The Most Non-Union Place I’ve Been”: United Packing's Texas Panhandle Campaign and the Transformation of Meatpacking in the 1960s
Sam Hege, Postdoctoral Scholar, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
In the 1960s, the geography of meatpacking in the United States shifted from concentrated and centralized hubs in places like Chicago to more remote operations strewn throughout the ranching areas of the Southwest. This “ruralization” of meatpacking depended on the construction of a new labor regime, one that diminished wages, limited safety protections, and relied on a transnational hiring strategy. Focusing on the Texas Panhandle, a central region to this restructuring, this paper documents the efforts to build a multiracial union to counter the specific precarities brought on by this geographic shift.
Commentator: Roger Horwitz, rhorowitz@hagley.org
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This seminar provides a forum for works in progress that explore the history of working class people, communities, and culture; class and state policy; unions and popular political movements; and other related topics.
The seminar’s co-sponsors are the history departments of DePaul University, Northwestern University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, The Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture at the University of Chicago, Loyola University Chicago, and the Labor and Working-Class History Association.