Struggle for the Health and Legal Protection of Farm Workers, The: El Cortito

by Maurice Jourdane

Overview

One of Maurice "Mo" Jourdane’s greatest contributions to the advancement of farm workers in the fields of California was his relentless – and ultimately successful – effort to end agricultural employers’ required use of the short-handled hoe by laborers in the state’s lucrative lettuce, celery, sugar beet, and strawberry industries. The short hoe, known by Hispanic farm workers as el cortito (the short one), was the cause of severe and permanent crippling of hundreds of thousands of field laborers. It required workers to spend as many as ten to twelve hours each day, often in more than 90 degree heat, stooped over in a back-breaking posture, thinning and weeding plants for agribusiness employers who profited immensely from the workers’ low cost labor. The text and eight pages of photos from the period chronicle Jourdane’s decade-long struggle to research and advocate for a state ban of the short hoe and his efforts to protect other civil and human rights of California field workers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611926316
Publisher:	Arte Publico Press
Publication date:	04/30/2004
Series:	Hispanic Civil Rights Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Maurice “Mo” Jourdane, author of The Struggle for the Health and Legal Protection of Farm Workers: El Cortito (Arte Público Press, 2004), was a young staff attorney of the California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA) organization that helped to protect farm worker rights through federally supported legal intervention during the early years of César Chévez’s United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC). His work at CRLA Helped secure several of the farm worker’s most significant victories in their campaign for justice during the nation’s civil rights gains of the 1960’s and 1970’s.