Only Strong Women Stayed: Women Workers and the National Floral Workers Strike, 1968-1969

On July1, 1968, after months of organizing, the women-led National Floral Workers Organization (NFWO) went out on strike against the Kitayama Corporation's floral operations in Brighton, Colorado. One of the first floral-workers' strikes in which the organizers and the majority of the workers were Chicanas and Mexicanas, the strike quickly became a rallying point for the Denver-based Chicano Crusade for Justice, and the United Mexican American Students (UMAS) and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) activists at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The story of this strike, which has yet to be fully told within the historical context of Chicanas' struggle for justice, is part of a work in progress. The following account is drawn from oral interviews by the author with Guadalupe (Lupe) Briseno, then president of the NFWO and the "sparkplug" of the strike. Texas-born Lupe and her husband Jose Hernandez Briseno had worked as migrant laborers in Colorado for a number of years while raising their four children. When their youngest child was old enough to go to school, Lupe Briseno sought work:

I found employment at Kitayama Brothers Company, in Brighton, Colorado. I went to work at the Carnation and Rose plant and recognized many women whom I had met in 1957 when we moved into the area. My friends, these women I had known, were now middle-aged, in their thirties and forties, sad and beaten down. They had no animo.... I looked around, and I asked what is going [on] here. The women told me how they were mistreated and taken advantage of by [the company and its managers]. I told them that workers are not to be treated without respect. ¹

Kitayama Brothers, a partnership in Brighton and in Union City, California, was one of the most influential members of the National Association of Florists (NAF). In 1966, Ray Kitayama located the sixty-unit greenhouse operations two miles north of Brighton in Weld County, claiming to have moved into the area because of its need for industry. However, the Mexican women of the NFWO believed that the carnation and rose factory was located near Brighton in order to have access to cheap Mexican labor.

When Lupe Briseno began working at the plant, conditions in the greenhouses were very bad. The women were tired of the long hours and poor working conditions, the lack of sanitary eating areas and the low wages. The women worked inside the nurseries on uncovered floors where dirt turned to mud, with the constant high humidity year around that produced several inches of water daily. During the winter months the humidity had the effect of producing a continual misty rain. Under these conditions, slipping and falling were regular occurrences. Colds, flues, pneumonia, coughs, allergies, arthritis pain, and inflamed sinuses were common health problems suffered by workers. The women were not provided protective clothing or coverings of any kind to prevent them from getting wet or injured. Every day the women came to work dry and went home wet after working nine- to ten-hour days, including Saturdays and sometimes Sundays, with no overtime pay. The women were allowed one fifteen-minute work break in the morning and a half-hour lunch, and only a few were allowed a ten-minute break during the afternoon. One drinking fountain and two bathrooms served over one hundred workers. The women acquired no seniority rights. ² Briseno later said:

When I first walked into that greenhouse, and I see my friends... older than I am... crying because of the abuse that is going on in that plant. How can that be? We are Americans. We are born here, and it doesn't matter, even if you are not born here, you are not supposed to be treated the way.... I was a housewife. This was the...