大象传媒

Tech workers, warehouse employees, and baristas  at major U.S. companies long deemed long shots for unions, including Apple, Amazon, and Starbucks.

To me, these recent union wins recall another pivotal period in the U.S. labor movement several decades ago. But that one was led by migrants from Central America.

I鈥檝e been researching human rights and immigration from Central America since the 1980s. In today鈥檚  over immigration, the substantial contributions Central American immigrants have made to U.S. society over the past 30 years rarely come up. One contribution in particular is how Guatemalan and Salvadoran immigrants helped expand the U.S. labor movement in the 1980s, organizing far-reaching workers鈥� rights campaigns in immigrant-dominated industries that mainstream unions had thought to be untouchable.

Migrants and Unions

More than  Salvadorans and Guatemalans came to the United States from 1981 to 1990, fleeing army massacres, political persecution, and civil war.

Since the 1980s, I have  this wave of migrants. Back then, President Ronald Reagan warned apocryphally that Central America was a threat to the United States,  in 1983 that 鈥淓l Salvador is nearer to Texas than Texas is to Massachusetts.鈥�

Just 2% of Salvadorans and Guatemalans who applied 鈥攕o few that a 1990 class-action lawsuit alleging discrimination compelled the U.S. government to reopen tens of thousands of cases. In recent years, about  of their asylum petitions were granted.

Then, as now, many undocumented immigrants in the U.S. worked in agriculture or service industries, . Unionization barely touched these sectors in the 1980s.

More broadly, the bargaining power of labor unions was suffering under Reagan, whose  started with his . Downsizing and outsourcing at American companies in the 1980s also  and pushed wages down.

Many Guatemalans and Salvadorans were veteran community organizers. They had faced down government terror to participate in , peasant leagues, , and  initiatives鈥攁ll currents in 1980s revolutionary Central America.

Drawing on these experiences, many Central American immigrants began to organize in their U.S. workplaces, demanding higher wages and safer conditions.

Salvadorans Led Justice for Janitors to Victory

Salvadoran immigrants in California were pivotal in , a  low-paid workers鈥� movement that inspired today鈥檚 .

Justice for Janitors began in Los Angeles in 1990. It aimed to reverse the wage drops janitors suffered over the past decade.

Rather than do battle with the small subcontractors who hired cleaning crews for big office buildings, Justice for Janitors targeted the corporations that owned those buildings. Led by experienced Salvadoran unionists鈥攕ome of whom had  back home鈥攖he movement used nonviolent civil disobedience and strikes to expose exploitative labor practices.

Speaking out could be dangerous. Police once clubbed participants at a  through Los Angeles鈥� Century City neighborhood on June 15, 1990. Undocumented workers feared deportation.

But it worked. Janitors in Los Angeles won a  after their 1990 citywide strike,  mainstream labor unions that even the city鈥檚 most marginalized workers鈥攗ndocumented Central Americans, many of them women鈥攈ad real organizing power.

Over the next decade, some , under the banner of the . The movement negotiated contracts that increased wages and health benefits for janitors across the U.S.

Guatemalans Defended Florida Farmworkers

Hundreds of thousands of people fled Guatemala during the early 1980s, escaping a  against Indigenous communities that left entire regions of its highlands charred and empty.

Roughly 20,000 of these Guatemalan refugees, many of whom spoke , landed in  in 1982, finding work in sweltering tomato farms and citrus groves.

Up to 90% of the fresh tomatoes in U.S. supermarkets .

Working conditions in the state鈥檚 tomato fields were dismal in the 1980s. Migrants  per 32-pound bucket of tomatoes picked. Some were , as a 1997  exposed.

In 1993, Guatemalan immigrants joined with Florida鈥檚 Haitian and Mexican farmworkers to form the , a community worker alliance that began in the basement of a local church in Immokalee, Florida. It used strategies common to Latin American protest movements, including street theater and socially conscious radio broadcasts, to unite Florida鈥檚 agricultural workers.

After five years of work stoppages, hunger strikes, and marches, Florida鈥檚 tomato pickers won wage increases of . A multiyear nationwide boycott of  convinced the fast-food chain in 2005 to increase the earnings of the farmworkers who supply its ingredients. Other fast-food giants followed suit.

In 2015, the Immokalee coalition launched the , an industrywide agreement with Florida tomato growers to promote strict health and safety standards and allow outside monitors to oversee working conditions. That same year, President Barack Obama gave the Coalition of Immokalee Workers the  in Combating Modern Day Slavery.

Guatemalans Organized North Carolina Poultry Plants

As Guatemalan migrants  during the late 1980s, recruited by labor contractors in other states, they soon became a powerful organizing force in North Carolina, too.

Case Farms, a poultry company that supplies KFC, Taco Bell, Boar鈥檚 Head, and the federal school lunch program, was a  place to work. Safety regulations were routinely ignored to increase output, and workers suffered serious injuries鈥攊ncluding losing limbs to cutting machines.

In 1990, the Guatemalan immigrants at Case Farms鈥� plant in Morganton, North Carolina, organized a union drive.

As labor historian Leon Fink describes in his book , Guatemalan poultry workers drew on prior organizing experiences back home鈥攊ncluding coffee plantation strikes and Mayan pride movements鈥攖o organize workers.

After  of walkouts, marches, and hunger strikes, the Case Farm workers voted in 1995 to join the Laborers鈥� International Union of North America. The company refused to negotiate, however, and the union pulled out of contract talks after six years.

In 2017, Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio challenged Case Farms to , after a New York Times and ProPublica investigation exposed ongoing abusive labor practices there.

These unionization stories show Central American migrants in a new light鈥攏ot as criminals or victims, but as people who have helped make the U.S. a safer place for workers.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the . This is an updated version of an  on Jan. 18, 2019.