A Social History of Farm Labor in California

A Social History of Farm Labor in California PDF Author: Ellen Casper
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agricultural laborers
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description

A Social History of Farm Labor in California

A Social History of Farm Labor in California PDF Author: Ellen Casper
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agricultural laborers
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description


A social history of farm labor in California with special emphasis in the United Farm Workers Union and California Rural Legal Assistance

A social history of farm labor in California with special emphasis in the United Farm Workers Union and California Rural Legal Assistance PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description


Factories in the Field

Factories in the Field PDF Author: Carey McWilliams
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520224132
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
Dramatizing the misery of the dust bowl migrants hoping to find work in California agriculture, this text starts with the scandals of the Spanish land grant purchases, and goes on to examine the experience of ethnic groups that have provided labour for California's agricultural industry.

The Struggle for the Health and Legal Protection of Farm Workers

The Struggle for the Health and Legal Protection of Farm Workers PDF Author: Maurice Jourdane
Publisher: Arte Publico Press
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
One of Maurice "Mo" Jourdane's greatest contributions to the advancement of farm workers in the fields of California was his relentless--and ultimately successful--effort to end agricultural employers' required use of the short-handled hoe by laborers in the state's lucrative lettuce, celery, sugar beet, and strawberry industries. The short hoe, known by Hispanic farm workers as el cortito (the short one), was the cause of severe and permanent crippling of hundreds of thousands of field laborers. It required workers to spend as many as ten to twelve hours each day, often in more than 90 degree heat, stooped over in a back-breaking posture, thinning and weeding plants for agribusiness employers who profited immensely from the workers' low cost labor. The text and eight pages of photos from the period chronicle Jourdane's decade-long struggle to research and advocate for a state ban of the short hoe and his efforts to protect other civil and human rights of California field workers. Parading through the pages of El Cortito are most of the principal players in the struggle for the rights of farm workers, from Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta to Governors Jerry Brown and Ronald Reagan. This document is critical for an understanding of continuing injustices that plague contemporary Latino (and other immigrant/minority) labor struggles in the garment, service, and heavy production industries of the nation. Jourdane's historical summation of the farm workers' struggle for justice emphasizes that despite real gains that California farm laborers achieved in the 1960s and 1970s, today much more work remains to ensure safe and decent working conditions.

Chasing the Harvest

Chasing the Harvest PDF Author: Gabriel Thompson
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1786632217
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Lives from an invisible community—the migrant farmworkers of the United States The Grapes of Wrath brought national attention to the condition of California’s migrant farmworkers in the 1930s. Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers’ grape and lettuce boycotts captured the imagination of the United States in the 1960s and ’70s. Yet today, the stories of the more than 800,000 men, women, and children working in California’s fields—one third of the nation’s agricultural work force—are rarely heard, despite the persistence of wage theft, dangerous working conditions, and uncertain futures. This book of oral histories makes the reality of farm work visible in accounts of hardship, bravery, solidarity, and creativity in California’s fields, as real people struggle to win new opportunities for future generations. Among the narrators: Maricruz, a single mother fired from a packing plant after filing a sexual assault complaint against her supervisor. Roberto, a vineyard laborer in the scorching Coachella Valley who became an advocate for more humane working conditions after his teenage son almost died of heatstroke. Oscar, an elementary school teacher in Salinas who wants to free his students from a life in the fields, the fate that once awaited him as a child.

Bitter Harvest, a History of California Farmworkers, 1870-1941

Bitter Harvest, a History of California Farmworkers, 1870-1941 PDF Author: Cletus E. Daniel
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520047228
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description


Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW PDF Author: Dionicio Nodín Valdés
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 029274479X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Puerto Rico, Hawai'i, and California share the experiences of conquest and annexation to the United States in the nineteenth century and mass organizational struggles by rural workers in the twentieth. Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW offers a comparative examination of those struggles, which were the era's longest and most protracted campaigns by agricultural workers, supported by organized labor, to establish a collective presence and realize the fruits of democracy. Dionicio Nodín Valdés examines critical links between the earlier conquests and the later organizing campaigns while he corrects a number of popular misconceptions about agriculture, farmworkers, and organized labor. He shows that agricultural workers have engaged in continuous efforts to gain a place in the institutional life of the nation, that unions succeeded before the United Farm Workers and César Chávez, and that the labor movement played a major role in those efforts. He also offers a window into understanding crucial limitations of institutional democracy in the United States, and demonstrates that the widespread lack of participation in the nation's institutions by agricultural workers has not been due to a lack of volition, but rather to employers' continuous efforts to prevent worker empowerment. Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW demonstrates how employers benefitted not only from power and wealth, but also from imperialism in both its domestic and international manifestations. It also demonstrates how workers at times successfully overcame growers' advantages, although they were ultimately unable to sustain movements and gain a permanent institutional presence in Puerto Rico and California.

A People's History of Environmentalism in the United States

A People's History of Environmentalism in the United States PDF Author: Chad Montrie
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826455727
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
This book offers a fresh and innovative account of the history of environmentalism in the United States, challenging the dominant narrative in the field. In the widely-held version of events, the US environmental movement was born with the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in 1962 and was driven by the increased leisure and wealth of an educated middle class. Chad Montrie's telling moves the origins of environmentalism much further back in time and attributes the growth of environmental awareness to working people and their families. From the antebellum era to the end of the twentieth century, ordinary Americans have been at the forefront of organizing to save themselves and their communities from environmental harm. This interpretation is nothing short of a substantial recasting of the past, giving a more accurate picture of what happened, when, and why at the beginnings of the environmental movement.

Promise Unfulfilled

Promise Unfulfilled PDF Author: Philip L. Martin
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501728555
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
In 1975, after vigorous campaigning by the United Farm Workers union, the state of California passed the Agricultural Labor Relations Act (ALRA), a pioneering self-help strategy granting farm workers the right to organize into unions. A quarter century later, only a tiny percentage of farm workers in the state belong to unions, and wages remain less than half of those of nonfarm employees. Why did the ALRA fail? One of the nation's foremost authorities on farm workers here explores the reasons behind its unfulfilled promise.Philip L. Martin examines the key features of the farm labor market in California, including the shifting ethnicity of the worker pool and the evolution of the major unions, beginning with the Wobblies. Finally, he reviews the impact of immigration on agriculture in the state.Today, many states look to the California experience to assess whether the ALRA can serve as a model for their own farm labor relations laws. In Martin's view, California's efforts to grant rights to farm workers so that they can help themselves have failed because of continued unauthorized migration and the changing structure of farm employment. Martin argues that alternative policies would make farming profitable, raise farm worker wages, and still keep groceries affordable.

Mexicanos

Mexicanos PDF Author: Manuel G. Gonzales
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253214003
Category : Mexican Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
A lively, original interpretive history of Mexicans in the United States.