[1] The union was founded mainly due to the discontent of the agricultural workers employed on farms in California's Imperial Valley.
Within a month of incorporation, the union signed up twelve hundred members, opened office in four Imperial Valley towns, and delivered its first petition to the growers via the Chamber of Commerce asking for a wage increase for cantaloupe workers.
Multitudes of Mexican and Filipino lettuce pickers walked off the job protesting declining wages and horrible working conditions.
[2] The Mexican Mutual Aid Society saw this opportunity to push for the improvement of working conditions and pay for its members and readily sought to lead the strike against the growers in the Valley.
The Society pushed initially for a peaceful solution to the strike, seeking to negotiate with growers in an attempt to increase the wages and working conditions of the Mexican and Filipino workers under their employ.
With the strike faltering following the decline of the proposal by the Mexican Mutual Aid Society by the Imperial Valley growers, the Communist labor organizations in the area saw an opportunity to unite the workers of the Valley into a single organization dominated by communist ideals.
With the TUUL at the helm, the strikers developed a list of demands that the growers would have to meet if the lettuce pickers were to return to work.
None of their demands were met and they were forced to go back to work in horrible conditions or risk deportation by the Aid Society who had turned against them in the strike.