Name	UFWA
Country	United States
Affiliation	Change to Win Federation
Full name	United Farm Workers of America
Founded	1962
Office	Keene, California
People	Arturo Rodriguez, president
Website	www.ufw.org
Footnotes	}}

The United Farm Workers of America (UFWA) (Spanish: '''') is a labor union created from the merging of two groups, the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) led by Filipino organizer Larry Itliong, and the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) led by César Chávez. This union changed from a workers' rights organization that helped workers get unemployment insurance to that of a union of farmworkers almost overnight, when the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) went out on strike in support of the mostly Filipino farmworkers of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) led by Larry Itliong in Delano, California who had previously initiated a grape strike on September 8, 1965. The NFWA and the AWOC, recognizing their common goals and methods, and realizing the strengths of coalition formation, jointly formed the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee on August 22, 1966. This organization eventually became the United Farm Workers and launched a boycott of table grapes and, after five years of struggle, finally won a contract with the major grape growers in California.

Roles

The union then brought in thousands more lettuce and vegetable workers in the Salinas and Imperial Valleys and orange workers in Florida employed by subsidiaries of Coca-Cola.

The union publicly adopted the principles of non-violence championed by Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The union was poised to launch its next major campaign in the lettuce fields in 1970 when a deal between the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the growers nearly destroyed it. Initially the Teamsters signed contracts with lettuce growers in the Salinas Valley, who wanted to avoid recognizing the UFW. Then in 1973, when the three year UFW contracts in the grapes expired, the grape growers signed contracts giving the Teamsters the right to represent the workers who had been members of the UFW.

The UFW responded with strikes, lawsuits and boycotts, including secondary boycotts in the retail grocery industry. The union struggled to regain the members it had lost in the lettuce fields; it never fully recovered its strength in grapes, due in some part to incompetent management of the hiring halls it had established that seemed to favor some workers over others.

The battles in the fields became violent, with a number of UFW members killed on the picket line. The violence led the state in 1975 to enact the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act, creating an administrative agency, the ALRB, that oversaw secret ballot elections and resolved charges of unfair labor practices, like failing to bargain in good faith, or discrimination against activists.

On July 22, 2005, the UFW announced that it was joining the Change to Win Federation, a coalition of labor unions functioning as an alternative to the AFL-CIO. On January 13, 2006, the union officially disaffiliated from the AFL-CIO. In contrast to other Change to Win-affiliated unions, the AFL-CIO neglected to offer the right of affiliation to regional bodies to the UFW. "AFL Discriminates Against UFW." Working Life. February 22, 2006.

Foundation of the UFW

Dolores Huerta grew up in Stockton, California, which was in the San Joaquin Valley, an area filled with farms. In the early 1950s, she completed a teaching degree at Delta Community College, part of the University of the Pacific. She briefly worked as an elementary school teacher. Huerta saw that her students, many of them children of farm workers, were living in poverty without enough food to eat or other basic necessities. To help, she became one of the founders of the Stockton chapter of the Community Services Organization (CSO). The CSO worked to improve social and economic conditions for farm workers and to fight discrimination.

By 1959, Cesar Chavez had already established professional relationships with local community organizations that aimed to empower the working class population by encouraging them to become more politically active. In 1952, Chavez met Fred Ross who was a community organizer working on behalf of the Community Services Organization. This was a group which was affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation which was headed by Saul Alinsky.

To further her cause, Huerta created the Agricultural Workers Association (AWA) in 1960. Through the AWA, she lobbied politicians on many issues, including allowing migrant workers without U.S. citizenship to receive public assistance and pensions and creating Spanish-language voting ballots and driver's tests. In 1962, she co-founded a workers' union with Cesar Chavez, which was later known as the United Farm Workers (UFW). The two made a great team. Chavez was the dynamic leader and speaker and Huerta was a skilled organizer and tough negotiator. Huerta was instrumental in the union's many successes, including the strikes against California grape growers in the 1960s and 1970s.

During Chavez’s participation in the Community Services Organization, Fred Ross trained Cesar Chavez in the grassroots, door-to-door, house meeting tactic of organization, a tactic which was vital to the UFW’s recruiting methods. The house meeting tactic successfully established a broad base of local Community Service Organization chapters during Ross's era, and Chavez used this technique to extend the UFW's reach as well as to find up and coming organizers. During the 1950s, Cesar Chavez and Fred Ross developed twenty-two new Community Services Organization chapters in the Mexican American neighborhoods of San Jose. In 1959, Chavez would claim the rank of executive director in the Community Services Organization. During this time, Chavez observed and adopted the notion of having the community become more politically involved in order to bring about the social changes that the community sought. This would be a vital tactic in Chavez’s future struggles in fighting for immigrant rights.

Cesar Chavez’s ultimate goal in his participation with the Community Services Organization and the Industrial Areas Foundation was to eventually organize a union for the farm workers. Saul Alinsky did not share Chavez’s sympathy for the farm workers struggle, claiming that organizing farm workers, “was like fighting on a constantly disintegrating bed of sand.” (Alinsky, 1967)

On March 1962 at the Community Services Organization convention, Chavez proposed a pilot project for organizing farm workers which was rejected by the organization’s members. Chavez’s reaction to this led him to resign from the organization in order to pursue his goal of creating a farm workers union which would later come to be known as the National Farm Workers Association.

By 1965 the National Farm Workers Association had acquired twelve hundred members through Chavez’s person-to-person recruitment efforts which he learned from Fred Ross just a decade earlier. Out of those twelve hundred, only about two hundred paid dues. Also in 1962, Richard Chavez, the brother of Cesar Chavez, designed the black Aztec eagle insignia that would become the symbol of the NFW and the UFW. Cesar Chavez chose the red and black colors used by the organization.

