Nothing to Lose
In 1985, Mexican-American women led 1,700 of their coworkers on strike against one of California's biggest canning companies.
In the fall of 1985, 1,700 mainly Mexican women workers at the two largest plants in Watsonville, California, “frozen food capital of the world,” were forced out on strike in a transparent attempt to break their union. The workers at Watsonville Canning, the largest of the two plants, won a stunning victory after a year and a half on the picket line. The story of their long, complex struggle is told in Peter Shapiro’s Song of the Stubborn One Thousand, recently published by Haymarket Books. An excerpt from the book follows.
On Friday, September 6, about two hundred Local 912 members gathered at the union hall, hoping to get the latest on negotiations. At last, the word came: a strike could not be put off any longer. Elizabeth Schilling of the Register-Pajaronian observed the gathering; the next day she told her readers that, although the workers were clearly ready to strike, “Union officials did not seem anxious to call them out.”
Little or no preparations had been made, so an informal group agreed to meet in the hall on Saturday morning to do some rudimentary planning, while a general call went out for people to show up at the hall on Sunday to make picket signs. Shaw and Watsonville Canning were served with strike notices on Saturday.
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