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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.