The National Farmers Organization, based in Iowa, was an attempt to organize Midwestern farmers in the 1950s and '60s. It is best known for its attempt in 1967 to withhold milk from processors to drive up milk prices. It was based upon the "Farmers Holiday" movement in Iowa, whose attempts to control production and stop farm foreclosures during the Great Depression in the 1930s led to some violent confrontations, at least one death and one case where a mob abducted a judge, hung a noose around his neck and threatened to hang him if he didn't stop approving foreclosures.
Also, most of the meat packing plants in the Midwest -- many of which were in smaller towns and cities -- were organized in the late 1940s and '50s. The meatpacking union, which negotiated "master agreements" that got uniform wages and benefits throughout the industry that were significantly better than other American manufacturing jobs, was broken in the 1970s and '80s with the rise of Iowa Beef Processors (IBP), which pioneered the use not only of automation but also the use of Mexican nationals to supplant native union workers. See http://www.ncrcrd.iastate.edu/newsletter/sept96/immigration.html.
IBP, which was purchased by Tyson Foods in 2001, also used non-union plants in "Right to Work (a.k.a. Right to Get Fired)" states to undercut unionized competitors. Now, of course, the meatpackers can threaten to move plants south of the border under NAFTA and other 'free trade' pacts if the workers get restless in Iowa.
United Auto Workers used to be strong at farm equipment manufacturers in eastern Iowa until those jobs were moved overseas.
>-- andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>Well, there is FLOC and the UFW, and there was the
>Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party (Hubert Humphrey's old
>base -- anyone remember Hubert Humphrey?), there was
>the Communist Party led union drive among black
>farmers in the 30s (see RDG Kelly's Hammer and Hoe)
>and there was militant socialist activism in Kansas
>and Oklahoma up through the Depression (Woody
>Guthrie's origins)-- Thomas Frank writes about this in
>What's The Matter With Kansas? But, basically, no,
>unions have not been strong in rural areas -- rural
>areas are hard to organize, white rural people since
>WWII have been hostile to collective action outside
>increasingly reactionary churches, and it's been,
>you'll excuse the expression, a hard row to hoe. This
>is what Marx would have predicted, and one reason he
>disliked the peasantry as a class. Of course we don't
>have peasants, but rural areas in the US share some
>characteristics with the 19th century European
>peasantry that make/made both of them hard to
>organize. In addition, in the US, you have the color
>line, and white supremacy and black oppression have
>made theSouth in particular especially resistant to
>uniosn. In its, er, glory days, the KKK was almost as
>hostile to unionism (anybody's unions) as it was to
>black people.
>
>---------------------------------------------------------
>
>Don't forget about the United Mine Workers though. They
>were very strong in the first half of the 20th century and
>most of their members lived in rural areas.
>
>Greg
>gboozell at juno.com
>
>
>
>
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