Labor Archives and Research Center

The Labor Archives and Research Center was founded in 1985 by trade union leaders, historians, labor activists and university administrators, to preserve the deep labor history of the San Francisco Bay Area. Our collections consist of the records of many of the unions and labor councils of the nine counties of the Bay Area, the papers of many rank and file members, photographs, newspapers, ephemera, and an extensive oral history collection.

The Labor Archives is located on the 4th Floor of the J. Paul Leonard Library on the SFSU campus, and is open to the public. You are welcome to submit questions about our collections, inquire about donating, or ask questions about your research needs via email.

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Instruction

The faculty of Special Collections can also create course-specific assignments and lead customized classes to support primary source literacy.  To request instruction, complete our Primary Source Instruction Request form and we'll get in touch!

Hours

The Special Collections & Archives Reading Room is open by appointment. 

Watsonville Strikers Holding a Banner. Unity Archive Project.

The Watsonville Canneries Strike, 1985-1987

Watsonville, in the heart of the agricultural Pajaro Valley, was once known as the "frozen food capital of the world" with a large number of canneries processing the majority of frozen food products sold in the United States. In September 1985, nearly half of the town's 4,000 cannery workers went out on a strike to protest reductions in wages and benefits at the Watsonville Canning and Shaw Frozen Food Companies.

The strike was led predominantly by Mexican and Mexican-American women. They went up against the cannery owners, the powerful agribusiness machine, local police, and their own union, which had become entrenched and unresponsive.  After battling for 18 months, strikers rejected an initial poor settlement negotiated by the union, pushing back against larger pay cuts and winning medical benefits for all workers, seniority rights and striker amnesty. But most of all, they gained organizing and leadership skills and a voice in the future of their community.

As striker Margarita Páramo explained: "We knew we had won, and we began to feel that we had won more than the strike, ganamos dignidad y un futuro bueno para nuestros hijos" (we won dignity and a good future for our children).

This exhibition was generously funded by the Friends of the J. Paul Leonard Library

The Labor Archives collection includes materials from the counties surrounding San Francisco Bay, including Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara. More than 6,000 feet of primary source material is available for research. From the beginning of the twentieth century to the present, a wide scope of Bay Area labor activity is represented. Many unions have made the Labor Archives the official repository for their historical records -- minutes, office correspondence, membership files, publications and contracts. Labor leaders, attorneys, arbitrators, and rank-and-file workers have donated their personal papers. Personal memorabilia, photographs, ephemera, and oral histories document the lives and stories of working men and women. Visual material, in addition to photographs, includes cartoons, banners, posters, prints, handbills, picket signs, and buttons.

Take a tour of San Francisco’s labor past and present working class neighborhoods, labor hangouts, monuments, murals, memorials, and buildings that reflect the history of the people who built the “City by the Bay.”  Discover 88 different sites and five neighborhood walking tours covering an array of landmarks from the unique point of view of those who work in its stores, labor in its hotels and run its cable cars.

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