Although still in its infant stages, the organization lent its support to a strike by workers in the rose industry in 1965. This initial protest by the young organization resulted in a failed attempt to strike against the rose industry. That same year the farm workers who worked in the Delano fields of California wanted to strike against the growers in response to the grower’s refusal to raise wages from $1.20 to $1.40 an hour, and they sought out Chavez and the National Farm Workers Association for support. The Delano agricultural workers were majority Filipino workers who were affiliated with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee which was a charter of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. The unification of these two organizations, in an attempt to boycott table grapes which were grown in the Delano fields, resulted in the creation of the United Farm Workers of America.

Historic Complications in Organizing Farm Workers Prior to the Formation of the UFW

In the early history of American agriculture, farm workers experienced many failed attempts to organize agricultural laborers. In 1903, Japanese and Mexican farm workers attempted to come together to fight for better wages and better working conditions. This attempt to organize agricultural laborers was ignored and disbanded when organizations, such as the American Federation of Labor, neglected to support their efforts, many of which withheld assistance on the basis of race.

In 1913, the Industrial Workers of the World organized a rally at a large ranch in the rural area of Northern California which involved two thousand farm workers. This resulted in an attack against the participants of the rally by national guardsmen. As a result of the violence the two lead organizers for the Industrial Workers of the World were arrested, convicted of murder, and were sentenced to life imprisonment. It is believed that the two people arrested were wrongly convicted of the murder charges.

In the later teens and 1920’s in the United States, further attempts to organize farm laborers were undertaken by spontaneous local efforts, and some which were led by communist unions. These attempts also resulted in failure because during that time employers were not required by law to involve themselves with negotiations with their workers. During this time period, Employers could also legally fire their employees if they chose to join a union.

In 1936, the National Labor Relations Act was put into effect. This legislation provided most American workers the right to join unions and bargain collectively. Agricultural workers were exempt from the protection of this law. Some believe that this labor category was excluded as a result of a political tactic to gain the support of Southern politicians in the passing of this law.

In 1941, the United States Government and the Mexican Government enacted the Bracero Program. Initially, this joint project between the United States and Mexico was established during the Second World War in order to address labor shortages by allowing “guest workers” from Mexico to work in the American agricultural industry until the end of the crop harvest. Thousands of Mexican Nationals were brought north to work in the fields in the United States and growers used this opportunity to undercut domestic wages, and the Braceros were also utilized in breaking strikes from resident farm workers. This program was extended until 1964.

Texas Strike

In May 1966, California farm worker activist Eugene Nelson traveled to Texas to rally support for the Schenley Farms boycott. While in Houston, AFL-CIO state representatives suggested that he visit Rio Grande City on the Texas-Mexico border in the lower Rio Grande Valley. Seeing the possibilities for organizing workers in the impoverished region, he quickly set about recruiting volunteers for the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC) as both strikers and assistants. Other UFWOC activists joined Nelson in Rio Grande City, including Gilbert Padilla, Antonio Orendain, and Bill Chandler.

On June 1, Nelson led workers to strike demanding $1.25 as a minimum hourly wage, protesting La Casita Farms and others packing sheds. The activists also protested the hiring of "scab" labor, mostly those with green card visas from Mexico, who were allowed to cross the border as day workers. In the dispute, reports and allegations of vandalism to equipment, produce, and public property caused Starr County officials, along with the support of the growers, to call for additional law enforcement, which arrived in the form of the Texas Rangers. Both county officials and rangers arrested protestors for secondary picketing, standing within 50 feet of one another, a practice illegal at the time. Allegations of brutality and questions of jurisdictional limits created national headlines in what came to be known as “La Huelga.”

On July 4, members of UFWOC, strikers, and members of the clergy set out on a march to Austin to demand the $1.25 minimum wage and other improvements for farm workers. Press coverage intensified as the marchers made their way north in the summer heat. Politicians, members of the AFL-CIO, and the Texas Council of Churches accompanied the protestors. Gov. John Connally, who had refused to meet them in Austin, traveled to New Braunfels with then House Speaker Ben Barnes, and Attorney General Waggoner Carr to intercept the march and inform strikers that their efforts would have no effect.

Protestors arrived in Austin in time for a Labor Day rally, but no changes in law resulted. Strikes and arrests continued in Rio Grande City through 1966 into 1967. Violence increased as the spring melon crop ripened and time neared for the May harvest. In June, when beatings of two UFWOC supporters by Texas rangers surfaced, tempers flared.

At the end of June as the harvest was ending, members of the Senate Subcommittee on Migratory Labor, including Senators Harrison Williams and Edward Kennedy, arrived in the lower Rio Grande Valley to hold hearings in Rio Grande City and Edinburg, Texas. The senators took their findings back to Washington as a report on pending legislation. Subsequently, the rangers left the area and the picketing ended. On September 20, Hurricane Beulah's devastations ruined the farming industry in the Valley for the following year. One major outcome of the strikes came in the form of a 1974 Supreme Court victory in ''Medrano v. Allee,'' limiting jurisdiction of Texas Rangers in labor disputes. Farm workers continued to organize through the 1970s on a smaller scale, under new leadership in San Juan, Texas, independent of César Chávez.

Texas Campaign

By mid-1971 the Texas campaign was well underway. In Sept. 1971, Thomas John Wakely, recent discharge from the United States Air Force joined the San Antonio office of the Texas campaign. His pay was room and board, $ 5.00 a week plus all of the menudo he could eat. The menudo was provided to the UFOC staff by the families of migrant workers working the Texas fields.

TJ worked for UFOC for about 2 years and his responsibilities included organizing the Grape Boycott in San Antonio. His primary target was the H.E.B grocery store chain. In addition, he attempted to organize Hispanic farm workers working the farmers market in San Antonio — an institution at that time controlled by the corporate farms. Among his many organizing activities included an early 1972 episode where he and several other UFOC staff members who were attempting to organize warehouse workers in San Antonio were fired upon by security agents of the corporate farm owners.

In mid-1973 the San Antonio office of the UFOC was taken over by the Brown Berets. This radicalization of the San Antonio UFOC office led to the eventual collapse of the San Antonio UFOC organizing campaign.

