It was racism that in 1935 kept farm workers and domestics from being granted protection of U.S. labor law
By Dick Meister
(Dick Meister, a San Francisco-based journalist, has covered labor and political issues for a half-century as a print, broadcast and online reporter, editor and commentator.)
It’s been three-quarters of a century since enactment of the National Labor Relations Act that grants U.S. workers the basic legal right of unionization
– the right to bargain with employers on setting their wages, hours and working conditions.
But for all that time, two groups of our most highly exploited workers have been denied the law’s protections – farm workers, and housekeepers, nannies, and other domestic workers.