Consists of 21 interviews with members of the Watsonville community including striking workers, representatives from supporting organization, and the corporations involved in the strike.

The Watsonville Cannery Strike took place in Watsonville, a town of nearly 30,000 located in the heart of the agricultural Salinas Valley,home to numerous canneries that process the majority of frozen food products sold in the United States. In September 1985, nearly half of the town's 4,000 cannery workers went out on strike to protest wage cutbacks. In February 1986, R. Shaw Frozen Foods reached a settlement with their 900 employees that included a 17% pay cut. It wasn't until a year later that workers at Watsonville Canning returned to work. The bitter 18-month strike can serve as a case study of the remarkable challenges facing agribusiness workers, whose livelihoods are affected as much by local politics as by the international economy. These recordings provide unique first person accounts about how the strikers and the Watsonville community came together and maintained solidarity for such a long duration, and the community organizations and unions that came together to support them.

38 compact disc (1 box)

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Collection is open for research.