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The Central Valleys Poor West Side

Marxist Analysis · 2026-05-13

Core Argument

The article argues that the contemporary struggle to unionise immigrant farmworkers in California's Central Valley represents a continuation of earlier waves of agricultural labour militancy, but under qualitatively different conditions. Where the United Farm Workers of the 1970s organised a workforce of relatively well-paid, predominantly male lettuce cutters with significant bargaining power, today's organising drive at Paramount Farms confronts a consolidated corporate agribusiness employing a more precarious, lower-paid, and family-based workforce. The central thesis is that the structural transformation of California agriculture — mechanisation, corporate consolidation, and the shift to permanent crops like nuts — has fragmented the old basis of union power, but that the new workforce, driven by desperation wages and employer brutality, is generating its own militancy. The article claims this militancy poses a challenge not only to the employer but to the union itself: immigrant workers expect a fighting organisation, not a business union.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis is grounded in a materialist understanding of class struggle as shaped by changes in the productive forces and the organisation of capital. It draws on:

  • The labour process and deskilling: The mechanisation of lettuce harvesting destroyed the craft-like position of the lechugeros, whose piecerate system and control over the pace of work gave them structural power. The article implicitly understands this as a classic instance of capital's drive to break the power of skilled labour through technological change.
  • The reserve army of labour and super-exploitation: The contemporary workforce at Paramount is composed of immigrant families — men, women, and children — earning wages ($6.00–$6.75/hour) below the cost of reproducing their labour power, as the article's detailed budget makes clear. This is super-exploitation enabled by the availability of a vulnerable, often undocumented, labour force.
  • The state as instrument of capital: The sheriff's deputy who watched strikebreakers smash a car window while chatting with the contractor is presented without commentary — the point is made by the fact itself. The state's coercive apparatus is not neutral.
  • The recomposition of the working class: The article traces how demographic change — the influx of Mexican and Central American workers — is transforming the Labourers' Union itself, creating a tension between the union's historical conservatism and the militancy of its new members. This is a concrete example of how class composition drives organisational form.

The article sits within the tradition of labour journalism that treats a single workplace struggle as a window onto broader structural dynamics. It is not a theoretical text, but its method — starting from the concrete, moving to the general — is consistent with historical materialism.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article was written in 1999, but its relevance to the current conjuncture is striking:

  • Corporate consolidation in agriculture: Paramount Farms, owned by Roll International, exemplifies the concentration of agribusiness capital. The company's $250 million in annual nut sales is part of a conglomerate stretching from citrus to collectibles — a reminder that "family farming" has long given way to corporate ownership with no organic connection to the land or its communities.
  • The permanent crop economy: The shift from lettuce (annual, harvest-intensive, requiring large seasonal labour forces) to pistachios and almonds (permanent, requiring year-round maintenance and packing) has transformed the geography and temporality of labour struggle. Workers are no longer transient single men but settled families — yet wages remain below subsistence.
  • The anti-union apparatus: The article names Mendez and Associates, a consultancy specialising in defeating union drives among Spanish-speaking workers. This is a concrete instance of the multi-million dollar union-busting industry that has grown alongside the decline in private-sector union density.
  • The murder of Obdulia Diaz: Fired mid-shift, denied a ride or the use of a phone, she walked home and was killed. The company then forbade workers from discussing her death. This is not an anecdote — it is a window into the regime of terror that constitutes "employment at will" for the most vulnerable workers.

The article's relevance today lies in its demonstration that the conditions which produced the UFW's rise — mass organisation, the strike weapon, community solidarity — are still present, but that capital has learned to counter them through mechanisation, legal harassment, and the creation of a more atomised, fearful workforce.

Where the Argument Continues

The article is a snapshot of a campaign in progress — the union vote was scheduled for October 7, 1999, shortly after publication. The argument continues in:

  • David Bacon's broader body of work: Bacon has written extensively on California agriculture, immigrant labour, and the labour movement for decades. His book The Right to Stay Home and his ongoing reporting for The Nation and other outlets trace the same themes.
  • In Defence of Marxism's coverage of US labour: IDOM has published analyses of the 2023 UAW strikes, the Teamsters' UPS contract fight, and the broader question of union strategy in an era of declining militancy. The Central Valley article connects to these as a case study in the difficulties of organising the most exploited sectors.
  • Against the Stream episodes on labour strategy: The podcast has addressed the question of how to build rank-and-file power within conservative unions, and the tension between business unionism and class-struggle unionism. The Paramount drive is a concrete example of that tension playing out.

The article does not develop a theoretical analysis of why the Labourers' Union was chosen over the UFW, nor does it explore the political economy of the nut industry in detail. These are gaps that Bacon's later work, and broader Marxist analyses of agribusiness, fill.

Connections

  • C. Wright Mills, The New Men of Power: On the conservative character of American labour leadership and the gap between union officials and rank-and-file militancy.
  • Mike Davis, City of Quartz: On the transformation of Southern California's economy and the role of immigrant labour in the region's class structure.
  • Carey McWilliams, Factories in the Field: The classic history of California's agricultural labour struggles, which the article's narrative of the UFW's rise and fall echoes.
  • Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I, Chapter 25 ("The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation"): On the reserve army of labour and the mechanisms by which capital ensures a supply of exploitable workers.
  • IDOM articles on the UAW strikes (2023): For a contemporary comparison of how militant rank-and-file organisation can challenge both employers and union bureaucracies.

Key Quotes

  1. "In the 1980s, growers brought in machines, and when the culture of the lechugeros faded, the strength of the union faded with it."

  2. "She makes $6.00/hour, and her husband, who works in the same plant, makes $6.75, giving the family about $450 a week to live on. But rent on the doublewide is $528, food for five kids runs $175 a week, and other bills absorb another $450 every month."

  3. "Strikebreakers broke every window in her car, while a local sheriff's deputy looked on, talking amiably with the contractor."

  4. "We never saw her alive again," says Gonzalea, "and as if that wasn't bad enough, we were then told that we couldn't talk about what happened to her at work."

  5. "According to Yanira Merino, when immigrant workers like Llamas and Lara risk organizing a union in the face of such opposition, it gives them high expectations that a militant campaign will win them not only a voice at work, but one in the union itself. 'That's the challenge the labor movement has to meet here,' she declares."

  6. "Coming from El Salvador, I never thought I'd see that in a first-world country like this. But even though you put your life on the line to organize a union back home, you have to fight for your rights in either place. I don't see much of a difference."