Factories in the Field

Factories in the Field
Author: Carey McWilliams
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2000-04-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520925181

This book was the first broad exposé of the social and environmental damage inflicted by the growth of corporate agriculture in California. Factories in the Field—together with the work of Dorothea Lange, Paul Taylor, and John Steinbeck—dramatizes the misery of the dust bowl migrants hoping to find work in California agriculture. McWilliams starts with the scandals of the Spanish land grant purchases, and continues on to examine the experience of the various ethnic groups that have provided labor for California's agricultural industry—Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos, Armenians—the strikes, and the efforts to organize labor unions

Chasing the Harvest

Chasing the Harvest
Author: Gabriel Thompson
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2017-05-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1786632217

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.

Farm Workers, Agribusiness, and the State

Farm Workers, Agribusiness, and the State
Author: Linda C. Majka
Publisher:
Total Pages: 368
Release: 1982
Genre: Agricultural laborers
ISBN:

Historical account of the social conflict between agricultural workers and agribusiness, and the role of state intervention in California, USA - analyses agricultural trade unionism since 1870, immigration of Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans and Filipinos, and its regulation; examines the economic recession of the 1930s, rise of rural worker organizations, internal migration, and state-enrolled contract labour; reports on the formation of the United Farm Workers and its struggle for trade union recognition, opposition, and state mediation. Bibliography.

The Migrant Project

The Migrant Project
Author: Rick Nahmias
Publisher: UNM Press
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2008-03
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 0826344070

Iconic photographs and the stories of the men, women, and children who work California's farms and orchards to feed America.