The United Farm Workers of America, or more commonly just United Farm Workers (UFW), is a labor union for farmworkers in the United States. It originated from the merger of two workers' rights organizations, the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) led by organizer Larry Itliong, and the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) led by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta. They became allied and transformed from workers' rights organizations into a union as a result of a series of strikes in 1965, when the mostly Filipino farmworkers of the AWOC in Delano, California, initiated a grape strike, and the NFWA went on strike in support. As a result of the commonality in goals and methods, the NFWA and the AWOC formed the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee on August 22, 1966. This organization was accepted into the AFL–CIO in 1972 and changed its name to the United Farm Workers Union.
Dolores Clara Fernández Huerta is an American labor leader and civil rights activist who, with Cesar Chavez, is a co-founder of the United Farmworkers Association, which later merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to become the United Farm Workers (UFW). Huerta helped organize the Delano grape strike in 1965 in California and was the lead negotiator in the workers' contract that was created after the strike.
Justice for Janitors (JfJ) is a social movement organization that fights for the rights of janitors across the US and Canada. It was started on June 15, 1990, in response to the low wages and minimal health-care coverage that janitors received. Justice for Janitors includes more than 225,000 janitors in at least 29 cities in the United States and at least four cities in Canada. Members fight for better wages, better conditions, improved healthcare, and full-time opportunities.
Day labor is work done where the worker is hired and paid one day at a time, with no promise that more work will be available in the future. It is a form of contingent work.
The Great American Boycott, also called the Day Without an Immigrant, was a one-day boycott of United States schools and businesses by immigrants in the United States which took place on May 1, 2006.
Worker centers are non-profit community-based mediating organizations that organize and provide support to communities of low wage workers who are not already members of a collective bargaining organization or have been legally excluded from coverage by U.S. labor laws. Many worker centers in the United States focus on immigrant and low-wage workers in sectors such as restaurant, construction, day labor and agriculture.
The Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA) is a nonprofit organization of Asian-Pacific American trade union members affiliated with the AFL–CIO. It was the "first and only national organization for Asian Pacific American union members".
Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) was a nonprofit and nonpartisan interfaith advocacy network comprising more than 60 worker centers and faith and labor organizations that advanced the rights of working people through grassroots, worker-led campaigns and engagement with diverse faith communities and labor allies. IWJ affiliates took action to shape policy at the local, state and national levels.
Cesar Chavez Day is a U.S. federal commemorative holiday, proclaimed by President Barack Obama in 2014. The holiday celebrates the birth and legacy of the civil rights and labor movement activist Cesar Chavez on March 31 every year.
The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, also known as CHIRLA, is a Los Angeles county-based organization focusing on immigrant rights. While the organization did evolve from a local level, it is now recognized at a national level. The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles organizes and serves individuals, institutions and coalitions to build power, transform public opinion, and change policies to achieve full human, civil and labor rights. The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles also has aided in passing new laws and policies to benefit the immigrant community regardless of documented status.
CASA is a Latino and immigration advocacy-and-assistance organization based in Maryland. It is active throughout the state, but has major foci in Prince George's County, Montgomery County and Baltimore. CASA influences Maryland politics on a wide range of policies, ranging from law-enforcement to education. It also has offices in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Georgia.
The California Agricultural Labor Relations Act (CALRA) is a landmark statute in United States labor law that was enacted by the state of California in 1975, establishing the right to collective bargaining for farmworkers in that state, a first in U.S. history.
Mary Kay Henry is an American labor union activist who was elected International President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) on May 8, 2010. She is the first woman to lead the union. While serving with the union in California, she helped pioneer SEIU's use of card check agreements, non-traditional collective bargaining agreements, comprehensive campaigns, and system-wide health care organizing strategies. Henry was included on Time's 100 Most Influential People of 2020.
Tefere Gebre is an Ethiopian-American labor and human rights activist, and the Chief Program Officer of Greenpeace USA. From 2013 until 2022, he was the Executive Vice President of the AFL-CIO.
The Los Angeles streetcar strike of 1919 was the most violent revolt against the open-shop policies of the Pacific Electric Railway Company in Los Angeles. Labor organizers had fought for over a decade to increase wages, decrease work hours, and legalize unions for streetcar workers of the Los Angeles basin. After having been denied unionization rights and changes in work policies by the National War Labor Board, streetcar workers broke out in massive protest before being subdued by local armed police force.
Eric Mann is a civil rights, anti-war, labor, and environmental organizer whose career spans more than 50 years. He has worked with the Congress of Racial Equality, Newark Community Union Project, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Black Panther Party, the United Automobile Workers and the New Directions Movement. He was also active as a leader of SDS faction the Weathermen, which later became the militant left-wing organization Weather Underground. He was arrested in September 1969 for participation in a direct action against the Harvard Center for International Affairs and sentenced to two years in prison on charges of conspiracy to commit murder after two bullets were fired through a window of the Cambridge police headquarters on November 8, 1969. He was instrumental in the movement that helped to keep a General Motors assembly plant in Van Nuys, California open for ten years. Mann has been credited for helping to shape the environmental justice movement in the U.S. He is also founder of the Labor/Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles, California and has been its director for 25 years. In addition, Mann is founder and co-chair of the Bus Riders Union, which sued the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority for what it called “transit racism”, resulting in a precedent-setting civil rights lawsuit, Labor Community Strategy Center et al. v. MTA.
On August 2, 1995, 72 Thai nationals were found working in conditions of slavery in a makeshift garment factory consisting of a row of residential duplexes in El Monte, California, just east of Los Angeles. This case is considered the first recognized case of modern-day slavery in the United States since the abolition of slavery. It would serve as a wake-up call for the world to the global phenomenon of human trafficking and modern-day slavery and would begin the anti-trafficking movement in the United States with the Thai Community Development Center as its pioneer. The case would also lead to the passage of California laws to reform the garment industry and end sweatshop abuses through independent monitoring and a code of conduct and then eventually to the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) passed by the United States Congress (later known as the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act.
Soledad "Chole" Alatorre was a Chicana labor activist who was active in the Greater Los Angeles Area, and was known for her work with the Centro de Acción Social Autónomo (CASA) and for her advocacy of civil rights among the Chicano community.
Herman Baca is a Chicano activist best known for grassroots community organizing in National City, California. Mentored by labor activists Bert Corona and Soledad Alatorre, Baca focused on political empowerment, grassroots organizing, police brutality, immigration, and a number of other issues during his involvement with the Mexican American Political Association, La Raza Unida Political Party, CASA Justicia, and the Committee on Chicano Rights. He was a key figure that advocated for undocumented immigrants as a part of the "Chicano/Mexicano" community during the Chicano Civil Rights Movement since the 1960s. As part of the Chicano Movement, Baca advocated for self-determination and defending human rights through organizing protests, administering electoral registration campaigns, community-based fund raising through tardeadas, and legal defense and social service workshops. Baca is currently based in San Diego, California in San Diego County.
