Vol. 76/No. 17 April 30, 2012
May 1, 1987
WATSONVILLE, Calif.—An important victory was won here recently for the 1,000 strikers who stayed out for 18 months against Watsonville Canning and Frozen Food Co. and its successor, Norcal Frozen Foods.A victory for the thousands of workers in Local 912 of the Teamsters union.
The strikers, a large majority of whom are Mexican women, waged a stubborn fight that halted the downward spiral of wages and benefits in this canning and freezing industry center. The united fight of the ranks (not a single striker crossed the picket line) was backed up by a broad-based strike support effort.
And a courageous 11th hour decision by the strikers to postpone for a week a vote on Norcal’s “final offer”—with Teamster officials declaring that the strike was over and that no more union strike benefits would be paid—was key to sealing the victory.
April 30, 1962
One by one Kennedy’s pretenses that U.S. involvement in South Vietnam’s civil war differs in any way from the U.S. “police action” in Korea are being dropped.Kennedy’s direct plunging of U.S. forces into the “dirty war” against the rebellious peasants of the southeast Asian country was made evident by the April 15 landing of a 400-man U.S. Marine helicopter unit in South Vietnam.
That the war of South Vietnam dictator Ngo Dinh Diem and the U.S. forces is not only against the Viet Cong guerrilla bands, but against the Vietnamese population as a whole is becoming increasingly obvious from the nature of the military orders issued.
The Associated Press [reported] for the area contiguous to the Cambodian border, “All persons in the zone suspected of being Communist infiltrators are likely to be shot on sight.”
May 1, 1937
Workers’ pickhandles beat down the pickhandles of deputized thugs and brought a major victory on the Stockton battlefront of California’s perennial civil war in agriculture.The four great canning plants in Stockton are the heart of San Joaquin agriculture and their conquest by the Cannery Workers Union, an A. F. of L. affiliate, marks the beginning of the end of open-shop exploitation.
Sheriff Odell openly enlisted 500 vigilantes and armed them with pickhandles and baseball bats. National Guardsmen were mobilized. Every farmer-vigilante offensive was met by a workers’ counteroffensive. Careful plans were laid for a general strike of industrial workers in Stockton and agricultural field workers throughout the valley. Longshoremen, carpenters, and cannery workers prepared their baseball bats and whittled their clubs.
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