Recent developments

In July 2008 the farm worker Ramiro Carrillo Rodriguez, 48, died of a heat stroke. According to United Farm Workers, he is the "13th farm worker heat death since CA Governor Schwarzenegger took office" in 2003. In 2006 California's first permanent heat regulations were enacted but these regulations are not strictly enforced, the union says.

References

Further reading

Bardacke, Frank. "Cesar's Ghost: Rise and Fall of the UFW." ''The Nation.'' July 26, 1993.

Ferriss, Susan; Sandoval, Ricardo; and Hembree, Diana. ''The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement.'' New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1998. ISBN 0156005980

Ganz, Marshall. ''Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement''. Oxford University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-19-516201-1

Gutierrez, David G. ''Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity.'' Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1995. ISBN 0520202198

Nelson, Eugene. ''Huelga! The First One Hundred Days of the Delano Grape Strike.'' Delano, Calif.: Farm Worker Press, 1966.

Pawel, Miriam. "Farmworkers Reap Little as Union Strays From Its Roots." ''Los Angeles Times.'' January 8, 2006.

Pawel, Miriam. "The Union of Their Dreams" Bloomsbury Press, 2009

External links

Official Website

Collected papers of the UFW and related organizations are held at the Walter Reuther Library, Wayne State University. The website also has an image gallery with 400 photographs.

Farmworker Movement Documentation Project

United Farm Workers Union: 1965 Grape Boycott Case Study - University of California, Berkeley

California UFW collective bargaining agreements - A searchable and browseable collection from the UC Davis Library.

United Farm Workers Union entry, Encyclopedia of Texas Online Edition

University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections - Vietnam War Era Ephemera This collection contains leaflets and newspapers that were distributed on the University of Washington campus during the decades of the 1960s and 1970s. Includes ephemera from the United Farm Workers.

Cal Poly Pomona University Library UFW Collection

The Rise and Fall of the United Farm Workers by Michael D. Yates, ''Monthly Review''

Category:Change to Win Federation Category:Trade unions in the United States Category:Agriculture and forestry trade unions Category:Agricultural labor Category:History of labor relations in the United States Category:Labor relations in California Category:Organizations based in California Category:Agriculture in California Category:Central Valley of California Category:San Joaquin Valley Category:History of the United States (1964–1980) Category:Mexican-American organizations Category:Boycott organizers

ca:United Farm Workers

name	César Chávez
birth date	March 31, 1927
birth place	Yuma, Arizona, United States
death date	April 23, 1993
death place	San Luis, Arizona, United States
occupation	Farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist.
parents	Librado Chávez (father)Juana Estrada Chávez (mother)
children	}}

César Estrada Chávez (; March 31, 1927 – April 23, 1993) was an American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist who, with Dolores Huerta, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers (UFW).

A Mexican American, Chávez became the best known Latino civil rights activist, and was strongly promoted by the American labor movement, which was eager to enroll Hispanic members. His public-relations approach to unionism and aggressive but nonviolent tactics made the farm workers' struggle a moral cause with nationwide support. By the late 1970s, his tactics had forced growers to recognize the UFW as the bargaining agent for 50,000 field workers in California and Florida. However, by the mid-1980s membership in the UFW had dwindled to around 15,000.

Chavez was a charismatic, gifted speaker who inspired Latinos to band together and devote themselves to the farmworkers' movement. Claiming as his models Emiliano Zapata, Gandhi, Nehru, and Martin Luther King, he called on his people to "Make a solemn promise: to enjoy our rightful part of the riches of this land, to throw off the yoke of being considered as agricultural implements or slaves. We are free men and we demand justice."

After his death he became a major historical icon for the Latino community, and for liberals generally, symbolizing militant support for workers and for Hispanic power based on grass roots organizing and his slogan "Sí, se puede" (Spanish for "Yes, it is possible" or, roughly, "Yes, it can be done"). His supporters say his work led to numerous improvements for union laborers. His birthday has become César Chávez Day, a state holiday in eight US states. Many parks, cultural centers, libraries, schools, and streets have been named in his honor in cities across the United States.

Early life

César Estrada Chávez was born on March 31, 1927 in Yuma, Arizona, in a Mexican-American family of six children. He had two brothers, Richard (1929-2011) and Librado, and two sisters, Rita and Vicki. He was named after his grandfather, Cesario. Chávez grew up in a small adobe home, the same home in which he was born. His family owned a grocery store and a ranch, but their land was lost during the Great Depression. Chávez experienced injustice early in life; his home was taken away after his father had agreed to clear eighty acres of land in exchange for the deed to the house, an agreement which was subsequently broken. Later when Cesar's father attempted to purchase the house, he could not pay the interest on the loan and the house was sold to its original owner. His family then moved to California to become migrant farm workers.

The Chávez family faced many hardships in California. The family would pick peas and lettuce in the winter, cherries and beans in the spring, corn and grapes in the summer, and cotton in the fall. Working conditions for migrant workers were poor and often unsafe, and their wages were low. Cesar's family frequently lacked access to such basic needs as clean water or toilets. Because a large number of migrant workers were Mexican-American, they also often faced prejudice, and their children had to skip school to earn wages to help support the family. When César was a teenager, he and his older sister Rita would help other farm workers and neighbors by driving those unable to drive to the hospital to see a doctor.

Although he was a bright student, Chávez faced difficulty in school due to prejudice. His family spoke only Spanish at home, and his teachers forbade him from speaking the language at school. At one time, Chávez was hit on the knuckles with a ruler for violating this rule. Also at school, he constantly faced hearing racial slurs. In 1942, he graduated from eighth grade. He did not want his mother to have to work in the fields, so he never attended high school, instead dropping out to become a full-time migrant farm worker. In 1944 he joined the United States Navy at the age of seventeen and served for two years. Serving on a ship, he was seasick most of the time. Chávez had hoped that he would learn skills in the Navy that would help him later when he returned to civilian life. However he soon discovered to his dismay that Mexican-Americans in the Navy at that time could only work as deckhands or painters. Later, Chávez described his experience in the military as “the two worst years of my life.” When Chávez returned home from his service in the military, he married his high school sweetheart, Helen Favela. The couple moved to San Jose, California, where they would have seven children: Fernando, Linda (1951–2000), Paul, Eloise, Sylvia and Anthony.

