Strike at Farah
Abstract
Fed up with Farah Manufactuing’s union-busting practices and continued mistreatment of its employees, 4,000 garment workers stepped away from their stations and walked out of the Gateway plant in El Paso, Texas on March 9, 1972. This marked the beginning of a two-year strike that garnered national attention. Mexican American women made up the majority of the company’s workforce as well as the participates in the strike. Through new outlets, the perception of the strikers and their ability to organize shifted from being thought of as unthreatening to a force to be reckoned with.
Introduction
The road to unionizing was a long and hard road for the workers of Farah Manufacturing. During the early 1970s, the massive men’s apparel company had employed over ten thousand workers, over eighty-five percent of whom were Chicanas (Mexican American women). William Farah, CEO of the company, was held in high regard by the upper echelons of El Paso, both for his contributions to making the city a major manufacturing hub and his reputation of being incredibly generous to his employees. However, free bus services and Thanksgiving dinners were not enough compensation for the workers of Farah. In 1969, the cutters of the El Paso plant attempted to unionize, demanding better pay, safer working conditions, and better treatment from management. Despite the overwhelming support amongst workers to join the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA), William Farah appealed to the National Labor Relations Board, who ruled that the cutting room could not be used as a bargaining chip in union negotiations. In the years that followed, Farah utilized different unionbusting techniques, including intimidation, humiliation, and outright firing anyone suspected of union activity.
Chicanas were most of the workforce within Farah.their numbers, most of upper management were White American men. These supervisors cultivated an atmosphere of competition among the women, pitting them against one another and promising higher wages if they outperformed others on their floor. Yet, after years of maintaining high outputs, the women would never receive their promised bonuses. The women were also subjected to constant racial and sexual harassment from management. For instance, a young, attractive worker may be given preferred treatment by accepting advancements from management. Meanwhile, their peers were screamed at for not meeting outrageous quotas, reprimanded for arbitrary reasons, or even had items thrown at them in a fit of rage.
While all workers at Farah faced job insecurity, pregnant women were particularly vulnerable. Farah did not offer any form of maternity leave. Instead, the on-site clinics were stocked with birth control, and it highly encouraged for women take them as to limit their responsibilities outside of the plant. It was an open secret that should a woman leave to deliver a baby, she would find herself either out of a job or, at best, with her pay cut back down to the minimum of $1.70 an hour. For these reasons, most women chose to work until the last possible moment before she left for the delivery room.
In early May of 1972, organizers in El Paso held a march in response to the firing of 26 workers to which several workers from San Antonio joined in solidarity. The following Tuesday, one employee had been confronted by management about his involvement in the El Paso march and was promptly fired. The outrage stemming from this unjust firing led to five hundred workers leaving their stations and walking out of the plant in protest. When word had reached the El Paso plant, within days they had their own. By the end of the month, 4,000 workers walked.
As a longtime opposer of unions, William Farah was not pleased by this turn of events. He believed himself to be extremely fair to his employees and this was obviously the work of greedy troublemakers. As reported in a newsletter written by the San Fransico Bay Area Farah Strike Support Committee, one worker recounts the first meeting between William Farah and his employees regarding the walkouts. Farah began by praising those who were “smart enough to stay out of the union.” However, the atmosphere took a sharp turn as Farah said to his Chicano workforce, “All of this Chicano, La Raza thing is not going to help you at all, do not believe anything they say. It is we the Americano who has done more and will do more.” The tension between the workers and management was exacerbated by racial prejudice. Later, when the El Paso plant was lined with armed guards and muzzled dogs, Farah claimed that it merely some extra precautions against “boozed up Latin kids.”
