The Farm Labor Movement in the Midwest

The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) was founded by Baldemar Velasquez in 1967 to challenge the poverty and powerlessness that confronted migrant farmworkers in the Midwest. This study documents FLOC's development through its first quarter century and analyzes its effectiveness as a social reform movement. Barger and Reza tell the story of FLOC's founding as a sister organization of the United Farm Workers (UFW) in California. They devote particular attention to FLOC's eight-year struggle (1978-1986) with the Campbell Soup company that led to three-way contracts for improved working conditions between FLOC, Campbell Soup, and Campbell's tomato and cucumber growers in Ohio and Michigan. (Similar contracts were later signed with Heinz, Aunt Jane's, and Green Bay and their growers in those states.) These contracts significantly changed the structure of agribusiness and instituted key reforms in American farm labor. The authors also address the processes of social change involved in FLOC actions. They use a systems model of social adaptation to analyze the internal and external forces that directed the FLOC movement and helped to achieve farm labor reform. Their findings are based on extensive original research, including participant observation in migrant camps, interviews with farmworkers, growers, and representatives of agribusiness, and survey research among farmworkers and the public, as well as on personal involvement with FLOC leaders and supporters. The Farm Labor Movement in the Midwest will be of interest to a wide interdisciplinary audience, including Mexican American studies, sociology, psychology, political science, anthropology, labor history, and economics.