy and all of us here represented today in our particular fields have participated in an expansion of 1370 and six tenths billion dollars of more income cumulatively 1951-64 and we earned in 1951 now this in my opinion is a disgraceful thing and still it's being ignored by almost everyone I think we because we've discussed it previously are aware of it but at the same time it has been overlooked by our government by our business associations it's been overlooked by our farm organizations it's been overlooked by many of the institutions of society who should be calling attention to it and unless we are willing to recognize this completely negative participation of this very important 230 billion dollar segment of our total economy I can't help but feel that it'll have very serious implications on the total economy from the accumulative effects and eventually at this time I'd like to call on dr. Mueller to express the views of the clergy concerning this farm problem and the effects it's having and rural America especially the rural church of course the as a clergyman we are concerned that all people share and participate in the economy and we're on the side of economic justice and we probably have not been too active in this but I think the picture is quite confused for us how do you go about helping the farmer to get an adequate price for his product and at this particular point where we probably have our problems similar enough Ernest the collective bargaining is being proposed as a solution to this and I for one am not particularly against collective bargaining I think collective bargaining we've accepted this structure in meeting the in helping the urban people to deal with mass production I would say that if a collective bargaining is a tool can be used to give the farmer a better price in rural areas fine that's understand pointer but it's ethically right or wrong I don't think this is to my mind quite neutral because well as I read the gospel it doesn't identify with any particular pattern and collective bargaining is is one pattern I don't see it's the pattern it's one pattern but it's an effective tool and if the farmers can demonstrate or if it can be demonstrated that it can be used there's no reason why it ought not to be used but I have my problem at the point look can you can the farmers as such effectively use this tool well I think that's a good point to discuss this afternoon because on this program for many months we have been citing the problem in rural America and I think the time has come and we should look at a solution of solving this problem and with us this afternoon we have professor Donohue from the University of Minnesota and professor Donahue I would like to ask you to express your viewpoints about collective bargaining and the possibility of using this tool to solve this farm problem in America today I think that I'd agree with dr. Mueller that collective bargaining in and of itself is not illegal or immoral as a matter of fact it's neither of those it's a device that has been used actually by farmers in the past through cooperatives really our collective bargaining organizations the effective use of them may be held in question but the fact is that in certain areas I know the Washington State Apple growers for instance have used the co-operative method of marketing very successfully for their product and we could cite others I do however think that when you think of collective bargaining as a device or a tool you're under estimating what is really involved in the collective bargaining process it is a process it's not a device it's not a tool it's a concept of how people organize themselves and how they work together and you don't get collective bargaining by saying here here is collective bargaining you must develop within the people who are going to bargain collectively an attitude a perspective a mental set which leads them to accept the idea of collective bargaining and here is where I think the real population is perhaps most lacking the rural population has been negative towards a concept of collective bargaining bargaining with the exception of cooperatives they have by and large attitudes that been referred to before as highly individualistic attitudes attitudes which actually prevent them from entering in to group activities which lead to the collective bargaining process let me indicate this perhaps by an illustration I think that the average farmer today has a concept of individuality concept of Independence or freedom whatever you choose to call it that is perhaps 50 if not 75 years out of date by being 50 or 75 years out of date I mean this then he doesn't realize that he's living in an interdependent world then he still thinks of himself as sort of a semi hermit who can go about his own business and do what he chooses to do on his own little piece of land the day that the farmer stops producing his own good for his own consumption and started to produce his good to place on a market he immediately became interdependent with his neighbor in the next section of land or his neighbor on the next quarter section of land when he did this whether he wanted to or not he had the conceived of himself in a somewhat different fashion than he had conceived of himself when he was an independent landowner producing primarily for his own use the fact is I think very few where the farm population have made this mental transition I think more of them will have to make it in the future before Collective Bargaining is a possibility there are a lot of objections to collective bargaining let me ask you Vince do you think you can bargain with a perishable product well yes I do George as a matter of fact there's nothing quite so perishable as labor and they've been bargaining successfully for this although some of the product perished in the bargaining process I think this is possible so it's obviously possible it's just a question of how much the farm people want to sacrifice to gain their goals of being able to price their own production and this