Song of the Stubborn One Thousand: The Watsonville Canning Strike, 1985-87

by Peter Shapiro

On September 9, 1985, one thousand mainly Mexican women workers in Watsonville, California, the “frozen food capital of the world,” were forced out on strike in response to an attempt by Watsonville Canning owner, Mort Console, to break their union. They returned to work eighteen months later. Not one had crossed the picket line. A moribund union has been revitalized, and Watsonville's Latino majority emerged as a major force in local politics.

At a time when organized labor was in headlong retreat, the Watsonville Canning strike was a dramatic show of the power of women workers, whose struggle became a rallying point for the Chicano movement.

Apart from its sheer drama, the strikers' story illuminates the challenges facing a group of ordinary working people who waged a protracted and ultimately successful struggle against seemingly insurmountable odds.

Genres: Labor, History, Nonfiction, Feminism

237 pages, Paperback

Published October 25, 2016

About the author

Peter Shapiro was an American lawyer and music journalist. He wrote several reference works on music genres including Disco and Hip-hop, before moving into practice focusing on media law.

Reviews

[Torie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am so glad that this event in history is memorialized, but it's tailored to a more niche, union history/union politics audience than a general social justice one.

At a time when unionism was being actively decimated by Reagan and others, one strike in Watsonville, CA--my hometown--led by nearly 1,000 canning workers who were 80% women and overwhelmingly Latina, managed to be successful despite a near-total lack of leadership and support. Strangely, though, those facts do not take center stage.

This book is largely concerned with the politicking of various union organizers who vied to, first, disclaim responsibility for the conditions that led to the strike, and then, second, scramble to fill the power vacuum and use the strikers for their own ideological and political ends. In a relatively short book the first fifty pages is a history of the machinations of various union and union-adjacent orgs in and around the region. The next 50 details the various (mostly Anglo, entirely male) union leaders who either failed to meaningfully lead the union and ensure democratic representation and involvement from the rank-and-file, or outside organizers and agitators attempting to either overthrow the leadership or prop it up.

But what about the workers? It does not actually center them or their stories. The book really shines in the second half when the actual women who lead the strike (unofficially, in many cases) get some much-needed coverage. Very little attention is paid to the lives of those women prior to the strike--to what their lives, their work, or they families were like. To what prompted them to say enough was enough. I didn't feel I had a window into these people or their struggle. Instead, I was drowning in details about which leftist group or union committee had shown up to which meetings and was upset about which leadership decisions. Unbelievably micro-level detail on things that most readers who aren't labor historians would be interested in, and not enough coverage (let alone immersive narrative non-fiction) about the people who should have been centered.

The last fourth is really superb because it corrects that imbalance, centering the women leaders who ultimately saved the strike when things it looked like it might fail.

Overall, and important and necessary contribution to the history, but the focus is a little off.

[Mills College Library]

331.89286 S5297 2016