Mexican, Filipino, U.S.-born, and Japanese workers lead by the T.U.U.L.’s Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union strike against Santa Clara Valley’s capitalist pea farmers.

‘Strike Ties Up California Pea Fields’ from Western Worker. Vol. 2 No. 17. April 24, 1933.

2000 ON STRIKE: PICKETS FIGHT POLICE==MORE CAMPS JOIN

Welfare Buros Issue Scab Herding Order

STRIKE BULLETIN

SAN JOSE, April 17. With strike ranks now increased to 2000, growers thus far have not been able to get workers as even those just coming into fields joined the strike by refusing to scab.

Two camps near Milpitas joined the strike, one of 80 Filipino workers and another with 117 workers.

Five hundred pea workers at Tracy, working for the Cunha Bros. are ready to join.

Two workers have been arrested at the San Jose strike headquarters, and three at one of the struck San Jose camps, and bail at $250 each was placed.

Max Olson, Organizer of the Young Communist League, is held incommunicado.

STRIKE BULLETIN

DECOTA, Apr: 17. Throwing their teargas bombs back into the faces of 60 police and plain clothes bulls who charged in to break up the picket line more than 300 striking pea pickers battled yesterday afternoon outside Andratti Bros. Fifteen were arrested, and more than a score of men, women and children badly clubbed. One worker is in the hospital. Two bulls were injured, one being sent to the hospital, struck with a gas bomb which was thrown back at him.

The picket line had been strengthened with more than 100 who rushed from a union meeting in Ashland when word came that 60 scabs had been brought in from Stockton. Marching down with an American flag at the head the workers were attacked as they approached the field. Relief money sent down with Chas. Gordon, was stolen by the bulls who clubbed him. Terrorization continued after the smashup of the picket line, po lice entering workers homes to arrest union leaders. In one home, Mexican women defended themselves with kettles of boiling water. Fernando Rodrigues, 17-year-old strike leader of Decota, was arrested in his home and beaten with baseball bats. Through the night| search continued by the police. A tent camp of 30 families between Decota and Warm Springs, ordered evicted by Monday morning, have refused to go.

HAYWARD, April 17.  At a conference of 185 delegates, under the auspices of the Agricultural Workers Industrial Union, representing 16 different pea picking points, the decision was made for a strike to begin on the morning of April 14. There were delegates from the San Jose district, Hayward, Sunnyvale, Decota and many others.

The demands are 30c per hamper, 80c per 80-lb. sack, or at 35c per hour.

That contractors be eliminated and workers be hired through the Union.

The Decota local of the union, taking a lead in the strike has grown to a membership of 300, and has a strike committee of fifteen. A large committee of women was elected who promptly went to three fields, and took the workers to the union. A relief committee was also elected to get help for needy strikers.

On Friday mass picket lines will patrol all fields.

Autos with slogans, “Don’t Scab! Join Us and Demand Union Wages” will be used, Telegrams quickly followed by organizers were dispatched to all fields and reports indicate that workers are likewise walking out in Contra Costa and Santa Clara County. The enthusiasm of the workers is at a very high pitch, with determination to win.

In the meantime, the growers have taken steps for a reign of terror. Deputies by the scores are being sworn in and armed. The growers came before the Alameda Board of Supervisors pleading that every available force be immediately placed at their disposal to save the highly perishable crop. The Alameda government quickly responded, by a declaration from the Welfare Board that any who refuse to scab on the pea strikers will be cut off relief. Thus far with only one day of the strike, very few were reported at work, with about 1500 out in the fields stretching from Hayward to Niles.

The “Hayward Review” came out a day prior to the strike with the story that the strikers have gone back to work in an effort to confuse the workers. Likewise, great headlines appeared in other papers designed for inciting terror against the strikers. The strike committee answered with a strike call in 10,000 copies covering the entire valley.

Hayward already has a large support for the strike, while Alvarado is almost 100%. Small farmers have already expressed agreement to settle and the Union will settle with them as quickly as possible, placing workers on Union jobs. The large contractors are doing everything possible to intimidate the small farmers against settling.

The District Office of the Union is at 81 Post Street, San Jose.

***

Rush Relief to Strikers!

WORKERS! The pea pickers are now fighting against the most miserable conditions yet forced on Agricultural Workers. Their demands are for the least that human beings need to exist.

The county and city governments in the strike districts have mobilized scores of deputies and police to smash the strike. The Relief offices everywhere are cutting off relief for those that refuse to scab.