It is evident that in the early days of the strike, there was little attention given to the strikers. Short columns nestled in with a dozen others offered glimpses of the progress made by organizers. On May 12, 1972, the Corpus Christi Caller reported that—according to Farah Manufacturing spokesperson, Kenneth Carr—after 750 workers had walked out, 200 new employees had stepped in their place a mere days after the initial walkout. This statement was corroborated by the Dallas Morning News with the addition of Tony Sanchez, a union official contradicting Carr’s statement by reporting the over 2,000 workers were participating in the walkouts. The following month, on July 1, the Corpus Christi Caller another statement by Carr. Until the union organizers receive written support from 30% of the workforce at Farah, he believes that “there is no reason for us to negotiate with them.” These articles serve to illustrate how unthreatened Farah Manufacturing--and, by extension, the garment industry as a whole-- was to the possibility of a union gaining a foothold with the company.
In the collaborative essay, Women at Farah: An Unfinished Story, the authors describe the complex system of labor practices that was cultivated within El Paso. Along the United States-Mexican border exists an area with allows for large corporations to take advantage of both cheap labor and the near nonexistence of collective bargaining. With the establishment of the Labor Management Relations Act in 1947, Texas become a right-to-work state. This meant that all workers were entitled to the same benefits as specified in a union contract regardless of whether they are a member of said union. In effect, unions struggled to gain traction with few members. Additionally, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) kept wages low by allowing companies to outsource labor from Mexican nationals during peak operation seasons, then removing them afterwards. With these systems working against Chicanos, El Paso was an area that seldom seen successful unions.
However, while many Chicanas were not experienced in union organizing, they still were exposed to it in keys ways. Northern Mexico saw its fair share of strikes in the textile mills, which some Chicanas had witnessed as children or knew some involved. Even though El Paso actively discouraged union activity, that did not mean organizing did not happen at all. The city’s smelting and packing plants had their own run-ins with unions.
Within labor history scholarship, the Farah Stike in El Paso has been credited with spotlighting Chicana militancy in the face of a patriarchal system. While the strike was successful, Farah Manufacturing could not recover from the loss of revenue and the newfound power the union within the plant slowly diminished. Despite this, the strike lied the groundwork for future women-led organization.
The ACWA was quick to support the Farah strikers. They provided much needed aid to the families affected by the strike. Though the ACWA gave the strikers the creditability that they needed, the organization often downplayed women’s presences in their campaigns. In an AWCA Christmas card released in 1973, the image of a young child can be seen holding the hand of her father. While the aim of this card was meant to invoke sympathy for the plight of the strikers, it erased the fact that in a strike predominately made up of women and it was them who brought their children to demonstration. Women within the ACWA frequently filled clerking positions or were placed on picketing shifts. It was not the organization received pushback did they send women speakers to give speeches and interviews on the strikers' behalf. Finding their skills being overlooked by the ACWA, a subgroup was created within the union that reemphasize the role of women in the Farah Strike, Unidad Para Siempre.
Discussion Questions
1.How did the fact that most of the strikers participates were women effect the public perceptions of the strike as a whole?
2.Why did the ACWA only send women to give speeches or interviews after they received pushback?
3.What were the challenges that women faced that made them apprehensive about joining the strike? Were these challenges unique?
4.In what ways was El Paso’s labor culture shaped by immigration and right-to-work laws? What does this say about the public option regarding immigration and Mexican American workers?
Bibliography
Coyle, Laurie, Gail Hershatter, and Emily Honig. “Women at Farah: An Unfinished Story.” A Needle, a Bobbin, a Strike: Women Needleworkers in America, edited by Joan M. Jensen and Sue Davidson, 227–77. Temple University Press, 1984.
“Farah Workers Go on Strike.” Corpus Christi Caller. June 1, 1972.
Ledesma, Irene, "Texas Newspapers and Chicana Workers’ Activism, 1919-1974.” The Western Historical Quarterly. Vol. 26, Oxford University Press, 1995, 309–31
“Plant Strike Grows at El Paso.” Corpus Christi Caller. May 12, 1972.
Solis, Gabriel. “Farah’s 50 Years Later” Spectre Journal, June 16, 2022
“Strike Action.” Dallas Morning News. May 12, 1972.
Suarez, Joan. 2024. Bill Barry Interview with Joan Suarez, 2024. University of Texas at San Antonio.
“Union Drive in the Southwest: Chicanos Strike at Farah.” The San Francisco Bay Area Farah Strike Support Committee, January 1974