UC Berkeley

This dissertation explains the decline of labor unions in the Southwest during the mid-twentieth century by studying Latina radicals’ political activities from strike wave that occurred after World War I through the first two years of the Korean War. Although working-class Latinas joined industrial labor unions in large numbers, labor leaders and reformers throughout the region failed to propose comprehensive fiscal, administrative, social, and political reforms during the 1930s. CIO affiliates consolidated their gains, won NLRB elections, and formed political action committees after the U.S. entered World War II, and industrial workers won equal pay, desegregated unions, and inched closer towards winning industry-wide bargaining after 1943. The colonial war against Korea and the deportation of Luisa Moreno caused the demise of industrial unionism, because these two events discouraged police officers from allying with other workers, made dismissals of Communist public employees possible, and isolated Sinophiles within the military.