Today in Labor History August 27, 1934: 7,000 Filipino lettuce cutters and mainly white packing shed workers went on strike against the powerful Salinas Valley growers and shippers, demanding union recognition & improved wages and working conditions. Many of the white workers were Dust Bowl refugees. Most of the Filipino workers had immigrated as U.S. nationals, after the U.S. took over the Philippines, in the wake of the Spanish-American and Filipino-American Wars, the latter of which included a genocide in which a quarter of a million Filipino civilians died of famine and disease. There was rampant persecution of Filipino workers in California. Laws prohibited Filipino women from immigrating to the U.S. and prevented Filipino men from consorting with Anglo women. The American Federation of Labor initially refused to recognize or support the Filipino Labor Union (FLU). Scabs and vigilantes viciously beat Filipino strikers and chased 800 out of the Salinas Valley at gunpoint. They also burned down a labor camp. Police arrested picketers and union leaders for violation of the Criminal Syndicalism laws (laws that prohibited advocating any change to the economic and political status quo). The FLU ultimately won a raise and union recognition. However, discrimination and racist violence against Filipinos continued. Steinbeck wrote about the plight of Filipino migrant farmworkers in the Salinas Valley in a 1936 series of articles for the San Francisco News called “The Harvest of Gypsies,” which formed part of the basis for his novel, Grapes of Wrath. He said they were among the most discriminated, and best organized, ethnic group in the U.S. Their organizing, he went on to say, brought on terrorism against them by vigilantes and the government. Larry Itliong did some of his earliest organizing during this strike, which would inspire the formation of the Filipino Labor Union. He would go on to lead several other farmworkers’ strikes, including the Delano Grape Strike in 1865, together with Cesar Chavez’s National Farm Workers Association. They would go on to cofound the United Farm Workers. You can read my article “Larry Itliong and the Filipino Roots of the United Farm Workers Movement” here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2026/03/25/larry-itliong-and-the-filipino-roots-of-the-united-farm-workers-movement/ #workingclass #LaborHistory #union #strike #filipino #salinas #farmworkers #racism #immigration #colonialism #police #policebrutality #vigilantes #dustbowl #steinbeck #journalism #books #author #writer #fiction @bookstadon