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The California Sanitary Canning Company Strike

Back in the day on August 31st, 1939, four hundred mostly Mexican women working at the California Sanitary Canning Company walked off their jobs. George and Joseph Shapiro, who owned the large Los Angeles processing firm, refused to bargain with the workers despite their dramatic move coming at the profitable height of the peach season. Organized under the banner of the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America, the women nevertheless pressed on with their demands. They wanted, among other things, union recognition, a closed shop, an increase in wages and the dismissal of almost every supervisor on staff. With the organizing leadership of Dorothy Ray Healy, the women workers prepared for the prospects of a lengthy strike. In one highly effective move, children picketed outside the wealthy homes of the Shapiro brothers with signs that read, “I’m underfed because my mama is underpaid!”

After that, the Cal San owners finally bargained with UCAPAWA Local 75 as the workers gained a wage increase, supervisor layoffs and, most of all, a closed shop.

For Uprising, this is your truth professa’ saying it’s no mystery why they conceal our people’s history