Interview with Dolores Huerta on September 28, 1957

-1- Interview with Dolores Huerta Stockton, California September 28, 1957 The Stockton CSO has a committee which is devoted to the problem of farm labor, or perhaps I should say problems of farm labor. One of the things that we are doing Lomie Gonzales has already told you about, we are trying to do something for the braceros; trying to help them out when they have complaints and they come to our attention. We’ve had a lot of difficulty with this kind of work and it is very frustrating because many times we have found the man was shipped out before we could do anything for him; whether they shipped him out because he complained or whether his contract had really expired, I can’t say for sure. In the future, Dr. Galarza, recommends that when we have evidence of some legitimate grievance, that we shoudl phone Mr. AIM Norton in San Franc isoo and he can issue an order freezing the man on the job until there is an investigation even if his contract does run out. Another activity of our committee at the present time is conducting a census of domestic workers in this area who are engaged in farm labor or are interested in doing this kind of work. This is a project that we are doing with Dr. Galarza, he sent us some forms which ask, MHow £ar would you be willing to travel to a farm job?, ”How much would you be willing to work for?,” and things like that. Incidentally, we are finding that many of our answers are not along the same lines, it seems that most of these people are willing to travel up to 1±0 or 50 miles and most of them consider around ^1.25 an hour to be a far wage. The reason that we are doing this census is that we want to find out if it is true what the Farm Placement Service claims; it claims that it has to bring in thousands and thousands of braceros because there are no domestic workers