The Chicano Worker is an incisive analysis of the labor-market experiences of Mexican American workers in the late twentieth century. The authors—each established in the fields of labor economics and research on Chicano workers—describe the major employment patterns of the Chicano labor force and discuss the historical and institutional factors determining these patterns. This work speaks to the continuing widespread public interest in Mexican immigration, migrant farm labor, unionization of farm workers, Chicano education and training needs, and the legacy of discriminatory treatment against Chicanos. The authors treat the convergence of these issues and their public policy implications. Drawing from census data as well as other sources, The Chicano Worker reports on Chicano unemployment, labor-force participation, occupational and industrial distributions of employment, and various indices of earnings. It also deals with such issues as history, family size, health, and culture. The Chicano Worker is likely to open new areas of interest, discussion, and criticism concerning Chicanos in the United States.

At the time Women’s Work and Chicano Families: Cannery Workers of the Santa Clara Valley was published, little research had been done on the relationship between the wage labor and household labor of Mexican American women. Drawing on revisionist social theories relating to Chicano family structure as well as on feminist theory, Patricia Zavella paints a compelling picture of the Chicano women who worked in northern California’s fruit and vegetable canneries. Her book combines social history, shop floor ethnography, and in-depth interviews to explore the links between Chicano family life and gender inequality in the labor market.

Perhaps no other industrial technology changed the course of Mexican history in the United States--and Mexico--than did the coming of the railroads. Tens of thousands of Mexicans worked for the railroads in the United States, especially in the Southwest and Midwest. Construction crews soon became railroad workers proper, along with maintenance crews later. Extensive Mexican American settlements appeared throughout the lower and upper Midwest as the result of the railroad. The substantial Mexican American populations in these regions today are largely attributable to 19th- and 20th-century railroad work. Only agricultural work surpassed railroad work in terms of employment of Mexicans. The full history of Mexican American railroad labor and settlement in the United States had not been told, however, until Jeffrey Marcos Garcílazo's groundbreaking research in Traqueros. Garcílazo mined numerous archives and other sources to provide the first and only comprehensive history of Mexican railroad workers across the United States, with particular attention to the Midwest. He first explores the origins and process of Mexican labor recruitment and immigration and then describes the areas of work performed. He reconstructs the workers' daily lives and explores not only what the workers did on the job but also what they did at home and how they accommodated and/or resisted Americanization. Boxcar communities, strike organizations, and "traquero culture" finally receive historical acknowledgment. Integral to his study is the importance of family settlement in shaping working class communities and consciousness throughout the Midwest.

Through extensive use of Spanish-language archives in Mexico and the United States, Zamora examines workers' independent organizations - including mutual aid societies and cooperatives that functioned as unions - as well as spontaneous informal actions, including strikes, by Texas Mexican workers. He portrays the gradual yet increasing integration of those organizations into the mainstream labor movement and examines labor solidarity across ethnic lines. In addition, he discusses the special role Mexican labor played in bridging labor struggles across the international border and in challenging racial exclusion on the job in the predominantly Anglo labor federations and in the broader institutional life of South Texas.

A study of the bracero program during World War II. It describes the labor history of Mexican and Chicano workers in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. It analyses the ways in which Braceros were active agents of their own lives. It also describes the living and working conditions in migrant farm camps.