Peter Shapiro

is the author of Song of the Stubborn One Thousand: the Watsonville Canning Strike, 1985-87 (Haymarket Books, 2016). He was labor editor of Unity, the LRS newspaper, during the Watsonville strike, and subsequently edited two union publications.

The Necessity of Organization: The League of Revolutionary Struggle and the Watsonville Canning Strike

The Necessity of Organization: The League of Revolutionary Struggle and the Watsonville Canning Strike

At the height of the Reagan era, 1,000 mainly Mexicana workers waged a successful 18-month strike against Watsonville Canning and Frozen Food, the town’s oldest and largest plant. In the face of the most difficult odds imaginable, they foiled a company effort to decertify their union, forced the plant owner to sell his business to avoid bankruptcy, and then won a contract from the new owner after a five-day wildcat.