Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930-1950 is a 1987 monograph by
Vicki L. Ruiz published by the
University of New Mexico Press.[1]
Synopsis
Cannery Women, Cannery Lives tells the history of Mexican and Mexican-American women working in the California canning and food processing industry and their involvement in labor organization and unionization during 1930–1950. Ruiz combines a variety of sources, government records, newspaper articles, union documents, and oral histories to tell the story of how Mexican American women shaped the canning and food processing industry and unionization in California and how the industry in turn impacted their lives, families and communities.[2][3]
The book is divided into six chapters. The first two chapters discuss the details of the work, family, and community lives of the women working in the industry;[4] the role of family and kinship connections form an important theme in the work.[5]
Chapters 3–5 focus on the
United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA), a loosely organized labor union created in 1937, and how it developed and influenced the California food packing industry and the roles Mexican women in the cannery industry played in its organization, development, and leadership. The final chapter discusses the competition between the UCAPAWA and the more centrally organized Teamsters and its eventual decline and absorption into the
Distributive and Processing Workers of America.[2][6]