Activism

Chávez worked in the fields until 1952, when he became an organizer for the Community Service Organization (CSO), a Latino civil rights group. He was hired and trained by Fred Ross as an organizer targeting police brutality. Chávez urged Mexican Americans to register and vote, and he traveled throughout California and made speeches in support of workers' rights. He later became CSO's national director in 1958.

In 1962 Chávez left the CSO and co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) with Dolores Huerta. It was later called the United Farm Workers (UFW).

When Filipino American farm workers initiated the Delano grape strike on September 8, 1965, to protest for higher wages, Chávez eagerly supported them. Six months later, Chávez and the NFWA led a strike of California grape pickers on the historic farmworkers march from Delano to the California state capitol in Sacramento for similar goals. The UFW encouraged all Americans to boycott table grapes as a show of support. The strike lasted five years and attracted national attention. In March 1966, the US Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare's Subcommittee on Migratory Labor held hearings in California on the strike. During the hearings, subcommittee member Robert F. Kennedy expressed his support for the striking workers.

These activities led to similar movements in Southern Texas in 1966, where the UFW supported fruit workers in Starr County, Texas, and led a march to Austin, in support of UFW farm workers' rights. In the Midwest, César Chávez's movement inspired the founding of two Midwestern independent unions: Obreros Unidos in Wisconsin in 1966, and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) in Ohio in 1967. Former UFW organizers would also found the Texas Farm Workers Union in 1975.

In the early 1970s, the UFW organized strikes and boycotts—including the Salad Bowl strike, the largest farm worker strike in U.S. history—to protest for, and later win, higher wages for those farm workers who were working for grape and lettuce growers. The union also won passage of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which gave collective bargaining rights to farm workers. During the 1980s, Chávez led a boycott to protest the use of toxic pesticides on grapes. Bumper stickers reading "NO GRAPES" and "UVAS NO" (the translation in Spanish) were widespread. He again fasted to draw public attention. UFW organizers believed that a reduction in produce sales by 15% was sufficient to wipe out the profit margin of the boycotted product. These strikes and boycotts generally ended with the signing of bargaining agreements.

Chávez undertook a number of ''spiritual fasts'', regarding the act as “a personal spiritual transformation”. In 1968, he fasted for 25 days, promoting the principle of nonviolence. In 1970, Chávez began a fast of ‘thanksgiving and hope’ to prepare for pre-arranged civil disobedience by farm workers. Also in 1972, he fasted in response to Arizona’s passage of legislation that prohibited boycotts and strikes by farm workers during the harvest seasons.

Immigration

The UFW during Chávez's tenure was committed to restricting immigration. Chávez and Dolores Huerta, cofounder and president of the UFW, fought the Bracero Program that existed from 1942 to 1964. Their opposition stemmed from their belief that the program undermined US workers and exploited the migrant workers. Since the Bracero program ensured a constant supply of cheap immigrant labor for growers, immigrants could not protest any infringement of their rights, lest they be fired and replaced. Their efforts contributed to Congress ending the Bracero Program in 1964. In 1973, the UFW was one of the first labor unions to oppose proposed employer sanctions that would have prohibited hiring undocumented immigrants. Later during the 1980s, while Chávez was still working alongside Huerta, he was key in getting the amnesty provisions into the 1986 federal immigration act.

On a few occasions, concerns that undocumented migrant labor would undermine UFW strike campaigns led to a number of controversial events, which the UFW describes as anti-strikebreaking events, but which have also been interpreted as being anti-immigrant. In 1969, Chávez and members of the UFW marched through the Imperial and Coachella Valleys to the border of Mexico to protest growers' use of undocumented immigrants as strikebreakers. Joining him on the march were both Reverend Ralph Abernathy and US Senator Walter Mondale. In its early years, Chávez and the UFW went so far as to report undocumented immigrants who served as strikebreaking replacement workers, as well as those who refused to unionize, to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

In 1973, the United Farm Workers set up a "wet line" along the United States-Mexico border to prevent Mexican immigrants from entering the United States illegally and potentially undermining the UFW's unionization efforts. During one such event in which Chávez was not involved, some UFW members, under the guidance of Chávez's cousin Manuel, physically attacked the strikebreakers, after attempts to peacefully persuade them not to cross the border failed.

Education

Later in life, Chávez focused on his education. The walls of his office in Keene, California (United Farm Worker headquarters) were lined with hundreds of books ranging in subject from philosophy, economics, cooperatives, and unions, to biographies of Gandhi and the Kennedy family. Chávez was a vegan because he believed in animal rights and also for his health.

César Chávez Day

César Chávez's birthday, March 31, is celebrated in California as a state holiday, intended to promote service to the community in honor of Chávez's life and work. Many, but not all, state government offices, community colleges, and libraries are closed. Only two public school districts in San Jose observe the day with no school. Texas also recognizes the day, and it is an optional holiday in Arizona and Colorado.

Legacy

He is buried at the National Chavez Center, on the headquarters campus of the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), at 29700 Woodford-Tehachapi Road in the Keene community of unincorporated Kern County, Kern County. There is a portrait of him in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.

In 1973, college professors in Mount Angel, Oregon established the first four-year Mexican-American college in the United States. They chose César Chávez as their symbolic figurehead, naming the college Colegio Cesar Chavez. In the book ''Colegio Cesar Chavez, 1973-1983: A Chicano Struggle for Educational Self-Determination'' author Carlos Maldonado writes that Chávez visited the campus twice, joining in public demonstrations in support of the college. Though Colegio Cesar Chavez closed in 1983, it remains a recognized part of Oregon history. On its website the Oregon Historical Society writes, "Structured as a 'college-without-walls,' more than 100 students took classes in Chicano Studies, early childhood development, and adult education. Significant financial and administrative problems caused Colegio to close in 1983. Its history represents the success of a grassroots movement." The Colegio has been described as having been a symbol of the Latino presence in Oregon.

