Impacts of the Outsourcing of the Frozen Food Industry
The neoliberal economic strategy of exporting labor and industries to Mexico and the exploited global majority for low-cost supply imports was implemented leading up to the official signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994.
Discussion Questions
What were the effects of the Green Giant’s move on workers and residents in Watsonville and Mexico? Why was it more lucrative to move the industry from Watsonville?
How did Watsonville city respond to the challenges produced by this system? What were the efforts of the workers and residents to respond to these difficulties?
How did the impacted workers protest the layoffs? What obstacles did they encounter? Who were the targets of their protests and what were the effects? Why was this a transnational struggle?
Who are the major players behind the cannery displacement? What is the relationship of Watsonville’s local industry to the national and international economy? What is neoliberalism and how has it impacted Watsonville’s residents and workers?
Key Terms
Neoliberalism – a global framework of political and economic order that dismantled the social welfare state to produce profits through accumulation and emphasizing individual “freedom” through the promises of the free market and private entrepreneurialism. It was formally implemented under Bill Clinton in the 1990s following Ronald Reagan’s economic privatization as a so-called “third way” between neoconservatism and old liberalism. In practice, neoliberalism removed governmental responsibility to provide a social safety net of poor and working-class people and privatized access to all public institutions and common goods, weaponizing anti-poor and anti-black rhetorics i.e. “welfare queens,” shaping international institutions to favor Western benefit, and converting welfare-dependent populations into “surplus” subject to individual “unfreedom” though exploitation, displacement, and incarceration.
Outsourcing – The practice of a business contracting an independent third party to provide services, labor, products, or materials previously handled by in-company employees. Often done because it provides the business with lowered costs, outsourcing usually results in lowered wages, unstandardized working regulations, reduced capacity to unionize, and increased labor violations faced by contracted workers.
NAFTA – The North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, the United States, and Mexico implemented in 1994, eliminated U.S. tariffs on qualifying goods to “liberalize” North America. Designed to facilitate the capital extraction of Mexico through the dispossession of land with the end of the ejido system (communal land rights and ownership), it has resulted in the economic weakening of Mexico through the export of exploitative labor and industry.
Grand Metropolitan – A London-based leisure, manufacturing and property conglomerate known for its global hotels chains, that has grown through acquiring various food, restaurant, hotel, brewing, and wine companies, including Pillsbury in 1988. In 1997, it merged with Guinness to form a corporation called Diageo.
Green Giant – A prominent American frozen vegetable supply company. Established in the beginning of the 20th century to sell large green peas, it became named Green Giant in 1950, merged with Pillsbury in 1979, then was sold to General Mills in 2001 by Grand Metropolitan. Acquired by B&G Foods in 2015, Green Giant is remembered for its mascot the Jolly Green Giant.
Displaced Workers – Workers who are forced to move localities or industries due to layoffs, inadequate wages, and/or unlivable working conditions.
“Although we are a small group with few resources, we make this worldwide call because we are convinced it’s time to organize worldwide to curb the power of huge trans-nationals like Grand Metropolitan to roam the world as they wish, reaping obscene profits from the labor of their workers and then moving on, leaving behind devastated workers, families, and communities.”
Statement from the Displaced Workers of Green Giant, as quoted by journalist Keith Muraoka in “Green Guant faces protest” from the September 28 1990 issue of the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
Layoffs at Green Giant
In 1988, Grand Metropolitan, a British conglomerate, purchased Pillsbury and moved major broccoli and cauliflower production from Watsonville to Irapuato, Mexico, where workers were paid $3.86/day for their labor. Pillsbury Green Giant laid off 370 permanent workers and 150 seasonal positions, threatening the livelihoods of many Watsonville families with the looming prospect of displacement. This raised unemployment and changed the industrial character of Watsonville, where the cannery jobs were a step up from the fields and came with some familial benefits, forcing many workers to look to other employers within the county.
Although the city attempted to implement job training and assistance programs, many workers had to find other service jobs or return to fieldwork, while many had to move out of Watsonville. It also severely impacted the residents of Mexico who suffered from poor working conditions, extremely low wages, health consequences, and polluted lands, increasing the need to migrate. This all came on the heels of the successful 1985-1987 Watsonville cannery workers against workplace abuses and wage cuts. The local industry was becoming obsolete due to outsourcing production for cheaper costs, with the Green Giant cannery fully closing down in 1994.
This poster declared the “Week of Protest” hosted by the Green Giant Committee of Displaced Workers, or Comite del Trabajadors Dezplazados, who were cannery workers affected by the layoffs. Workers organized a week of actions which included a community danse (baile) to open the week, 5 days of international picket lines spanning Watsonville, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Washington, New York, London, Tokyo, Mexico City, Irapuato. The week culminated into a march at Callaghan Park. They proclaim “Solidaridad en el mundo contra Grand Metropolitan,” the London-headquartered conglomerate which acquired Pilsbury in December 1989 in a $5.7B deal before initiating the Watsonville Green Giant layoffs in 1990.
Additional Resources
Song of the Stubborn One Thousand: The Watsonville Canning Strike, 1985-87, by Peter Shapiro. Published 2016 by Haymarket Books.
“Dirty Business,” dir. Jon Silver for Migrant Media Productions, 1990, 14 min.