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During the Second World War, western woolgrowers faced a stubborn sheepherder shortage—an industry crisis they called “labor freezing.” Historian Iker Saitua has traced how ranchers sought to retain trusted herders while recruiting new ones—privileging Basque immigrants they labeled “skilled” and too often sidelining Mexican workers as “unsuitable.” These labels were not neutral; they reflected lobbying, racialized ideas about “fitness” for range work, and the everyday demands of a job requiring solitude and judgment honed over seasons.

The story is also about immigration policy. Tight national-origins quotas from the 1920s had throttled Basque immigration just as wartime need peaked, prompting woolgrowers to petition for changes—including targeted measures in 1942 that allowed some Basque herders to remain and eventually naturalize. By following the paper trail from Capitol Hill to tents on the ranges, Saitua explains how immigration rules, wartime classifications, and racial hierarchies shaped who could enter, stay, and move in the West’s sheep industry. His article in the Pacific Historical Review, “‘Labor Freezing’: Spanish-Basque Immigrants, Mexican Labor, and the Sheepherder Shortage in the American West during the Second World War,” received the Pacific Coast Branch AHA’s Robert W. Cherny Prize.

Q: For readers new to your work—what did woolgrowers mean by “labor freezing,” and why did it matter during World War II?

A: In the growers’ vocabulary, “labor freezing” described a wartime bottleneck: experienced herders weren’t arriving, and the men on the range were hard to replace mid-season. Draft calls, better-paying defense jobs, and prewar immigration quotas all constricted the usual pipelines. The response was practical more than rhetorical—petitioning for temporary visa allotments, coordinating transoceanic and rail transport, and standardizing season-long contracts so bands wouldn’t be left unattended during lambing and shearing. In short, “freezing” named a stuck labor market and the scramble to unstick it.

Q: If the problem was a shortage, why didn’t growers just raise wages to fix it?

A: They tried—but they were competing with sectors that offered better overall packages. Defense plants and construction dangled steadier schedules, town-based housing, weekends, and the company of other people. Many of those jobs also came with overtime pay, safety gear, and sometimes union contracts. By comparison, range outfits could raise wages, but they couldn’t change the fundamentals: solitude, weather exposure, and weeks far from town. 

Q: Why bring Basque and Mexican workers into the same story?

A: Because employers did. Faced with shortages, woolgrowers compared labor sources—Basque herders, who were stereotyped (rightly or wrongly) as uniquely “skilled,” and Mexican workers, who were being recruited into U.S. agriculture through wartime channels. Decisions about who counted as “skilled,” who got a visa, and who could move between jobs weren’t neutral; they reflected lobbying, racialized assumptions, and institutional habits. Putting Basque and Mexican labor side by side reveals how categories like skill and essential are made—and how they shape real lives.

Q: Your piece argues that “skill” is social as much as technical. What do you mean?

A: Herding isn’t just a set of tasks; it’s judgment learned over seasons—reading weather, forage, and predators; managing isolation; moving flocks safely. But whether authorities recognize that as “skill” depends on institutions: consulates, labor boards, and industry associations. During the war, calling someone “skilled” could mean a draft deferment, a visa, or a long-term contract. In other words, skill travels through communities, gets stabilized by rules, and is ratified (or ignored) by public authorities.

Q: How does this history speak to debates about “essential workers” today?

A: What my research shows is that “essential” is not only about the job; it’s about classification power. Who gets that label? Who gets stuck in a job because the system wants them to stay put? Today’s guest-worker programs and visa categories still divide labor into “skilled” and “unskilled,” often overlooking forms of expertise that are embodied, place-based, or hard to fit into a checklist. The WWII sheep story is a reminder to look past credentials and ask how value is assigned—and by whom.

Q: What are you working on right now?

A: I’m branching out along two fronts. First, the American West: I’m doing quantitative agricultural history—tracking institutional change with new datasets on prices, costs, and outcomes across different cooperative institutions (marketing pools, credit co-ops, warehousing, grading). The aim is to measure when and how co-ops actually shifted risk and improved returns, not just describe them. Second, Guatemala: I’m researching its economic history—especially coffee and rural markets—to see how finance, transport, and policy shaped growth and vulnerability over time. Together, these projects ask a common question: how do institutions—and the numbers behind them—help communities manage volatile commodity economies?

We invite you to read Iker Saitua’s award-winning article, “‘Labor Freezing’: Spanish-Basque Immigrants, Mexican Labor, and the Sheepherder Shortage in the American West during the Second World War,” for free online for a limited time.

Print copies of PHR's Spring 2024 issue (issue 93.2), in which the article appears, as well as other individual issues of PHR, can be purchased on the journal’s site. 

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We publish PHR in partnership with the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association.