In 1992, Chávez was awarded the Pacem in Terris Award. It was named after a 1963 encyclical letter by Pope John XXIII that calls upon all people of good will to secure peace among all nations. Pacem in Terris is Latin for "Peace on Earth."

Chávez died on April 23, 1993, of unspecified natural causes in a rental apartment in San Luis, Arizona. Shortly after his death, his widow, Helen Chávez, donated his black nylon union jacket to the National Museum of American History, a branch of the Smithsonian.

On September 8, 1994, Chávez was presented, posthumously, with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton. The award was received by his widow, Helen Chávez.

The California cities of Long Beach, Modesto, Sacramento, San Diego, Berkeley, and San Jose, California have renamed parks after him, as well as the City of Seattle, Washington. In Amarillo, Texas a bowling alley has been renamed in his memory. In Los Angeles, César E. Chávez Avenue, originally two separate streets (Macy Street west of the Los Angeles River and Brooklyn Avenue east of the river), extends from Sunset Boulevard and runs through East Los Angeles and Monterey Park. In San Francisco, César Chávez Street, originally named Army Street, is named in his memory. At San Francisco State University the student center is also named after him. The University of California, Berkeley, has a César E. Chávez Student Center, which lies across Lower Sproul Plaza from the Martin Luther King, Jr., Student Union. California State University San Marcos's Chavez Plaza includes a statue to Chávez. In 2007, The University of Texas at Austin unveiled its own César Chávez Statue on campus. Fresno named an adult school, where a majority percent of students' parents or themselves are, or have been, field workers, after Chávez. In Austin, Texas, one of the central thoroughfares was changed to César Chávez Boulevard. In Ogden, Utah, a four-block section of 30th Street was renamed Cesar Chavez Street. In Oakland, there is a library named after him and his birthday, March 31, is a district holiday in remembrance of him. On July 8, 2009, the city of Portland, Oregon, changed the name of 39th Avenue to Cesar Chavez Boulevard. In 2003, the United States Postal Service honored him with a postage stamp. The largest flatland park in Phoenix Arizona is named after Chavez. The park features Cesar Chavez Branch Library and a life-sized statue of Chavez by artist Zarco Guerrero. In April, 2010, the city of Dallas, Texas changed street signage along the downtown street-grade portion of Central Expressway, renaming it for Chávez; part of the street passes adjacent to the downtown Dallas Farmers Market complex. El Paso has a controlled-access highway, the portion of Texas Loop 375 running beside the Rio Grande, called the Cesar Chavez Border Highway; also in El Paso, the alternative junior-senior high school in the Ysleta Independent School District is named for Chavez. Las Cruces, New Mexico has an elementary school named for Cesar Chavez as well.

In 2004, the National Chavez Center was opened on the UFW national headquarters campus in Keene by the Cesar E. Chavez Foundation. It currently consists of a visitor center, memorial garden and his grave site. When it is fully completed, the site will include a museum and conference center to explore and share Chávez's work.

In 2005, a César Chávez commemorative meeting was held in San Antonio, honoring his work on behalf of immigrant farmworkers and other immigrants. Chavez High School in Houston is named in his honor, as is Cesar E. Chavez High School in Delano, California. In Davis, California; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Bakersfield, California and Madison, Wisconsin there are elementary schools named after him in his honor. In Davis, California, there is also an apartment complex named after Chávez which caters specifically to low-income residents and people with physical and mental disabilities. In Racine, Wisconsin, there is a community center named The Cesar Chavez Community Center also in his honor. In Grand Rapids, Michigan, the business loop of I-196 Highway is named "Cesar E Chavez Blvd." The (AFSC) American Friends Service Committee nominated him three times for the Nobel Peace Prize.

On December 6, 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted César Chávez into the California Hall of Fame located at The California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts.

César Chávez's eldest son, Fernando Chávez, and grandson, Anthony Chávez, each tour the country, speaking about his legacy.

Chávez was referenced by Stevie Wonder in the song "Black Man," from the album Songs in the Key of Life, and by Tom Morello in the song "Union Song," from the album One Man Revolution.

On May 18, 2011, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced the Navy would be naming the last of 14 Lewis and Clark-class cargo ships after Cesar Chavez.

Timeline

ImageSize = width:750 height:700 PlotArea = left:50 right:0 bottom:10 top:10

DateFormat = yyyy Period = from:1927 till:1996 TimeAxis = orientation:vertical ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:3 start:1927 ScaleMinor = unit:year increment:1 start:1927

PlotData= color:red mark:(line, pink) align:left fontsize:M shift:(25,0) # shift text to right side of bar at:1927 text:March 31, César Estrada Chávez born near Yuma, Arizona. at:1942 text:Chavez Begins as a farm worker at:1944 text:Chavez begins his military service in the US Navy, which lasts 2 years. at:1946 text:Chavez joins the National Agricultural Workers Union, his first. at:1948 text:He and his family join the National Farm Workers Labor Union. at:1952 text:Cesar Chavez is recruited for Saul Alinsky's Community Service Organization,~ an activist group that fought racial and economic discrimination against Chicano residents. from:1958 till:1959 text:Chávez organizes strikes, marches, and a boycott of merchants~ in Oxnard to protest local unemployment. at:1962 text:Leaves The CSO and moves to Delano where he founds the Farm Workers Association. at:1965 shift:(25,-5) text: The NFWA and Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee start the grape boycott. at:1966 shift:(25,8) text:In March, Chávez marches with 75 others from Delano to the capital, Sacramento, 340 miles~ to bring attention to the plight of farmworkers. at:1968 text:In February, Chavez begins his historic 25 day fast. at:1969 text:UFW declares National Grape Boycott Day. at:1970 text:In December, Chávez imprisoned for challenging injunction against the boycott. at:1973 text:UFW celebrates first convention in Fresno. at:1975 text:California Supreme Court declares the short-handled hoe an Unsafe Hand Tool thus banned by California law at:1977 text:An agreement was reached that gave the UFW the sole right to organize farm workers. at:1984 text:Chávez announces a new grape boycott, this time focused on pesticides. at:1988 text:Chávez fasts for 36 days to protest pesticide use at:1993 text:April 23, after a fast of several days, Chávez dies in his sleep of unknown cause. at:1994 text:Chávez posthumously receives the US Medal of Freedom from President Clinton. at:1996 text:Made a memorial of his history.

