From Labor Contracts to Labor Contractors: The United Farm Workers, the Agribusiness Landscape, and the Making of Modern Labor Precarity (1964-2000)

Labor contracting firms allow employers to access cheap, flexible labor supplies, while off-loading responsibility for labor law compliance. What are the origins of labor contracting as a force in local and global political economies?

This project will explore the making of labor precarity consequent to the rise and fall of the United Farm Workers union in California. California is the focus because of its  long-standing role as an innovator in labor relations. With the rise of the UFW many farm workers gained secure labor contracts for the first time.

Its decline saw these contracts replaced by a system whereby labor contracting firms became a dominant force in the farm labor market.

The project explores how: (1) this transformation of labor relations was prompted by shifting geographical conditions of production; (2) this geographical shift was decisive for the form of the labor-contracting system; (3) the result may have served as one origin of the form of labor contracting now globally prevalent.

This crucial historical moment will be examined through archival and legal analysis, drawing on records of unions, agribusinesses, state agents, legislative debates, and key labor-law cases.

Results will be synthesized with literature on labor contracting and precarity to understand the specific forces that make and perpetuate contracting and precarity.

The project will contribute to literatures on labor precarity, labor geography, agrarian studies, and California labor history.