" " The workdays were long and the temperatures in the fields could get up to an excess of one hundred and thirteen degrees. They picked an array of different crops from cotton to asparagus. Many started the day at four in the morning picking asparagus with flashlights. They would climb into wagons to go home at six in the evening covered in dirt and sweat from the hard days work. They would come home to overcrowded bunkhouses and would share one bathtub with one hundred other Filipinos. Unlike Mexicans, many Filipino men first came to America without their family so it was easy for the growers to house a hundred men in one barn. Growers thought that Filipinos were easy to step on but they soon realized that they were more independent (and educated) than they thought. Grape picking Filipinos began to demand pay increases in 1927. When their employer didn't oblige, riots broke out (Takaki 1989). .
Tensions between growers and Filipinos continued to increase when Filipinos created the Filipino Labor Union. 4,000 Filipinos joined the FLU which was a noticeable chunk of the 30,000 Filipinos living in California at that time. Filipinos made up 40% of the total agricultural work force in Salinas Valley so they couldn't be ignored. In August 1933, FLU held a one-day strike to raise wages. Growers brought in more immigrants to fill the void of the Filipinos on strike. The FLU continued to expand and growers created the Filipino Labor Supply Association which was made up of Filipino contractors who opposed the FLU. The growers would replace FLU workers with Filipinos from the Filipino Labor Supply Association when the FLU went on strike. FLU strikers were also driven off by police officers who would arrest strikers and Caucasian citizens who would torment members of the FLU when they would strike. It wasn't easy for the Filipinos to stand up for their rights but they kept at it. When the strike ended, they gained almost a 40% increase in wage (from twenty-five cents to forty cents) and the FLU was recognized as a legitimate farm workers" union (Takaki 1989).
