Envisioning Mayan Dairy Worker Organizing in West Texas

The following sources were used in research for this project, and they may be useful to anyone else who is interested in the topic: Bobo, Kim, and Marien Casillas Pabellon. The Worker Center Handbook. Cornell University Press, 3 Aug. 2016. Worker centers are a common organizing form for immigrants in industries with a weak union presence. This book covers everything from beginning technicalities to long-term strategy when forming a worker center. It includes several highly relevant chapters, such as “Organizing around Health and Safety Issues” and “Working with Faith Communities.” Champlin, Dell, and Eric Hake. “Immigration as Industrial Strategy in American Meatpacking.” Review of Political Economy, vol. 18, no. 1, Jan. 2006, pp. 49–70, https://doi.org/10.1080/09538250500354140. This article uses changes in immigration policy, migration patterns, and the structure of the meatpacking industry to argue that a supply of undocumented immigrants is used by companies to decrease worker barg...

Dr. Anabel Rodriguez is an Assistant Professor in Environmental and Occupational Health at Texas A&M. Her focus is “improving occupational health, safety, and well-being among Spanish and Indigenous-speaking agricultural working populations in rural regions.” She was the lead author on the 2023 paper “On-Farm Health Screening Needs of Immigrant Dairy Workers in the Texas Panhandle and South Plains.” Additionally, she has a decade of experience providing OSHA safety training at dairy facilities in the High Plains region. My final project will envision forms and content of worker organizing by Kiche-speaking dairy workers in West Texas. This requires understanding the issues workers face, which could inspire demands, as well as the social structure of their community, which could enable different approaches to organizing. Dr Rodriguez offered insights for both parts of this equation. On the one hand, she discussed the three major sources of injuries in dairy operations: slips, trips,...

Many factors in Guatemala’s history and present—such as the civil war and genocide, the “post-conflict” violence, and the economic situation—have contributed to the immigration of Guatemalans to the United States. However, an additional factor may explain the presence of a large number of the country’s Kiche-Speaking Mayans in a cluster of West Texas towns including Hereford, Friona, and Bovina: the usefulness of this supply of exploitable workers for dairy operators in the area. In their study of the meatpacking industry, Champlin and Hake showed how employers have facilitated “an immigration policy that tolerates or even encourages the hiring of low-wage immigrant labor while it demonizes the immigrant.” This ensures a cheap, non-union workforce which is made complacent by its precarious undocumented status. Much of the same can be said for the West Texas dairy industry: Guatemalans in the US are largely undocumented, and in this industry they earn low wages and are not unionized (Ma...

The poster below was the Creative Component for this project. The text in Spanish ("Unidos/Seguros") means "United/Safe", while "Ich-ket/Muk'a'an" means "Together/Healthy" in Mopán, a Mayan language spoken in Belize. This translation is taken from the 2011 Mopán Maya-Spanish-English Dictionary by Charles A. Hofling. The poster is meant to convey the importance of collective action for the safety and health of Mayan dairy farm workers. (Click "Read More" to see full image.)