See also

List of places named after César Chávez

Sí se puede

Union Organizer

References

References and Further reading

Bardacke, Frank. "Cesar's Ghost: Decline and Fall of the U.F.W.", ''The Nation'' (July 26, 1993) online version

Bruns, Roger. ''Cesar Chavez: A Biography'' (2005) excerpt and text search

Burt, Kenneth C. ''"The Search for a Civic Voice: California Latino Politics," (2007).

Dalton, Frederick John. ''The Moral Vision of Cesar Chavez'' (2003) excerpt and text search

Daniel, Cletus E. "Cesar Chavez and the Unionization of California Farm Workers." ed. Dubofsky, Melvyn and Warren Van Tine. Labor Leaders in America. University of IL: 1987.

Etulain, Richard W. ''Cesar Chavez: A Brief Biography with Documents'' (2002), 138pp; by a leading historian. excerpt and text search

Ferriss, Susan, and Ricardo Sandoval, eds. ''The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement'' (1998) excerpt and text search

Griswold del Castillo, Richard, and Richard A. Garcia. ''Cesar Chavez: A Triumph of Spirit'' (1995). highly favorable treatment

Hammerback, John C., and Richard J. Jensen. ''The Rhetorical Career of Cesar Chavez.'' (1998).

Jacob, Amanda ''César Chávez Dominates Face'' Sayville: Mandy Publishers, 2005.

Jensen, Richard J., Thomas R. Burkholder, and John C. Hammerback. "Martyrs for a Just Cause: The Eulogies of Cesar Chavez," ''Western Journal of Communication,'' Vol. 67, 2003 online edition

Johnson, Andrea Shan. "Mixed Up in the Making: Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez, and the Images of Their Movements." PhD dissertation U. of Missouri, Columbia 2006. 503 pp. DAI 2007 67(11): 4312-A. DA3242742 Fulltext: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

LaBotz, Dan. ''Cesar Chavez and La Causa'' (2005), short scholarly biography

León, Luis D. "Cesar Chavez in American Religious Politics: Mapping the New Global Spiritual Line." ''American Quarterly'' 2007 59(3): 857–881. Issn: 0003-0678 Fulltext: Project Muse

Levy, Jacques E. and Cesar Chavez. ''César Chávez: Autobiography of La Causa''. (1975). ISBN 0-393-07494-3

Matthiessen, Peter. ''Sal Si Puedes (Escape If You Can): Cesar Chavez and the New American Revolution,'' (2nd ed. 2000) excerpt and text search

Meister, Dick and Anne Loftis. ''A Long Time Coming: The Struggle to Unionize America's Farm Workers,'' (1977).

Orosco, Jose-Antonio. ''Cesar Chavez and the Common Sense of Nonviolence'' (2008)

Prouty, Marco G. ''César Chávez, the Catholic Bishops, and the Farmworkers' Struggle for Social Justice'' (University of Arizona Press; 185 pages; 2006). Analyzes the church's changing role from mediator to Chávez supporter in the farmworkers' strike that polarized central California's Catholic community from 1965 to 1970; draws on previously untapped archives of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Ross, Fred. ''Conquering Goliath : César Chávez at the Beginning''. Keene, California: United Farm Workers: Distributed by El Taller Grafico, 1989. ISBN 0-9625298-0-X

Soto, Gary. ''César Chávez: a Hero for Everyone.'' New York: Aladdin, 2003. ISBN 0-689-85923-6 and ISBN 0-689-85922-8 (pbk.)

Taylor, Ronald B. ''Chavez and the Farm Workers'' (1975) online edition

External links

"The Story of César Chávez" United Farmworker's official biography of Chávez

César E. Chávez Chronology County of Los Angeles Public Library

Five Part Series on César Chávez ''Los Angeles Times'', Kids' Reading Room Classic, October 2000

The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworker's Struggle ''PBS'' Documentary

Farmworker Movement Documentation Project

''New York Times'' obituary, April 24, 1993

Walter P. Reuther Library – ''President Clinton presents Helen Chavez with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1994''

Category:1927 births Category:1993 deaths Category:People from Yuma, Arizona Category:Agriculture and forestry trade unions Category:American anti–illegal immigration activists Category:American labor leaders Category:American vegans Category:Christian vegans Category:Disease-related deaths in Arizona Category:Labor relations in California Category:Activists for Hispanic and Latino American civil rights Category:Mexican-American history Category:American people of Mexican descent Category:Nonviolence advocates Category:People from Oxnard, California Category:Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Category:Roman Catholic activists Category:United States Navy sailors Category:United States presidential candidates, 1976 Category:American labor unionists

ca:César Chávez de:César Chávez es:César Chávez fa:سزار چاوز fr:César Chávez nl:César Chávez no:César Chávez pl:César Chávez ru:Чавес, Сесар Эстрада simple:César Chávez sv:César Chávez tl:Cesar Chavez

''This article is about the boxer, not the president of the United Farm Workers.''

Arturo "El Mono" ''(The Monkey'') J. Rodríguez Jurado (May 26, 1907 – November 22, 1982) was an Argentine boxer who competed in the 1924 Summer Olympics and in the 1928 Summer Olympics.

In 1924, he lost his first fight against Thyge Petersen and was eliminated in the first round of the light heavyweight class.

Four years later, Rodríguez won the gold medal in the heavyweight class after winning the final against Nils Ramm.

