Wage Stabilization in Agriculture

Abstract

WO years have gone by since the passage by Congress of the Stabilization Act of 1942, designed to stabilize wages and prices. During that time much has been heard of the impact of this legislation upon industrial laborers and their employers. Its bearing upon farm labor, on the other hand, has received little attention. The farm wage stabilization program is of interest, not merely as a phase of war-time control of prices and wages, but as a demonstration of the difficulties of including farm wages in any scheme of wage regulation. The large number of small enterprises, the wide variety in working conditions and in methods and amounts of payment, the lack of representative associations of employers and employees able to enter into and maintain contracts, and to furnish representatives to wage boards, create formidable obstacles. It is these, undoubtedly, which have led to the exemption of farm labor from most existing federal legislation relating to wages and working conditions, such as the Fair Labor Standards Act, the National Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act. It is worthy of note that in the few states in which farm wage ceilings have been established, the primary motive has been a desire, not to prevent inflation, but to eliminate certain causes of confusion and inefficiency in the farm labor market. From November 1942, when farm wage control was placed under the Secretary of Agriculture, until the following August, only one wage ceiling, covering five counties, was established. Through this experiment farmers became aware that in the wage stabilization machinery they had a means of preventing the spiralling of wages, eliminating labor pirating and lowering the turnover of labor. Consequently, four additional ceilings-three in California and one in Florida-were instituted. During the second year under the Wage Stabilization Act, the rapid rise of agricultural wage rates continued. There were protests from packing houses that high farm wages made it impossible to keep sufficient labor. in the sheds, where wages were prevented from rising by the War Labor Board. In some instances, high farm wages gave rise to requests to OPA for higher prices of farm products. Wage ceilings, however, were still not set primarily as a means of checking inflation, but only at the request