Historical Context: Working Conditions
A Frontier for Workers’ Rights:
The Delano Grape Strike and Boycott
Early Strikes
In May 1965, Filipino laborers organized a grape strike in California's Coachella Valley. Because of federal anti-miscegenation laws, most Filipino strikers were over 50 years old and risked what little they had for better living conditions. Led by Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz under the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), the strike successfully granted workers a pay raise to $1.40 an hour.
Larry Itliong, Farmworker Movement Documentation Project, University of California San Diego Library
Philip Vera Cruz, Institute for Public Relations
Although workers made gains in Coachella, other regions in California continued to severely underpay immigrants, and farm owners refused to sign contracts with farmworkers. Thus, strikers moved north to Delano, California to continue the strike. Upon arriving, farm owners only paid the immigrants $1.20 an hour, refusing to raise wages because they considered Filipino workers easily replaceable.
"No, we should not work for $1.20 per hour that the growers are offering. We just came from Coachella and they have met our demands for $1.40 plus 25 cents a box bonus. The price of grapes in the markets has gone up to an unprecedented high. We should insist they increase the wages. This time we will also hold out for better working conditions. We need cool water and as there are some women with our crews, we need toilet facilities to give them some privacy.”
~ Larry Itliong, quoted in Andrew G. Imutan account, 1965
"Although AWOC won a victory in Coachella, it should only be considered in retrospect a half-victory. We won the salary increase but we didn't get a contract, and in a labor negotiation, the salary is really secondary to a contract. If you don't get a contract it means the growers have not recognized your union."
~ Craig Scharlin, Philip Vera Cruz: A Personal History of Filipino Immigrants and the Farmworkers Movement, 2000
Map of the California grape farms, New York Times, 2012
Marina Peng, Senior Division, Individual Website