References

profile

Category:1907 births Category:1982 deaths Category:Argentine boxers Category:Light-heavyweight boxers Category:Heavyweight boxers Category:Olympic boxers of Argentina Category:Argentine people of Black African descent Category:Boxers at the 1924 Summer Olympics Category:Boxers at the 1928 Summer Olympics Category:Olympic gold medalists for Argentina Category:Olympic medalists in boxing

da:Arturo Rodríguez Jurado de:Arturo Rodríguez Jurado es:Arturo Rodríguez Jurado fr:Arturo Rodríguez ja:アートゥロ・ロドリゲス no:Arturo Rodríguez pl:Arturo Rodríguez

A farmworker is a person hired to work in the agricultural industry. This includes work on farms of all sizes, from small, family-run businesses to large industrial agriculture operations. The farmworker may or may not be related to the individuals who own or run the farm, but his or her job entails a more formal relationship than a family member or neighbor who might do occasional chores on the farm. Depending on the location and type of farm, the work may be seasonal or permanent. Seasonal, or migrant workers, are often low-wage workers, who may or may not be working in their country of origin. Permanent workers may have a particular set of skills or educational background that allow them to earn higher wages, and are often found on farms where there is year-round production, such as on dairy or beef cattle farms. Farmworkers usually earn a wage, however, the work can be done on a volunteer basis or for educational reasons. Many programs exist, such as World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) that facilitates the placement of volunteer farmworkers on specific types of farms. Additionally, farms may offer apprenticeship or internship opportunities where labor is traded for the knowledge and experience gained from a particular type of production. Farm workers may be from the country where they are employed, or may be immigrants, as is often the case in the United States.

History

Farmwork has been around for thousands of years. In Medieval times, 90 percent of Europeans worked on the farms of wealthy knights or nobles. A form of farmwork is peasantry, a term usually used before the Industrial Revolution. Peasants were considered the lowest class of people and had few rights.

After the Industrial Revolution, many farm workers left the countryside to large cities to work in the factories. This meant farm labourers became more sought after, so the farmers and landowners offered better pay and conditions so their workers wouldn't find factory work more appealing. Some farmers employed one or two farmworkers, while Lords could employ thousands on their land.

Usually referred to as agricultural labourers (abbreviated to ag labs), they appeared often on census returns and documents from the 19th century. However, as more and more labourers moved to cities the term became less common by the early 20th century.

Farm Workers in the United States

United States Farm Structure

The development of a particular kind of agriculture is dependent on the characteristics of the farming region. The soil type, climate, slope, and distance to markets all help in shaping the type of agriculture that thrives in any particular region. For instance, the Midwestern United States has rich, fertile soil, and so it produces corn, soybeans, cattle, hogs, and dairy products and has become known as the Corn Belt of America. In contrast, agriculture in California’s Mediterranean and moderate climate produces more than half of the nation’s fruits, vegetables, and nuts, which require hand-harvesting and a large labor force.

Over the last century the amount of farmland in production has remained relatively steady, but the number of operating farms has continually dropped, signifying a consolidation of farm enterprises. Around the 1930s hard economic times hit the country with the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl era, forcing some farmers off the land. From 1950 to 2001 the amount of U.S. farm land used for major commodity crop production has remained about the same while over half of the farms are gone. As farm production has largely moved away from the family farms and towards an industrial agriculture model, there is an increased need for wage labor. A farm’s reliance on farmworkers greatly depends on the quantity and type of crop in production. Some crops require more labor than others, and in California many labor-intensive crops are produced such as dairy products, fruits, tree nuts and vegetables. Although the domestic farm labor force has decreased in the last century, the proportion of hired workers has grown. Increased competition among agricultural producers and consolidation have created a need for a large, inexpensive, temporary workforce that increasingly comes from abroad.

Demographics of Farm Workers in the United States

The agricultural labor force is largely foreign-born Hispanics of which 81% are foreign born, 77% are from Mexico, and it is estimated that 98% of all farm workers immigrated to the country illegally. They are usually young, married males. Every year many of these farmworkers leave their homes and families to cultivate, harvest, and package fruit, nut and vegetables in the U.S., while others work in the fishing, meat packing and dairy industries. In the past, the rise in immigration to the U.S., usually of unauthorized workers, has increased the population of migrant farmworkers. However, in the 1990s, a new trend began with the development of more year-round production methods resulting in a larger population of settled farmworkers.

Issues Facing Farm workers

Farm workers face many challenges globally and in the United States, and are among the most marginalized labor group in the world. The increasing prevalence of multinational corporations and a consolidated agricultural supply chain puts downward pressure on producers and thus wages and working conditions for labor. The International Labor Organization argues that the large scale restructuring of agriculture contributes to violations of the four fundamental worker rights: the right to join unions and bargain collectively, the elimination of forced labor, the ending of child labor, and the reduction of discriminatory hiring. Farm workers are more vulnerable to these abuses because of the precarious nature of their employment.

Not all farms and agricultural systems exhibit the following abuses and may respect the dignity of farm labor. The Swanton Berry farm for example "was the first strawberry farm in the United States to sign a contract with the United Farm Workers of America/AFL-CIO. The farm workers' contract includes the highest pay scales in the industry, health care, vacation and holiday pay." Nonetheless, there are many prevalent abuses within the agricultural labor industry.

Agricultural manual labor is often seasonal employment, which increases job insecurity among farm workers and can inhibit them from effectively organizing for better working conditions. For some, pursuing farm labor as a migrant worker, or following the crops, is an attempt to secure more regular employment but this incurs traveling costs that may not be made up upon arriving at the destination. Dairy farms and other animal operations require year-round, daily and around-the-clock labor which farm workers may feel unable to challenge. Farm workers in any context are additionally vulnerable to abuse when they are undocumented immigrants and isolated physically, socially, or linguistically.