again is a tough transition for a person that's used been used to a husbanding every resource on the farm and digging out every efficiency that's available to he and his family but I think it's possible as but as you say it's going to be a terrific transition for many people and but George I think probably the one of the faults is they say if you knock an idea out of a man's head you've got to have another one to replace it with and I don't believe that we've properly presented this so-called replacement idea we're trying to knock the idea of rugged individualism out of the out of the farm producers head what is the potential of this well one of the fears that many farmers have towards our concerning collective bargaining is a automatically associated with collective farming such as they have in Russia and then they follow through a little further and they say that collective bargaining is as a trend towards communism and I'd like to call on dr. Mueller to comment on this well I would make this comment on this that I think part of that the rural people in particular farmer will need to examine their own value system and I think until they do this they will not be able to feel comfortably with the collective bargaining concept because collective bargaining concept as I understand it you put a pretty much you get pretty much power to the group which they belong and there's an economist in Washington that has influenced me a good deal who has analyzed the the value system of the farmer over the years and how this has influenced our various policies for instance he has demonstrated or went up the farmer functions with what he calls the Democratic creed that no one is so wise that he has a right to tell him what to do there's some truth to this if we don't kick her they want anybody else tell us what to do then there's also what he called the the free enterprise creator the private enterprise cream but he doesn't want anybody to interfere with his business not his government not his neighbor nor his farm organization and then added to this is what we call the work ethic or the proficiency Creek where the farmer has status among his peers if he can produce more bushel per acre than his neighbor can or if he can put more pounds of beef on a critter in less time than his neighbor with less beef that is tremendous drive to produce now harry has three basic values Democratic creed no interference to tell you what to do the free-enterprise Creed no regulation on his operation and the proficient degree but the more that he produces is he the less he gets but this will not permit but his other two basic values will not permit him to accept any kind of control from the outside now to me we have to help him to see this and to think this thing through if we're going to make any progress at all or are going to need to propose or suggest that collective bargaining may be a solution because while it may be a solution it is it will have have no value unless you can get a quite a majority of the farmers to accept it it will do no good just to have a twenty five percent acceptance you've got a go long ways if you're gonna get this thing done we're no idea I would disagree with you on that dr. Mueller I don't think it takes such a tremendous number of people to collective to bargain collectively this is the idea that if you have a total number of people you have to have almost all of them to some degree of consensus before you can go ahead with an activity a fact is that a minority group in society whether it's a racial or religious group bargains very effectively sometimes with three or four percent of the population or ten percent of the population in other words one of their biggest strengths or largest strengths rest in their organization now the point you make that the individual is subject to some type of restraining mechanism when he joins a group is true because he has to give up certain parts of his individual sovereignty but in turn he gets a different type of individuality for it he gets a certain sense of security out of it he doesn't lose his personality or his identity but he has to revise his identity just as a man in the labor union has to revise his identity as far as his determination of the conditions under which he works if the group says in a contractual negotiation with management that we shall work eight hours a day and the conditions of work shall be a B and C if he wants to be a part of that group then he has to say alright I agree to these conditions if he doesn't agree to him and he decides instead of working 8 he's gonna work 9 he'll be subject to the censure of the group but as long as he can accept these conditions he's just as free under them as he from a social psychological standpoint as he is under any conditions and the other myth there the farm area that this brings to mind is the fact that the farmer thinks today he's not subjected to controls he is subjected to controls anybody who lives in a social organization is subjected to controls his participation in church subjects them to certain controls of course I'm sure that you could enunciate or elaborate on that far more eloquently than I can but his participation would say in the community as a citizen set certain restrictions he can't pass stoplights he can't park wherever he wishes these are restrictions upon him for the sake of public safety for the rights of others who would like to be able to go through that stop sign without go through the other side of the street without getting hit by him as he passes the stop sign so the idea that he's free of restriction is a myth he's not free of restriction what he may be doing is trading certain restrictions from for others and indeed his individuality may well change when he becomes part of this group and if he's afraid of losing this then he's in difficulty when he goes into collective bargaining well I agree with you that this is a myth that he doesn't have any controls or that he will lose his freedom in case he does join the group but the fact