What was life like for a migrant worker in the 1930s?
What was life like for a migrant worker in the 1930s?
Migrant workers lacked educational opportunities for their children, lived in poverty and terrible housing conditions, and faced discrimination and violence when they sought fair treatment. Attempts to organize workers into unions were violently suppressed.
Who were the migrant workers in the 1930s?
The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl (a period of drought that destroyed millions of acres of farmland) forced white farmers to sell their farms and become migrant workers who traveled from farm to farm to pick fruit and other crops at starvation wages.
Where did migrant workers come from in the 1930’s?
The migrants represented in Voices from the Dust Bowl came primarily from Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. Most were of Anglo-American descent with family and cultural roots in the poor rural South.
How many people were migrant workers in the 1930s?
During the 1930s, some 1.3 million Americans from the Midwest and southwest migrated to California, which had a population of 5.7 million in 1930s.
What challenges did migrant workers face?
The main issues facing migrant garment workers are:
- Lack of rights (implementation) resulting from insecure legal status.
- Composition of workforce.
- Low pay, no pay, deception & overtime.
- Debt bondage & contracts.
- Labour organisation.
- Violence & intimidation.
- Sexual harassment & gender discrimination.
How much did migrant workers get paid in the 1930s?
Migrant workers in California who had been making 35 cents per hour in 1928 made only 14 cents per hour in 1933. Sugar beet workers in Colorado saw their wages decrease from $27 an acre in 1930 to $12.37 an acre three years later.
Why did migrant workers go to California in the 1930s?
Driven by the depression, drought, and the Dust Bowl, thousands upon thousands left their homes in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. Over 300,000 of them came to California. They looked to California as a land of promise. Not since the Gold Rush had so many people traveled in such large numbers to the state.
Why did people migrate in the 1930?
People didmove in the 1930s, spurred by the economic difficulties of the Great Depression, by heat and drought and by a multitude of other pressures.
How much were migrant workers paid in the 1930s?
How are migrant workers treated?
But the life of a migrant worker is often a harsh and isolated one. Cut off from their loved ones and support networks; often unaware of local laws, languages and customs; and frequently denied the same rights as national workers, migrant workers are particularly vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.
What challenges did migrant workers face during the Great Depression?
Along with the job crisis and food shortages that affected all U.S. workers, Mexicans and Mexican Americans had to face an additional threat: deportation. As unemployment swept the U.S., hostility to immigrant workers grew, and the government began a program of repatriating immigrants to Mexico.
What are some of the struggles that migrant workers faced?
In general, migrant garment workers in all work settings lack social security and health case arrangements or they are dependent on their employers for health care. Bad housing and sharing work and living space often leads to health problems, due to overcrowding, lack of ventilation and lack of recreation.
What did the migrant workers do?
The term “migrant farmworker” includes people working temporarily or seasonally in farm fields, orchards, canneries, plant nurseries, fish/seafood packing plants, and more. Guest workers who temporarily live in the US through the federal H2A program to work on farms are also migrant farmworkers.
Why did people move west in the 1930s?
Drought in the 1930s allowed dust storms to carry away top soil, darkening the sky even at mid-day. As families realized that the drought and dust storms would not end, some sold what they could not take and began to drive west on Route 66.
Why did migrant workers move to California in 1930?
The storms, years of drought, and the Great Depression devastated the lives of residents living in those Dust Bowl states. Three hundred thousand of the stricken people packed up their belongings and drove to California.
How were the migrant workers affected by the Great Depression?
The Great Depression of the 1930s hit Mexican immigrants especially hard. Along with the job crisis and food shortages that affected all U.S. workers, Mexicans and Mexican Americans had to face an additional threat: deportation.