Linskey, A. Our Vision. Rodriguez, R. The Fresno Bee. Rose, M. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 11 1 , Sherman, J. United Farm Workers History and Geography. Skip to main content.
You are here Home. The History of the United Farm Workers. About Author s. View the discussion thread. I came up to his shoulder, had a ponytail and big mod glasses. They could hardly understand my American accent. We both wore red-and-black UFW buttons on our jackets. By July , the growers conceded defeat. The boycott drove twenty-six of them to the bargaining table, where they finally signed collective bargaining contracts with the UFW that ended the five-year-long Delano grape strike.
The first few years after the historic contracts in were difficult ones, marred by competition from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union to represent farm workers. Although the UFW fought off the threat initially, the Teamsters continued to pursue the matter, including with grape workers in , when the initial contracts came up for renewal in the San Joaquin and Coachella Valleys. Through outright physical intimidation, the Teamsters declared war on the United Farm Workers, attempting to beat UFW representatives out of the fields.
The extreme violence exhibited by the Teamsters precipitated retaliation from UFW supporters. At the peak of employment in , the UFW boasted 60, members; however, loss of contracts to the Teamsters dropped membership down to 12, by the end of the harvest.
By the winter of , the Teamsters cut UFW membership in half, to 6, The loss of members reduced dues, thereby cutting into the economic viability of the union. Holding free and fair elections for representation in the fields and adjudicating unfair labor practice charges were two of the primary duties of the ALRB. ALRA transformed the movement and Chavez. By the end of , ALRB had held elections; of these, the UFW scored victories in of them, representing 26, workers, or The Teamsters, by comparison, won elections representing 12, workers, or 23 percent.
While the union did not like to lose any workers, the UFW took solace in the fact that, in elections on fifty-eight ranches, 8, workers switched allegiances from the Teamsters to the UFW. Only 4 percent of workers voted for no representation. Jerry Cohen used these numbers to persuade the Teamsters to reach a settlement. After years of mayhem in the fields and numerous courtroom battles, the UFW and Teamsters met on December 1, , to agree to a moratorium on filing suits against one another.
On March 10, , Cohen facilitated a meeting of Cesar Chavez and Teamster President Frank Fitzsimmons to sign a jurisdictional pact that recognized the right of the Teamsters to organize truck drivers, cannery workers, and other non-field workers, while UFW had exclusive rights to organize farm workers.
The pact ended a six-year war between the unions and opened up the possibility for the UFW to take advantage of future union elections under ALRA.
In spite of this success, the UFW struggled to work within the law. Problems existed from the start. After the first six months of its existence, the ALRB exhausted its budget and had to close down operations.
In an attempt to protect funding for the future, Chavez pursued a risky strategy of appealing to voters to pass Proposition 14, an initiative that would have insured funding for all the work ALRB needed to do within a year.
Chavez added the demand for greater union access to workers on farms, a provision that went against attitudes towards private property in California and the West. Nevertheless, the ALRB received funding the following fiscal year, in — ; with it came continued opportunities for the UFW to win more elections.
He was not entirely alone among union leaders in his skepticism about the law. Although many union members lamented the change in strategy, no one resisted it more than Chavez. Eliseo Medina, for example, threw himself into organizing citrus workers and winning elections, striving to reach , members by the end of Chavez, on the other hand, questioned the value of a union, and articulated a preference for organizing the poor and building a commune at the union headquarters, La Paz.
The way for me to go is to have a community like Synanon or close to that and start truly cooperative ventures. In other words, we start taking over the land. In the months following this meeting, Chavez appealed to the Executive Board to support the implementation of a controversial group encounter exercise, The Game, practiced at Synanon. The Game subjected members to harsh interrogations from peers, and sometimes Chavez, to achieve greater conformity to the leader.
Chavez eventually demanded that everyone at La Paz play The Game, though several members resisted. Outside of La Paz, staff members and volunteers working in boycott houses around the country questioned the practice and wrote letters of opposition to Chavez.
When Chuck Dederich fell into trouble with the law after plotting to kill a lawyer who sued him for the mistreatment of children at Synanon, Chavez defend him. Ultimately, his association with Dederich and his experimentation with The Game damaged the esprit de corps within the movement and produced questions about his vision for the union.
He responded to his critics by cancelling the boycott and purging members from the union. Other factors contributed to the weakened state of the union in the s. The actions of the Teamsters created the perception that the fight for labor rights was between two unions rather than against the practices of farm owners. The confusion made it difficult for consumers to choose sides and follow the various boycotts. During the mid- to late s, Chavez travelled to the field offices less frequently and focused a greater portion of his attention to building a community.
When Chavez accepted an invitation from President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, several current and former members argued that he had lost touch with those who had supported him, especially Filipino members.
He ignored the counsel of Gilbert Padilla, who advised him not to go. When Filipinos and Catholic supporters of the union faulted him for supporting Marcos, who opposed labor unions and practiced martial law in his country, Chavez refused to admit his mistake and pushed harder against his critics.
The action upset many Filipinos within the union who challenged him from the floor of the UFW convention. Many left the union altogether. Conference of Catholic Bishops, as well as criticism within the Filipino, radical, and popular press.
The workers won the battle in , and Jerry Cohen negotiated the contracts with the growers, but Chavez refused to celebrate the victory with the workers. During the late s and early s, Chavez accused many of his most loyal members of treason, for their willingness to criticize him or express new ideas.
