Mexican Cannery Worker Unionization, 1917-1960

Title

Mexican Cannery Worker Unionization, 1917-1960

Description

The first Santa Clara County cannery strikes took place in 1917 with the AFL’s Toilers of the World. According to historian Glenna Matthews, the Toilers signed a two-year contract that only benefitted male workers. Not until the 1930s did women cannery workers find a union voice.

Initially, cannery and field/orchard work were seen as components of the larger agriculture industry and excluded from government-sponsored protections afforded to industrial workers under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) or The Wagner Act. By the 1930s, as more mechanization was introduced, cannery and packinghouse labor gained protections offered to industrial workers. According to historian Glenna Matthews, canners strengthened their efforts to fight unionization during the 1930s with the formation of the Canners’ League. The 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act stipulated that competing companies within an industry should cooperate, which the fractured growers resisted.

During the Great Depression, Santa Clara County canners faced a harsh economic future. Profit margins were dropping, executives took pay cuts, and small canners went out of business. According to historian Glenna Matthews, during that decade CalPak reduced production by one third. Processors tried to reduce expenses by lowering workers’ pay.

With the first dramatic decrease in wages, in 1931 cannery workers fought back with their first strike under the Cannery Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU). Dorothy Ray Healey and Elizabeth Nicholas were among the organizers, with Dorothy taking the lead with cannery workers. A few months prior to this strike, Italian and Spanish cannery workers formed the American Labor Union and revealed the harsh conditions cannery workers faced. In 1931 the CAWIU set up picket lines at several canneries. Workers were arrested, and in July 2,000 workers held a rally in St. James Park, demanding that police release jailed picketers and triggering the worst riot in San José history. In response Richmond-Chase cannery set up machine guns at its gate, and CalPak threatened to ship its fruit to distant canneries. The strike was lost, and the CAWIU shifted its focus to unionizing agricultural workers.

The 1931 cannery strike developed future cannery union leaders who joined the struggle for worker representation led by the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The AFL was seen as a “company union,” not taking the grievances of cannery workers seriously, particularly those of Mexican women. At the end of the 1930s, the AFL battled the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) for cannery worker representation and won the struggle. By the end of the 1930s, all San José canneries were unionized and remained so until the last one, Del Monte Plant #3, closed in the 1990s, with union representation shifting back and forth. In 1945 the AFL relinquished its control of Santa Clara County cannery workers to the Teamsters, who neglected the rights of non-white cannery workers. Union representation returned to the AFL, which merged with the more left-wing CIO in 1955. By the 1950s many Mexican cannery workers had gained unemployment insurance, a livable wage, and benefits for the first time. In 1967 under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, jobs could no longer be classified as “male” or “female,” so women could enter the more lucrative warehouse jobs previously controlled by men. Through the unions, Mexicans were able to earn the salaries needed to settle permanently in the colonias and become homeowners.

Scholar Talk

https://vimeo.com/812986564

Additional Online Information

The Fruit Workers of the Santa Clara Valley: Alternative Paths to Union Organization During the 1930s

A Promise Fulfilled Mexican Cannery Workers in Southern California

Identifier

B4SV Exhibit Topic Five: Slide 003