Milking in the Shadows by Julie C. Keller

Author:Julie C. Keller [Keller, Julie C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Sociology, Rural, Political Science, Public Policy, Agriculture & Food Policy, Business & Economics, Labor, Agriculture & Food, Emigration & Immigration, Discrimination
ISBN: 9780813596433
Google: DF9VDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Published: 2019-01-07T04:25:43+00:00

Shifting Los Turnos

The organization at Grassy Dairy was not the only way that work could be divided. At other farms, workers’ shifts changed such that the night shifts were distributed across all workers, or workers could select their preferences and adjust their schedules accordingly. That type of flexibility seemed to occur more on larger farms, where there were at least eight to ten migrant workers to do all the milking and other jobs on the farm. My observations aligned with what Harrison and Getz (2014) found in their research on the connection between size of farm and quality of jobs. In their analysis of the Wisconsin dairy data collected, they found that larger farms allowed for more flexibility in shifts, and workers could more readily swap shifts than on smaller-sized operations. In this sense, then, not all the farms I visited presented workers with the same sets of immobilities. I saw this play out in the history of incoming and outgoing workers at Grassy Dairy.

When Héctor went from feeding calves to milking, for instance, the job change was facilitated by the departure of a milker who had been paired with Gaspar for the early morning shift. Gabriel was nineteen years old, and he was Héctor’s cousin. I only met him a few times before he left. It was my second visit to Grassy Dairy when Fred told me, exasperated, that Gabriel had not showed up for his early morning shift. As Fred and I sat in the break room discussing the matter, Gabriel suddenly walked in and punched his time card to begin working the midday shift. Fred looked at me, eyebrows raised, then called out to him as he walked toward the parlor, asking him in a stern tone if he was planning on working. Gabriel looked down, smiling, and nodded yes. Fred asked him why he had not worked the earlier shift, and Gabriel shrugged and gave no answer. The next day, I stopped in again, and Fred was asking the other workers about Gabriel. Again, he had skipped his morning shift, and Fred asked where he had gone and if his belongings were still in the trailer. Héctor and Gaspar claimed they knew nothing about it, only that he said he was leaving to work someplace else.

A couple of months later, I caught up with Gabriel, who happened to be working at Six Mile Dairy, a large farm I had just begun visiting in the spring. He asked me how things were going at Grassy Dairy, and then he began to explain why he left. The story I heard was a surprise. Gabriel said that all the workers but Gaspar were basically his cousins and that Davíd from Cualtzin was his cousin’s husband. It was Davíd’s departure from Grassy Dairy that prompted Gabriel to begin working there. He had been working at a different dairy farm when Davíd told him he was heading back to Mexico and his job was opening up. Gabriel explained that the reason

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