Farmworker (left) waits in the rain for his "daily card" to be punched by the grower.
"We know that the farmers are paying the contractors approximately $4.50 per hour per worker. But why can't they pay the same wages to the farmworkers? Why do they have to have a middleman who takes 30-40 per cent of the worker's wages? Some farmers say that if they had to pay better wages, the consumer would have to pay higher prices. This is just an attempt to show a unity of interest between the farmer and consumer and create hostility between people and farmworkers... Considering the amount of wages eaten up by the contractors, the elimination of the contract system and its substitution with a union hiring hall will itself lead to an improvement in wages without affecting prices in any way." - Raj Chouhan, at the founding of the CFU, April 6, 1980