is it exists as a fact in his mind and as long as it exists of the fact the majority or quite a group number of the world people if we're all practical purposes is a thought we're a fact now the point is I think how do we change this see I mean he he has the at least as I run into it and this comes up again and again then I and I take the same point of view that you're emphasizing I use this little illustration to say that here if I go fishing in Minnesota they tell me when I can fish how many fish I can catch how long they have to be here be lucky to catch fishing I shouldn't say that about me but now this is not done however due to interfere with my freedom of fishing or taking away but to give me good fishing so I would say the same thing is true about these controls if he imposed him himself I say if they're imposed upon him from the outside but coming back nevertheless the point that you say they don't exist and in fact they don't but I would say you aren't people aren't convinced of this well no I would like to make the point that I thought George would make and I'm sure he's thinking about it but the if we're to believe what we read in the statistics from Department of Agriculture 27 suddenly farmers the United States control 80% of the production so the idea that you have to have large numbers of farmers they're certainly not the case because if you could get if you could get the production that's involved in a substantial part of the production it's involved in twenty four seven percent of the farms the United States you would be in an excellent bargaining position and of course this is again going back to the union's Georgia the unions didn't bother to organize the little low paid industries they went directly into the high paid industries and perhaps that collective bargaining will evolve among the larger the more afloat the farmers with the greater risks rather than the the farmers that we're thinking of our neighbors who are comparatively small I think I think the point is well-taken that you don't need a majority we have about seventy million well seventy four million in our labor force now and I think if you counted every individual who was organized and to a labor union of one type or another you'd probably have not over twenty to twenty-five million let's say it's 25 million there you have not more than this let's say a third of the workers and probably those who are in tightly organized unions come closer to twenty percent of the labor force yet they have a tremendous impact upon what the rest of the labor force gets in other words people outside of unions have undoubtedly been influenced in terms of their work conditions by what is acceptable in the union contract to Union employers a union employees so I think that the history of labor unions indicates that you can bargain effectively with a minority but you point out something important that this minority has to be strategically located and has to have an important part in the economy therefore if you organize let's say the lower 30% of the farmers in the nation who produce somewhat less than twenty percent I forget the exact figure but it's somewhat less than 20% of the total product you might have some difficulty in terms of controlling the product therefore the price of the product so you must be strategically organized as well as organizing a number of people possibly one of the largest myths that we have in America today is the myth of free enterprise this seems to be the big fear of amongst farmers the fear of losing their individuality or their freedom to participate in free enterprise and yet I think professor Donahue you'd agree that we haven't had free enterprise in this country since possibly eighteen hundred and fifty free enterprises the complete freedom to participate in business without any controls restrictions regulations and tariffs and so forth and yet even the largest industries in America are continually lobbying in Washington for controls and regulations to protect their interests and I think that the average farmer in America today is not aware or doesn't realize this and two of the questions I like to ask to conclude our program today is one dr. Mueller will the farmer actually lose his freedom through collective bargaining and then for the rest of the panel do you believe that collective bargaining can work if the American farmers would organize and employ collective bargaining for marketing farm production you're asking me whether I think that the farmer will use it loses freedom to collective bargaining right no I would say doesn't lose his freedom if he himself in his own organization he votes this then I say no but I would on the other hand say it is not that simple I would say that the many of the farmers think that they will and I think they would have a sort of psychological block here that we have to have to deal with and and this I think it has to be dialogue and discussed and I think we have to explain more fully what we mean by collective bargaining fact is news to me then I changed my mind a little bit since you have discussed this that you don't need as large a group to participate in this as as I had indicated but I would say you would need to be able to bring together quite a bit of the production that and and be able to withhold a certain amount of production if you were going to make the thing operate now one other point I want to make here I am look not sure on this collective bargaining from the standpoint how the farmer can can do this effectively unless he also cuts down his supply my mind he puts himself at a little disadvantage if he if he has the product there like he has his beef he has its hogs he has his milk there did have to be sold or destroyed I think he's in a rather poor bargaining position unless he also begins to talk about the thinking in terms of limiting the supply to the projected need is this possible or is this is this off other question mr. Rossiter I'd like to have you express your views now in the closing moments of this program