California has a long history of farm worker strikes and protests, from the Wobblies before WWI to the Communists (CAIWU) in the 1930s. The UFW is the best-known farm worker union, but today has fewer than 5,000 members in a state where the average employment of farm workers is about 400,000. California enacted an Agricultural Labor Relations Act in 1975 to foster collective bargaining in agriculture. It failed, and there are four major explanations for the failure of the ALRA and unions to transform farm labor, viz, flawed UFW leadership, state politics in appointments to the ALRB, changes in the structure of farm employment (more custom harvesters), and rising unauthorized migration.
Philip Martin,
Professor of Agriculture and Resource Economics,
UC Davis
