May and June, 1951, 1951

From May 23 to June 25, the NFLU led a strike of 6,000 fruit and vegetable workers in the Imperial Valley in an effort to win collective bargaining and an end to the exploitation of "wetback" labor. A voluminous number of letters, telegrams, and press releases throughout both months details the progress of the strike. The failure of the Department of Labor to remove "wetbacks" who were serving as strikebreakers became a major issue in the strike. Documents of special interest include: a copy of a legal complaint filed by the NFLU against the Department of Labor to force the Department to remove all Mexican Nationals from the strike area (May 31); a seven-page confidential memorandum by Hank Hasiwar on the "Operation of s of the NFLU in the Imperial Valley, February-May, 1951" (n.d. [May]); a long letter from Mitchell to the Department of Labor, accusing it of acting as "an employment agency for strikebreakers" (June 25); and a 23-page NFLU report entitled "The Wetback Strike" (filed at June 25). In addition to the Imperial Valley strike, there are two memoranda by organizer Bill Becker on "Imported Labor in the Salinas Valley" (May 4,11).