Linda C. Majka

Decline of the Farm Labor Movement in California: Organizational Crisis and Political Change

This paper interprets the reversal of the farm labor movement in California during the 1980s as part of an overall decline in a general cycle of protest as well as a reversal of opportunities for changes in class relations that this movement stimulated. More specifically, three factors account for the failure of collective bargaining to become fully established in Californias agribusiness. The United Farm Workers union (UFW) experienced a serious internal crisis during the late 1970s that resulted in the departure of key officials and staff members. A change in administration in the governors office led to the appointment of officials antagonistic to farm labor unionization. In this climate, grower tactics to prevent or delay unionization became more effective.

LABOR MILITANCY AMONG FARM WORKERS AND THE STRATEGY OF PROTEST: 1900-1979

Despite nearly continuous poverty, farm workers in California during the past century organized unions and initiated strikes over control issues as well as wages. The control emphases contradicts the expectations of the dominant paradigm in labor relations, as well as Marxian perspectives which view control or qualitative issues as being concentrated among segments of the working class in advanced industrial sectors. It is proposed that the logic of the farm workerssituation in agriculture accounts for the continuity and pervasiveness of their control strikes. Because of the impermanence of wage gains alone, farm workers have had to seek control as a prerequisite to other changes in their conditions of life and work.