The Farm Labor Movement in the Midwest
Title | The Farm Labor Movement in the Midwest PDF eBook |
Author | W. K. Barger |
Publisher | University of Texas Press |
Pages | 258 |
Release | 2010-07-22 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN | 0292792123 |
The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) was founded by Baldemar Velásquez in 1967 to challenge the poverty and powerlessness that confronted migrant farmworkers in the Midwest. This study documents FLOC's development through its first quarter century and analyzes its effectiveness as a social reform movement. Barger and Reza describe FLOC's founding as a sister organization of the United Farm Workers (UFW). They devote particular attention to FLOC's eight-year struggle (1978-1986) with the Campbell Soup company that led to three-way contracts for improved working conditions between FLOC, Campbell Soup, and Campbell's tomato and cucumber growers in Ohio and Michigan. This contract significantly changed the structure of agribusiness and instituted key reforms in American farm labor. The authors also address the processes of social change involved in FLOC actions. Their findings are based on extensive research among farmworkers, growers, and representatives of agribusiness, as well as personal involvement with FLOC leaders and supporters.
The Farm Labor Situation in the Midwest ...
Title | The Farm Labor Situation in the Midwest ... PDF eBook |
Author | United States. Bureau of Agricultural Economics. Division of Program Surveys |
Publisher | |
Pages | 4 |
Release | 1942 |
Genre | Agricultural laborers |
ISBN |
Farm and Factory
Title | Farm and Factory PDF eBook |
Author | Daniel Nelson |
Publisher | Indiana University Press |
Pages | 278 |
Release | 1995-12-22 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN | 9780253328830 |
Farm and Factory illuminates the importance of the Midwest in U.S. labor history. America's heartland - often overlooked in studies focusing on other regions, or particular cities or industries - has a distinctive labor history characterized by the sustained, simultaneous growth of both agriculture and industry. Since the transfer of labor from farm to factory did not occur in the Midwest until after World War II, industrialists recruited workers elsewhere, especially from Europe and the American South. The region's relatively underdeveloped service sector - shaped by the presumption that goods were more desirable than service - ultimately led to agonizing problems of adjustment as agriculture and industry evolved in the late twentieth century.
The Farm Labor Movement in the Midwest
Title | The Farm Labor Movement in the Midwest PDF eBook |
Author | Walter Kenneth Barger |
Publisher | |
Pages | 235 |
Release | 1994 |
Genre | Mexican American migrant agricultural laborers |
ISBN | 9780292758919 |
Barger and Reza tell the story of FLOC's founding as a sister organization of the United Farm Workers (UFW) in California.
Hired Hands and Plowboys
Title | Hired Hands and Plowboys PDF eBook |
Author | David E. Schob |
Publisher | Urbana : University of Illinois Press |
Pages | 352 |
Release | 1975 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN |
Before the Civil War, the livelihood of most Americans was involved in some way with farming. Yet, because of a lack of readily available information on workers, farm labor has long been neglected by historians. Filing a major gap in the history of American agriculture, labor, and the frontier, David Schob studies this distinctive aspect of American life in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota from 1815 to 1860. Through hundreds of details drawn from farmers' records, diaries and letters, county histories, newspapers, and periodicals, Schob evokes the farm laborer as he broke prairies, harvested grain, drained ditches, dug wells, and worked during off-season winter months logging, sawmilling, and pork packing. Farm work varied with the season and with the ethnic background of the hired hands, each group of immigrants introducing its specialized tasks to the region--the Irish as ditchdiggers and trenchers, the Germans as horticulturists, and the Scandinavians as wood choppers. Together, these groups not only contributed to the economic development of the Midwest, but according to Schob, they also accelerated the westward movement of the American frontier. In addition to providing detailed accounts of the workers' duties and way of life, and information on wages, contracts, and working conditions for routine farm employment, the book sheds light on several previously ignored facets of agricultural and labor history: the work of chore boys and hired girls, whose services were equally important to industrious farmers, and the role of free black farm hands, who augmented the white labor force in the harvest fields and the hazardous work of well digging.
The Political Economy of Migrant Farm Labor and the Farmworker Movement in the Midwest
Title | The Political Economy of Migrant Farm Labor and the Farmworker Movement in the Midwest PDF eBook |
Author | James L. Terry |
Publisher | |
Pages | 310 |
Release | 1988 |
Genre | Agricultural laborers |
ISBN |
Cutting Into the Meatpacking Line
Title | Cutting Into the Meatpacking Line PDF eBook |
Author | Deborah Fink |
Publisher | Univ of North Carolina Press |
Pages | 268 |
Release | 2000-11-09 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 0807861405 |
The nostalgic vision of a rural Midwest populated by independent family farmers hides the reality that rural wage labor has been integral to the region's development, says Deborah Fink. Focusing on the porkpacking industry in Iowa, Fink investigates the experience of the rural working class and highlights its significance in shaping the state's economic, political, and social contours. Fink draws both on interviews and on her own firsthand experience working on the production floor of a pork-processing plant. She weaves a fascinating account of the meatpacking industry's history in Iowa--a history, she notes, that has been experienced differently by male and female, immigrant and native-born, white and black workers. Indeed, argues Fink, these differences are a key factor in the ongoing creation of the rural working class. Other writers have denounced the new meatpacking companies for their ruthless destruction of both workers and communities. Fink sustains this criticism, which she augments with a discussion of union action, but also goes beyond it. She looks within rural midwestern culture itself to examine the class, gender, and ethnic contradictions that allowed--indeed welcomed--the meatpacking industry's development.