We Feed America: Recognizing Latino field workers for their impact on food production

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They work the agricultural fields, clean the streets, the gardens, prepare food in restaurants, take care of children and clean the houses.

Many of them find themselves working in inclement temperatures this Labor Day. They are the heroes and many of them are not recognized.

Latino Americans have been critical players since the early 1900s. Their organizing and agitation have led to improved working conditions and wages in industries across the U.S.

“Latinos have been part of the long history of the construction of this country and its labor force,” especially in the American West, says Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, project director at UCLA’s Center for Labor Research and Education to History Channel. “They were part of the completion of the transcontinental railroad. They were part of the early Los Angeles building boom.” And, of course, they have had a profound impact on the massive world of American food production, where they have been heavily represented both in the fields and in processing plants.

The fight for protections and living wages by Latino workers has been an uphill battle, burdened with layers of discrimination. “The great expansion of labor rights in the 1930s during the [Franklin D. Roosevelt] administration, which led to the creation of the National Labor Board, specifically excluded farmworkers and domestic workers from the right to create unions,” says Rivera-Salgado. It’s an outcome he attributes to a legacy of racial subjugation against African Americans who had long labored in America’s fields.

Latino workers continue to drive our economy, and let’s give recognition to those efforts.