The claims of unfair treatment by E.&J. Gallo Winery workers
and subsequent potential boycott of Gallo wine are unsubstantiated,
fallacious and immoral. Unlike the wine they so vehemently and
irrationally oppose, the arguments of Gallo’s opposition only
get more boring with age.
Repeating the tired mantra “We need more money,” the
Gallo workers succumb to the false notion that “need”
is the criterion for value. As fourth-year sociology student
Michelle Senchez said, according to a May 25 Daily Bruin article
(“Union may boycott winery,” News), “(Gallo
workers) need to get a contract; they need to get paid
more.”
For Senchez and her cohorts, there is no such word as
“earn.” In their world, the arbitrary standard of
“need” is substituted for the moral standard of
productivity. The trouble is that their world has already been
tried ““ several times, and with disastrous results.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to
his needs,” the fundamental tenet of communism, consistently
fails because it divorces output (payment) from input
(productivity), giving no incentive for hard work and rewarding
only the man who can claim to be in the most need.
Whether or not Senchez consciously accepts communism, its values
lead to the same destructive ends: poverty and misery.
Money, however, recognizes no such anti-value as
“need.” Gallo earns its wealth by producing wine that
consumers like at a price they are willing to pay. Gallo’s
workers in turn earn their pay by providing labor to Gallo at a
mutually agreeable wage. If Gallo’s workers judge that they
“need” more money to cover their expenses than Gallo is
prepared to offer, they are free to look elsewhere.
The workers at Gallo are no more entitled to higher wages than a
wine consumer unwilling to pay $70 per bottle is entitled to the
same wine for $20. In jobs, just as in wine, it is the
responsibility of the individual to choose among alternatives.
Whether this means choosing a cheaper brand of wine or finding a
higher-paying job, no amount of claimed “need” can
overrule this basic principle.
The basis for their irrational claims is the faulty notion of
the Marxist theory of labor, which states that all labor ““
whether it’s starting a major corporation (which in turn
creates wealth and thousands of jobs) or being the night janitor in
the company’s branch office ““ is of the same value.
The real value of labor, however, does not stem from mere
physical work, but rather is a product of the rational mind.
Repetitive tasks that require little thinking (like picking grapes)
are fundamentally different from running a winery, which requires
rationality, foresight, planning, marketing and a host of other
skills of the mind.
In a related Daily Bruin article (“Student activists
campaign to support farm workers,” News, May 25), fourth-year
sociology student Olivia Guevara said about Gallo’s farm
laborers, “I don’t think it’s right that we just
push them aside or pretend that they’re … not as important
as the businessmen or the doctors or the lawyers.”
Guevara’s refusal to recognize the root of labor’s
value ““ the productive genius of the businessmen, doctors and
lawyers ““ is indicative of the labor movement’s value
system as a whole, with the value of “need” and
standard of demands as replacements for the moral value of
production and standard of voluntary exchange.
Gallo, by virtue of owning the land, the grapes, the
infrastructure, the name and the assets, owns the right to dispose
of its assets as it sees fit. This includes the jobs those assets
provide. As such, Gallo has the right to offer to pay its workers
whatever it thinks will attract the best workforce for the least
cost, and the farm workers have the right to refuse Gallo’s
terms and seek employment elsewhere.
Effectively, Gallo’s farm workers have decided that they
own Gallo’s resources and are thus entitled to apportion them
however they want ““ as ludicrous a position as contending
that shoppers own a supermarket and can thus set whatever prices
they fancy.
There is no conflict between “management” and
“labor” (as if managing a winery were not labor
anyway). There is only Gallo’s offer of a specific job at a
specific price and the individual workers who accept or reject the
offer. Contending otherwise removes the incentive to earn wages,
thus destroying the entire concept of earning and effectively
putting Gallo’s resources at the disposal of people who do
not own them.
If the workers don’t like their wages and refuse to look
elsewhere, sour grapes.
Hurst is the chairman of L.O.G.I.C., a contributing editor
for the Bruin Standard and a former Daily Bruin columnist.