Decline of the Canneries and Impact on Local Ethnic Mexican Population Led to Local Chicano Advocacy

Title

Decline of the Canneries and Impact on Local Ethnic Mexican Population Led to Local Chicano Advocacy

Description

With the rise of Silicon Valley in the 1960s, Valley canneries were in decline due to the postwar transition from an agricultural to a technological/industrial economy. Technology was a booming field which attracted both local residents and new immigrants to the Valley, also contributing to a housing shortage. Agricultural employment declined as farmers sold entire orchards for real estate and industrial development. Consequently, many local canneries closed during this period. Though Mexican workers found local employment in urban construction and suburban domestic work, they were not as successful on the assembly lines of Silicon Valley’s emerging tech industry.

In 1967, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act required that jobs not be gendered into “male” or “female” work. Title VII afforded more opportunities for women to work in warehousing and shipping, occupations traditionally reserved for men. Although cannery women’s benefits were lower than men’s,, in the 1970s and 1980s cannery work offered women stability, enabling many women to become homeowners and create worker neighborhoods, according to sociologist Patricia Zavella. Historian Glenna Matthews notes that this changed when the Teamsters took cannery representation away from the American Federation of Labor (AFL). In the 1970s and 1980s César Chávez’s new organization, the United Farm Workers of America (UFWA), created a legal project called “The Cannery Workers Committee” (CWC) to protest Teamster discriminatory treatment. Using the Civil Rights Act Title VII, the CWC won a number of cases that enabled ethnic Mexican cannery women to move from seasonal line work to higher paying, permanent warehouse-related cannery jobs.

By 1976, most cannery jobs were unionized, providing ethnic Mexican women with wage, medical, holiday and retirement benefits. Technology workers were not as fortunate, holding jobs that were not unionized, providing none of the benefits. By 1987, there were only eight canneries left in the Santa Clara County, and by 1999 Del Monte had closed Plant #3, the world’s largest cannery operation. The demise of the canneries took access to well-paid union jobs with their opportunities for advancement away from ethnic Mexican workers.

Additional Online Information

The Canning Industry in San José

The decline of Santa Clara County's fruit and vegetable canning industry (1967-1987)

Women's Work and Chicano Families: Cannery Workers of the Santa Clara Valley on JSTOR

One of Silicon Valley’s last canneries closes its doors – East Bay Times

DEL MONTE CANNERY LAST DAY (video)

Identifier

B4SV Exhibit Topic Six: Slide 010