the pickers demanded $1.40 an hour, 25 cents per box of grapes
October 21, 2023 6:39 PM Subscribe
The story of labor organizer Larry Itliong and Stockton's Little Manila (Youtube link). Filipino farmworkers were the first to walk out off vineyards in 1965, prompting the Delano Grape Strike and, ultimately, the formation of the United Farm Workers.
Little Manila Is in the Heart: The Making of the Filipina/o American Community in Stockton, California (introduction can be downloaded as a pdf). Happy Filipino American History Month!
Little Manila Is in the Heart: The Making of the Filipina/o American Community in Stockton, California (introduction can be downloaded as a pdf). Happy Filipino American History Month!
Me, neither! Thank you, spamandkimchi!
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 12:05 AM on October 22, 2023
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 12:05 AM on October 22, 2023
As a boy, grapes were one of the crops we worked on yearly. We got 3 cents a box for table or wine grapes and 10 cents for each tray of Thompson seedless (raisins). We applied burning newspapers to the wasp nests in the vines for free. At 12 years of age, I could box about 200 boxes each day, nearly half that number of trays. I did more trays if I worked with a partner--one cut the bunches into a box, while the other laid out the paper and spread the grapes.
Ironically, my last truck-driving job was hauling grapes from the vineyards near Fresno to the wineries. My load typically topped 100,000 pounds on the scales at the winery, about 20,000 pounds over the legal limit in those days. I was paid by the trip, about $200 a day.
The grape pickers were all mechanical. A field boss and two workers managed the picker and loaded the contents of the bins into two large vats on each of the two trailers each truck pulled. Five drivers and three field workers did the work of maybe forty or fifty people and hauled five times the amount of grapes to wineries. One of this system's benefits is that once picked, grapes change their acidity from hour to hour. Grapes that are too sugary go to the distillery rather than the winery and get less money per ton. A mechanical picker can harvest a row maybe ten times faster than a single human.
The mechanical picker scoops wine grapes into its vat in a kind of lumpy slurry. Wineries don't care. They separate leaves and stems (and wasp nests and dead rodents) and pile this stuff up in huge mounds near the winery. Ask some Fresnoids who live downwind how that works out for them. Sometimes my house in Clovis had one wall completely covered with flies.
Table grapes are still picked by hand.
posted by mule98J at 10:19 AM on October 22, 2023 [11 favorites]
Ironically, my last truck-driving job was hauling grapes from the vineyards near Fresno to the wineries. My load typically topped 100,000 pounds on the scales at the winery, about 20,000 pounds over the legal limit in those days. I was paid by the trip, about $200 a day.
The grape pickers were all mechanical. A field boss and two workers managed the picker and loaded the contents of the bins into two large vats on each of the two trailers each truck pulled. Five drivers and three field workers did the work of maybe forty or fifty people and hauled five times the amount of grapes to wineries. One of this system's benefits is that once picked, grapes change their acidity from hour to hour. Grapes that are too sugary go to the distillery rather than the winery and get less money per ton. A mechanical picker can harvest a row maybe ten times faster than a single human.
The mechanical picker scoops wine grapes into its vat in a kind of lumpy slurry. Wineries don't care. They separate leaves and stems (and wasp nests and dead rodents) and pile this stuff up in huge mounds near the winery. Ask some Fresnoids who live downwind how that works out for them. Sometimes my house in Clovis had one wall completely covered with flies.
Table grapes are still picked by hand.
posted by mule98J at 10:19 AM on October 22, 2023 [11 favorites]
I grew up in the Bay Area in the 70s-80s and I too never heard of this strike.
posted by rhizome at 2:30 AM on October 23, 2023
posted by rhizome at 2:30 AM on October 23, 2023
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posted by samthemander at 8:13 PM on October 21, 2023 [1 favorite]