Defending their dignity

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Jose Lopez, who spent most of his life as a migrant laborer and still works with laborers through the Diocese of Stockton, says workers need to be granted legal status despite gains won by organizer Cesar Chavez.CRAIG SANDERS/The Record

By Dana M. Nichols

Record Staff Writer

STOCKTON – Jose Lopez liked picking asparagus.

"For some people, it is el trabajo mas pesado," Lopez said, using a Spanish expression that can mean either the heaviest or the dreariest work.

Workers must stoop to cut asparagus. Lopez knows it is hard. He did it every spring from 1971 to 2001.

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But he enjoyed the beauty of the mornings out on the Delta’s Mandeville Island, as well as the companionship of his brothers, who also worked the harvest.

"We worked in a group most of the time," Lopez said.

He acknowledges there were many hardships, too. When he was a child, his family lived in a San Joaquin County labor camp, where five families shared two bathrooms. The pay was low and often calculated illegally based on piece work rather than the hourly wages required by law.

Even as Californians prepare to celebrate the achievements of farm labor organizer Cesar Chavez on March 31, Lopez said that much remains to be done to assure the dignity of the men and women who labor on farms.

In particular, Lopez calls for immigrant workers to be granted legal status in order to end the fear that prevents many from defending themselves when they are taken advantage of by labor contractors or farm owners.

"If they had documents, they could defend their dignity," Lopez said. "They would have the possibility to belong to a union. They would have the possibility to denounce abuses. They’d have the opportunity to seek other employment."

Lopez, 57, spent most of his life as a migrant laborer and still works with migrant laborers in his capacity as a director of the Diocese of Stockton ministries serving migrants and Latino youth.

He’s picked grapes, tomatoes, apricots, peaches and many other crops. He’s pruned fruit trees and weeded vegetable rows. He’s worked in packing sheds.

Though much of his work was in San Joaquin County, he also moved as far north as Washington state to follow the cherry harvest.

Those mornings picking asparagus or tomatoes with his father and his three brothers were the best part of being a farm worker, he said.

Migrant labor was a family tradition. Lopez’s father came from Mexico to the United States under the Bracero program in 1942. His father became a legal resident of the U.S. in 1962 and then brought his wife and children to live part of each year in the migrant labor camp on Matthews Road near Stockton starting in 1968.

Lopez was too young to work legally, but he started working occasional weekends anyway in 1970. It was on April 19, 1971, when he was 15, that he first picked asparagus and began doing migrant farm work full time.

At the beginning, he estimates he was earning about $1.25 an hour. At times, however, he said that by working fast at a piece rate, he could bring in as much as $175 a week.

By 2001, he said, he was earning about $7.55 an hour and bringing home $400 a week. "But we worked seven days a week," he said of the asparagus harvest season.

Lopez was there during years of labor organizing. He saw Cesar Chavez march in San Joaquin County, he said, in 1969 and 1970.

Because his father had come here legally, Lopez, too, was able to obtain residency documents.

"Thanks to God," he said of his family’s legal residency status.

Without the fear of deportation, Lopez participated in tomato strikes in the early 1980s.

At the time, he said, farmers were paying workers 35 cents per bucket of harvested tomatoes.

"We asked the farmers to pay more per bucket," he said. He said the United Farm Workers union sent lawyers and other support.

Lopez said that thanks to the UFW and the strikes, things changed. Farmers paid more. There were bathrooms provided so workers didn’t have to relieve themselves in the fields. Farm workers won unemployment insurance.

And the larger society, Lopez said, realized where its food came from.

"There’s more respect for farm workers," he said.

Still, the increased respect doesn’t always translate into fair treatment, Lopez said.

He said that more farm workers now are undocumented, and the fear of deportation prevents them from organizing. Also, he said that many workers are employed by labor contractors rather than the farmers who own the fields. That shields the farmers from laws requiring them to check the immigration status of workers.

"They cleaned their hands with the contractors," Lopez said of the farmers.

Lopez said that he believes it is possible for owners and workers to respect each other. And he also believes it is possible to find a satisfying life working in the fields.

"Work dignifies a person," Lopez said. "It doesn’t matter what work it is. What is important is to do it well."

Contact reporter Dana M. Nichols at (209) 607-1361 or dnichols@recordnet.com. Visit his blog at recordnet.com/calaverasblog.