Ultimately, Chavez and the UFW struggled with the transitions from being a social movement in the s to a union responsible to members in the s. Once it succeeded in drawing growers to the bargaining table, the union was forced into a process of professionalization by competing unions The Teamsters and grower expectations. He also insisted that they play the Game.
Problems in the organization notwithstanding, Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers delivered a degree of justice to farm workers and their families never before seen in California or the United States. Prior to the farm worker movement, unions used the boycott to create class solidarity by asking fellow laborers not to purchase a particular product linked to the unfair treatment of workers.
Chavez and the UFW expanded the use of the boycott by appealing to an international public to participate on the grounds of achieving social justice rather than just labor solidarity.
He attracted attention to the injustices of a farm labor system that employed mostly Mexican and Filipino laborers in hopes of capitalizing on a heightened civil rights consciousness in the nation. Thus, together, these essays offer a good sense of recent Latino and Latin American history and progress. N47 A history of Catholic social thought Many Americans assume that the Catholic Church is inherently conservative, based on its stances on abortion, contraception, and divorce.
Yet there is a longstanding tradition of progressive Catholic movements in the United States that have addressed a variety of issues from labor, war, immigration, and environmental protection, to human rights, women's rights, exploitive development practices, and bellicose foreign policies. These Catholic social movements have helped to shift the Church from an institution that had historically supported incumbent governments and political elites to a Church that has increasingly sided with the vulnerable and oppressed.
This book provides a concise history of progressively oriented Catholic Social Thought, which conveys the Catholic Church's position on a variety of social justice concerns. Sharon Erickson Nepstad introduces key papal encyclicals and other church documents, showing how lay Catholics in the United States have put these ideas into practice through a creative and sometimes provocative political engagement.
Nepstad also explores how these progressive movements have pressured the religious hierarchy to respond to pressing social issues, such as women's ordination, conscription, and the morality of nuclear deterrence policies. Catholic Social Activism vividly depicts how these progressive movements have helped to shape the religious landscape of the United States, and how they have provoked controversy and debate among Catholics and non-Catholics alike.
Sowards Call Number: HD H84 S68 In this new study, Stacey K. She shows how Huerta navigates the complex intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, language, and class through the myriad challenges faced by women activists of color. Sowards's approach to studying Huerta's rhetorical influence offers a unique perspective for understanding the transformative relationship between agency and social justice.
These papers are microfilmed from the holdings of the Walter P. Reuther Library, Detroit, MI. Collections of the United Farm Workers of America. Papers of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee The papers include minutes and research papers, as well as communications with organizers, politicians, public health officials, Filipino community organizations, the Community Service Organization, and other unions.
Dolores Huerta External See this digital exhibition provided by the national women's history museum on Dolores' Huerta's work.
Migrants, family of Mexicans, on road with tire trouble. Looking for work in the peas. Camilo J. Vergara, photographer. Tam's Burgers, S. San Pedro Ave. Juan is the manager, in addition to burgers he serves chicken teriyaki and Mexican food. Mural of MLK Jr. Dorothea Lange, photographer, Filipino crew of fifty-five boys cutting and loading lettuce. Imperial Valley, California.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs. Russell Lee, photographer. Mexican girl, carrot worker, Edinburg, Texas. Lange, Dorothea, photographer Filipino crew of fifty-five boys cutting and loading lettuce. Imperial Valley, California, Carol M. Camilo J Vergara, photographer. Vernon Ave. Dorothea Lange, photographer. Migrant Mexican children in contractor's camp at time of early pea harvest.
Nipomo, California. Dorothea Lange, photographer, Mexican family. Brawley County, Imperial Valley, California. Cesar Chavez mural at 76th Place at S. Central Ave. Dorothea Lange, photographer, Children of Mexican cotton laborers.
Casa Grande, Arizona. Fifteen or twenty cars full of pickets would go to a field where a grower was attempting to use strikebreakers. Striking workers, often harassed by the growers and police, sometimes violently, would try to get the scabs to leave the fields. Remarkably, their appeals were successful much of the time in persuading workers to join the strike. The growers made a mistake almost immediately. They had always been able to end strikes with small wage concessions.
The raise merely encouraged the strikers to believe they were being effective. Now there had to be a union, too. Shortly after the strike erupted, Chavez called upon the public to refrain from buying grapes without a union label.
Union volunteers were sent out to big cities, where they established boycott centers that organized friendly groups-unions, churches, community organizations-to not buy grapes, and in turn to join in publicizing the boycott. The Civil Rights movement had increased public awareness of the effects of racism, including lowered standards of living for the victims of prejudice in housing, employment, schools, voting, and other areas of daily life.
The Civil Rights movement focused attention on the treatment of Blacks in the south. But the situation in the fields of California proved similar enough that the largely Chicano and Filipino farmworkers benefited by the new public understanding of racism. As a result, millions of consumers stopped buying table grapes. The two biggest growers in the Delano area, Schenley and DiGiorgio, were the most vulnerable to the boycott.
Both companies were owned by corporate entities with headquarters far from Delano. For each company grape growing was a relatively minor part of a larger economic empire. Schenley and DiGiorgio had union contracts with workers in many other parts of their business. The boycott had the potential to hurt sales in other product areas, and to harm labor relations with their other workers.
Schenley was the first to crack.
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