From Mission to Microchip: A History of the California Labor Movement by Fred B. Glass (review)

Larry Itliong arrived in California in 1929, when his native Philippines was still a United States colony, and began organizing agricultural laborers. In 1965, the seasoned, tough organizer led a strike of thousands of Filipino grape workers of the AFL-CIO's Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee in Delano, California. The Delano Grape Strike and the farmworkers movement became one of the significant social movements of the twentieth century. Decades later, thousands of janitors, most of them Central American immigrant women in Los Angeles, fearlessly organized themselves although janitors' unions were in their death knell, and despite virulent anti-immigrant sentiment. The stories of the creative strategies, militant bravery, and heroism of the Service Employees International Union and its Justice for Janitors campaign in 1990s Los Angeles and the Delano Grape Strike and Boycott of the United Farm Workers are just two of the dozens of stories told in Fred B. Glass's epic narrative of the labor movement in California.

Glass's ambitious book—no single work has ever attempted to tell history of the entire California labor movement—comes at a historic moment in which California's Left, of which unions play a critical role, has demonstrated staunch resistance to the reactionary politics of the current White House and Congress. The state legislature recently raised the minimum wage and passed an overtime bill for farmworkers. Yet this year the Supreme Court considers the fate of public-sector "fair share fees" for union activities. The court's ruling could destroy public sector unions. All those fighting to protect the working class would do well to read Glass's book carefully to learn from the past.

Glass works as communications director of the California Federation of Teachers and is an instructor at City College of San Francisco. His meticulously researched book emerged from research for his ten-part documentary on California labor history, "Golden Lands, Working Hands," and, as he writes, his need for a book for his course on California labor movements. The book's only shortcoming, for scholars at least, is the lack of footnotes, though Glass does provide bibliographic notes.

The book opens as the state's indigenous peoples are violently coerced into working under the mission system. Glass provides rich details on the establishment of white supremacy and capitalism in the state; the growth of working-class consciousness and unions in industries from beer to oil, autos to Hollywood; farmworker struggles; the radical Left politics that grounded much of the state's labor movement; and the impact of World War II and the Cold War. The postwar California dream of consumerism, home-ownership, and suburban life came as a direct result of higher wages bought by the labor movement, Glass argues.

Glass's research shines in his discussions of the larger legacies of the General Strike in San Francisco in 1934, the influence of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and its radical politics, and the significance and legacies of civil rights unionism of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, especially on organizers who were women, immigrants, and people of color, such as Bert Corona, Luisa Moreno, and Rose Pesotta, and their constituents. Glass also brings to light the contributions of the feminist movement to the state's public sector unions and the movement for comparable wages. Particularly engaging are the stories he tells of labor's resilience during the Cold War and the Reagan years, when union manufacturing jobs disappeared and the state's workforce skewed browner, more immigrant, and poorer than ever. Innovations such as worker's centers for immigrants and service workers, along with a coalition of nurses, teachers, and firefighters, brought hard-fought victories.

Most important, Glass tells the story of California's labor movement as one grounded in white supremacy and racism. Though all were either immigrants or descendants of immigrants, California's white working class zealously protected their gains and...