you can elaborate on anything that you'd like in relationship to this subject we've been discussing this afternoon what does that last remark you made me I asked you I might have last remark lies on this I don't think that even those that talk about collective bargaining there's enough said about thinking in terms of cutting back the supply to meet the demand supply management yeah well yes you've got a good point here of course if we can cut back to supply we wouldn't need collective bargaining but it stands to reason that a well operated collective bargaining group isn't going to produce excess pounds or bushels for the simple reason at one of the phases of collective bargaining is that they have to pick up the excess in order to make the law of supply and demand work and this excess costs money in other words out of their dues that they reflect from the membership part of this would be used to pick up the excess production so to be lost or wasted so to speak so they nearer they could come to meeting may demand of the economy for the production of the food the less it would cost them in terms of fees and dues to cover this excessive production so obviously well organized the well operated bargaining group will ultimately come to the conclusion that they should limit their production in some to the needs of the economy I think we should say at this time the collective bargaining certainly is not a panacea for the problems of agriculture or the problems of the rural community I mean you can have collective bargaining tomorrow when you're not going to resolve the question of the school system and its inadequacy or the religious system in its inadequacy and many others social and economic problems that occur in the rural areas unless you happen to be a shear economic determinist and say we get collective bargaining we get higher prices therefore we will be able to take care of these things I doubt this very much I think there are many problems of the rural community they don't have to be looked to the other thing about collective bargaining is it's not all positive I think you have to look at collective bargaining as a device and as a tool and one which is subject to change as society changes in other words it's not one concept that's it's immutable over a period of time that people would have to look at it and let's say if people voted for collective bargaining today and tomorrow they voted against it they could vote against it it's not an irrevocable act that one takes one won't accept the idea of collective bargaining I mean I don't know of any union for instance in which you cannot leave the Union you may have a difficult time finding a job in that particular area or in that particular industry later but the fact is you can leave it the other thing is that there is some possibility of restriction of entry into the industry and we all practice this to some extent whether we happen to be bankers ministers or college professors there are some controls we exercise over who shall be part of our professional group or our occupational group and I think that all of these facets of collective bargaining have to be examined very carefully by the individuals and be understood I don't make these remarks as negative to collective bargaining but I don't want anybody to get the idea that if you get collective bargaining this resolves a problem progress in the technology of farming still has to be made progress in the social institutions in the rural areas also have to be made so collective bargaining is one step that allows organization and power and some possibility control the elements of your universe human control not control from outside or divine control but rather human ability to work together and to have some decision-making function over what they're going to do and how they are going to do it a Democratic Society has really collective bargaining we as citizens of this community of this nation give certain of our sovereignty as citizens to the national government to the state in to the local government who in turn for which we expect certain services and certainly in the collective bargaining whether it's a union or a farm organization or a cooperative you expect when you give up certain privileges to the organization certain services and benefits and if they're not forthcoming then I assume that people will no longer be party to it so I don't think of this as an irrevocable act but an act which could be viewed as one possible system in which the farm group may be able to operate there are undoubtedly others we have been led to believe that the business enterprises of this country are operating under the supply and demand theory which is true but big business actually controls the supply to meet the demand and of course this is one of the objectives of collective bargaining because they will be able to control its supply to meet the demand for the various farm commodities and I think we've had a very interesting discussion this afternoon and I'm very happy to have you gentlemen with us dr. Mueller, mr. Vince Rossiter and professor Donahue and in closing I would like to extend this challenge to every farmer in America regardless of which farm organization he belongs to or whatever his solution to this farm problem might be I challenge you to investigate and to study the proposals and the programs that your organization offers you to solve this farm problem in America today if you are convinced that your organization cannot solve this problem with the present programs that they have then you had better be sure that you're right and you better find the farm program that can solve this program facing rural America today because the farm you save the community you save may be your own [music] this program has been brought to you by the members of the National Farmers Organization in this listening area in the interest of agriculture rural business and the well-being of our nation for more information or suggestions and how to solve our farm problem contact this station