But the workers–Mexicans, Filipinos, Spanish and American–are carrying on the fight in a most militant manner.

DON’T LET THE CHARITIES MAKE SCABS OUT OF YOU!

HELP SPREAD THE STRIKE! IT’S YOUR FIGHT! IT WILL HELP RAISE WAGES IN ALL OTHER FIELDS! HELP RAISE RELIEF FOR THE STRIKERS AS THEY, INCLUDING THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN, ARE STARVING!

DON’T LET THE BOSSES STARVE THEM BACK TO WORK!

SEND FOOD, MONEY TO 81 POST ST., SAN JOSE.

***

SUPPORT THE PEA STRIKE!

The pea pickers strike now spreading is of great significance not only by the fact that it involves a greater number of workers than any recent agricultural strike in California, but also that it broke out at the beginning of the season as an answer to the wage cutting campaign and forced labor.

In contrast to most previous cases when preparations to strike were late, the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union, leading the struggle, made a considerable step forward in being able to call out the workers on the eve of the time for picking the first pea crop, and naturally prior to most other crops to be picked. The workers understand the situation, are showing splendid initiative for spreading the struggle, and in some camps went out even before union organizers could reach them.

Proof that the strike is dealing a serious blow to the growers is the panic in their ranks in fear that the easily perishable crop will be lost. They came before, the Alameda Supervisors for additional deputies, and every available force was mobilized to give machine gun protection to scabs. But the weapon the bosses count on most is that scab agency known as the Alameda Welfare Department. Before the strike call reached most workers, the government through its relief agency announced that it I will cut off relief from any who refuse to answer the call of the growers for hands at 17c per hour. Not content with instituting forced labor for miserable relief, the bosses and their government want to force the unemployed to scab.

BOSS LIES TO GET SCABS

The cry of the growers that they can use 8000 hands is a gross exaggeration, designed to give an impression that a small number of “agitators” are keeping that many from working. The fact is that the number of workers necessary to pick the peas are on strike and ready to work if the bosses will pay at least the minimum the workers need to live on, 30c per hamper or 35c per hour.

Workers should realize that this fight for a living wage is not only important to those on strike but is closely connected with the struggle in the cities and other fields. Already growers in other fields are hesitating about cutting wages, knowing that the Agricultural Workers Union is not confined to peas. Furthermore every worker in the cities, and particularly the canneries knows, that the low wages paid to agricultural workers, have always been a club in the bosses hand over his head. If the workers in the fields received a higher wage they would not offer the serious competition to rates of wages in the cities, and union conditions, as they do when they come in from the fields.

A.F. OF L. IN SCAB ROLE

In face of this the A.F. of L. is taking its place side by side with the Welfare scab agencies. As a solution to the strike of the pea and beet workers in Santa Barbara County, now out for two weeks, the Central Labor Council of Santa Barbara proposes to the Supervisors, that in addition to the slogan “Buy American” another one be “Hire American,” and that the Mexican and Filipino “aliens” be replaced by citizens, so the unemployment problem would also be “solved.” They, after declaring that even Filipinos are not Americans, sanctify scabbing and make that a privilege of only Americans.

The San Francisco Central Labor Council, not to be outdone by Santa Barbara, declares gleefully in an editorial in the “Labor Clarion” of March 31, that Filipinos were brought in as strike breakers from Stockton into the Monterey lettuce fields to scab on other Filipinos; that the Monterey Filipinos got what’s coming to them, since they replaced Chinese and Japanese who in turn replaced whites. The lying sheet fails to tell that these Stockton workers were fooled into coming there, and when they learnt there was a strike they promptly demanded return fare. These labor fakers express in a most brazen manner the policy of race prejudice of the American bosses, designed to throw one set of workers against the other.

But despite them the strike is a fine expression of solidarity between American, Filipino, Mexican and Spanish workers. In Alameda hundreds have been cut off relief but would not scab. The militancy of the workers gives every indication that important gains will be made. But relief must pour into the striking camps. The workers are being evicted, and many have hardly had food for days. Emergency measures must be taken to raise relief! Send to 81 Post street, San Jose.

WORKERS GET BEHIND THE STRIKE! Spread the struggle to all fields!

Western Worker was the publication of the Communist Party in the western United States, focused on the Pacific Coast, from 1933 until 1937. Originally published twice monthly in San Francisco, it grew to a weekly, then a twice-weekly and then merged with the Party’s Daily Worker on the West Coast to form the People’s Daily World which published until 1957. Its issues contain a wealth of information on Communist activity and cultural events in the west of those years.

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