The many problems with farm working around the world compel immigration, both from rural to urban areas and internationally. Global trade and the depression of crop prices across the developing world contribute to agricultural workers seeking employment outside of their home country. Undocumented workers are subject to the worst abuses since they have no recourse and may be more dependent on their current employment. Workers documented under the H-2A Visa program may also be unwilling to make demands since producers are only required to pay for their return home if the worker completes the growing season.

There are many working conditions that can be of concern to farm workers and their advocates including adequate wages, housing, food, working conditions, access to health care, and the quality of life for their families. Farm wages fell by 10% between 1989 and 1998. Additionally, in the agricultural sector overtime pay and minimum wage, depending on the man-hours employed by the farm, is not required in the United States. Many farm workers live below the poverty line, making an average of $10,000 per year. Access to adequate food and housing compound the problem of low wages. Housing may be rented by the farmworker or provided for free; however, much of the housing provided is inadequate and overcrowded. Extremely low wages can prohibit farmworkers from buying enough food to feed their families.

Information about health hazards and access to health care is extremely important and limited for farm workers. Agricultural workers perform a dangerous job- working with animals, pesticides, heavy machinery, and doing physically demanding tasks. Safety training is required in the United States but is not always performed or may be inadequate due to the seasonal time frame and language barriers. Chronic back injuries, serious respiratory problems in Confined animal feeding operations, and pesticide poisoning are common. The problem of pesticide exposure is increasingly recognized as one which occurs not only during the employees workday, but also due to pesticide drift which exposes workers, their families and whole neighborhoods when the wind carries pesticides into nearby communities. There have even been reports of farm workers drowning in manure lagoons. In instances where farm workers may be hurt on the job, they may not know their right to health care or they may be reluctant to report injuries for fear of losing their jobs. Meanwhile, in the United States, 95% of farm workers have no health insurance for non-farm related injuries which makes healthcare access for the family of farm workers and for illness very difficult to obtain.

While farm workers are mainly young men, the structure of farm work affects the entire family. When families do not travel together, parents, particularly fathers, are away from their children and families for long periods of time. On the farm site, many other issues confront women and children. Sexual harassment and abuse, inadequate educational opportunities, and the need for child labor for wages or for lack of childcare are serious concerns as well as exposure of pregnant women and children to many of the health hazards listed above. Women also face discriminatory hiring practices and often significantly lower wages, especially for piece-rate harvest work.

The following poem shows some of the difficulties faced by farmworkers:

Farm Worker Organizing in the United States

As compared to other workers, organization attempts on the behalf of farm-workers face a double challenge. First, labor laws that apply generally do not apply to agricultural workers. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, for example, which protects most workers who organize and form trade unions from employer retaliation (e.g., the firing of workers for trying to join a union) and sets up a framework for unions and employers to negotiate in good faith, does not extend to farm workers. Similarly, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which sets minimum wage and overtime pay requirements does not apply to farm labor. In 1966, the minimum wage requirement, but not the overtime pay, was extended to apply to farm workers who worked on farms where there was over approximately 7 full-time employees in a quarter. Some states, such as California, have pass laws guaranteeing the right to organize, but these apply only to the state level. A second important challenge faced by farm worker organizers is the vulnerability of the workers due to their immigration status. The non-immigrant status of guest workers as well as the lack of documentation of many other workers places them in a politically weak position to address worker injustices. Despite these challenges, there has been an important history of farm worker organizing in the United-States, and farm labor organizing continues to this day both to ensure the enforcement of existing regulation and to create new regulations.

Some of the main organizations associated with the farm workers movement are the United Farm Workers, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. Many of the issues around which farm workers organize relating to occupational health and safety and labor rights are also socially important issues that affect society more broadly. These include issues such as immigration rights or pesticide use in American agriculture. These leads to collaborations between farm workers organizations and other groups. United Farm Workers, Pesticide Action Network, and Earthjustice, for example, have worked together to present a petition, supported by 24 organizations in total, to the US Environmental Protection Agency to push for a ban of the pesticide endosulfan.

Given the reduced right to organize and bargain as workers, two approaches are commonly used. The first is targeting regulation changes by pressuring the government. The UFW, for example, often run campaigns targeting policy by encouraging citizens to communicate with their government representatives on a variety of issues. As a recent example, on the heels of the death of a young farm worker, the UFW has been encouraging supporters to contact California’s governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, to improve the enforcement of existing regulations regarding working in the heat. Despite having the strictest heat laws in the country, heat deaths continue to occur and are largely attributed to a lack of workplace inspectors which results in a low level of compliance. A second strategy involves targeting high profile businesses that are supplied through contractors and subcontractors hiring farm workers. Recently, the Coalition for Immokalee Workers, for example, has applied pressure to several companies through consumer boycotts, including McDonalds and Taco Bell. The result of these campaigns were that these companies agreed to pay an extra penny per pound to the farmworkers who picked for them, regardless of the fact that they were employed through subcontractors.

See also

Agroecology

Farmer

Juliana Mateo Foundation for Disabled Farmworkers

Manual labor

Migrant worker

Grower (disambiguation)

References

External links

U.S. Department of Labor Employment & Training Administration: National Agricultural Workers Survey.

http://www.doleta.gov/agworker/naws.cfm

USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service

http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/MannUsda/viewDocumentInfo.do?documentID=1063

Levine, Linda. 2006. The Effects on U.S. Farm Workers of an Agricultural Guest Worker Program. CRS Report for Congress. Updated March 9, 2006. http://leahy.senate.gov/issues/Immigration/GuestWorker.pdf

Farmworker Justice website

http://www.fwjustice.org/

Hundreds of millions of agricultural workers face poverty, hunger. UN report. 2005. UN News Centre. Oct. 6, 2005.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=16109&Cr;=&Cr1;

National Institute for Occupational safety and Health: Agriculture http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/agriculture/

Family Farm Defenders: Farm Workers Rights

http://www.familyfarmdefenders.org/pmwiki.php/FarmWorkersRights/FarmWorkersRights

Category:Agricultural occupations Category:Agricultural labor

ru:Батрак