The Farah strike (1972–1974) was a labor strike by the employees of Farah Manufacturing Company, a clothing company in El Paso, Texas and New Mexico. The strike started at the Farah plant in San Antonio in 1972 when the Hispanic women, called Chicanas, led by Sylvia M. Trevino, at the company demanded a labour union formation to fight for better working conditions. The two-year long strike included 4,000 individuals, of which the majority were women.
William Farah was the CEO of the company. The company's workforce consisted of mostly Mexican women. In 1967, the company went public and employed around 7,000 people. In 1972, it had expanded globally employing 9,500 people, making it the second largest employer in Texas. The company expected high production rates from its employees despite low wages and poor working conditions. This led to the beginning of the strike. Workers supporting the strike were penalized and risked their jobs.
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA) was the mediator of the strike and within a month after the strike begun, they launched a national boycott of the products of Farah Manufacturing Company.
The strike was culminated in 1974 in the favor of the women workers. The women employees benefitted from the strike as some women were then actively involved in political organizations fighting for women's rights and fair and safe labor environments.
Farah Manufacturing Company
The Farah Manufacturing Company, owned by Willie Farah, was the "largest manufacturer of men's and boy's pants in the United States." The company had a total of eleven plants all based in San Antonio, El Paso, Victoria, and New Mexico with a total of 10,400 employees pre-strike. Five of the plants were located in El Paso, making it the largest employer in the city. The El Pasobased plants were also the largest private employer and was almost entirely unorganized. The El Paso plant, central part of the strike, was seven-tenths of a mile long with a capacity to hold up to 5,000 employees.
Reasons for the Farah strike
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA) is the union that represented the Farah strikers. A majority of the strikers were Chicanas, or Mexican American women. Although ACWA has been known to portray images of men as the face-of-the-movement, "majority of the workers at Farah and on striker were women... many of them were single female parents with children." Many of the mothers on strike had to bring their children to the picket lines. At first, ACWA kept the women strikers "limited to picketing and clerking tasks, while men made public statements." The Chicanas challenged ACWA's lack of gender neutrality and formed their own group to display their solidarity and talents, Unidad Para Siempre (Unity Forever), where they were able to utilize their techniques when they "organized speaking and television engagements, facilitated resources to supporters, and developed a strike fund directed from a local church." This was a way for Chicanas to create a voice and claim space for women during the strike.
Job security
One of the reasons for the Chicana-led strike was lack of job security and Farah Manufacturing Co.'s lack of union support. Other factors that contributed to the strike were: no benefits for workers, gender prejudices, low wages, raises based on favoritism, health and safety hazards, and unattainable quotas.
Alice Saenz, a Farah picketer, voiced her experience with Farah's effortless employment termination when she stated, "the main reason we need a union is for job security." Another striker that was fighting against lack of job security was Armando, and he joined the picket line because he had eight children and was uncomfortable with not knowing if he would be fired for minor reasons. He stated, "For me it was job security, I saw a lot of people fired for no reason. Every day you have to think maybe this day I'll be fired because something else happens."