Sikhula Sonke farmworkers union is a women led Western Cape based independent trade union. [1]
Its focus include issues such as labour rights, domestic violence, food insecurity and alcohol abuse. The union has over 4000 employed and unemployed members including those living on farms in Stellenbosch, Grabouw, Villiersdorp, Franschhoek, Ceres, Rawsonville, Paarl and Wellington. [2] [3]
Its members resolved to boycott the April 2009 elections as part of the No Land! No House! No Vote! Campaign. [4] [5]
In 2011 it had around 5 000 members on over 200 farms in ten different districts of the Western Cape. [6]
César Estrada Chávez was an American labor leader, community organizer, businessman, and Latino American civil rights activist. Along with Dolores Huerta, he co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), which later merged to become the United Farm Workers (UFW) labor union. Ideologically, his world-view combined leftist politics with Roman Catholic social teachings.
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.
Howard Lawrence Berman is an American attorney and retired politician who served as a U.S. Representative from California from 1983 to 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented the state's 26th congressional district until redistricting and 28th congressional district until losing his reelection bid—which both encompassed parts of the San Fernando Valley—for respectively ten and five terms.
Dolores Clara Fernández Huerta is an American labor leader and civil rights activist who, with Cesar Chavez, is a co-founder of the National Farmworkers Association, which later became 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.
The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) is a labor union representing migrant farm workers in the Midwestern United States and North Carolina.
Baldemar Velásquez is an American labor union activist. He co-founded and is president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1989, and awarded the Order of the Aztec Eagle in 1994, the highest honor Mexico can bestow on a non-citizen.
The Delano grape strike was a labor strike organized by the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), a predominantly Filipino and AFL-CIO-sponsored labor organization, against table grape growers in Delano, California to fight against the exploitation of farm workers. The strike began on September 8, 1965, and one week later, the predominantly Mexican National Farmworkers Association (NFWA) joined the cause. In August 1966, the AWOC and the NFWA merged to create the United Farm Workers (UFW) Organizing Committee.
A farmworker is a hired agricultural labourer. In labor law, the term "farmworker" is sometimes used more narrowly, applying only to a hired worker involved in agricultural production, including harvesting, but not to a worker in other on-farm jobs, such as picking fruit.
South Africa held national and provincial elections to elect a new National Assembly as well as the provincial legislature in each province on 22 April 2009.
Eliseo Vasquez Medina is a Mexican American labor union activist and leader, and advocate for immigration reform in the United States. From 1973 to 1978, he was a board member of the United Farm Workers. He is currently secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union. He was previously an international executive vice president, the first Mexican American to serve on the union's executive board. Medina announced his resignation as an SEIU executive vice president effective October 1, 2013.
The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign is a non-racial popular movement made up of poor and oppressed communities in Cape Town, South Africa. It was formed in November 2000 with the aim of fighting evictions, water cut-offs and poor health services, obtaining free electricity, securing decent housing, and opposing police brutality.
Internal resistance to apartheid in South Africa originated from several independent sectors of South African society and took forms ranging from social movements and passive resistance to guerrilla warfare. Mass action against the ruling National Party government, coupled with South Africa's growing international isolation and economic sanctions, were instrumental in leading to negotiations to end apartheid, which began formally in 1990 and ended with South Africa's first multiracial elections under a universal franchise in 1994.
The Landless People's Movement was an independent social movement in South Africa. It consisted of rural people and people living in shack settlements in cities. The Landless People's Movement boycotted parliamentary elections and had a history of conflict with the African National Congress. The Landless People's Movement was affiliated to Via Campesina internationally and its Johannesburg branches to the Poor People's Alliance in South Africa.
No Land! No House! No Vote! is the name of a campaign by a number of poor people's movements in South Africa that calls for the boycotting of the vote and a general rejection of party politics and vote banking. The name is meant to imply that if government does not deliver on issues important to affected communities these movements will not vote.
The Salad Bowl strike was a series of strikes, mass pickets, boycotts and secondary boycotts that began on August 23, 1970 and led to the largest farm worker strike in U.S. history. The strike was led by the United Farm Workers against the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The Salad Bowl strike was only in part a jurisdictional strike, for many of the actions taken during the event were not strikes. The strike led directly to the passage of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act in 1975.
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.
Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, more commonly known by the acronym PCUN, is the largest Latino union in the U.S. state of Oregon. PCUN is located in Woodburn. According to the Statesman Journal, the meetings that led to the formation of PCUN were held at Colegio Cesar Chavez, the nation's first fully accredited and independent Latino college. PCUN was founded in 1977 by Cipriano Ferrel, who graduated from Colegio Cesar Chavez and worked closely with Cesar Chavez himself. Ferrel was motivated to create the organization after an increase in immigration raids in Oregon. PCUN has organized the creation of migrant housing and farmworker housing. Cipriano Ferrel worked closely with Cesar Chavez.
South Africa has been dubbed "the protest capital of the world", with one of the highest rates of public protests in the world.
The Western Cape 2012 Farm Workers' strike was a wave of strikes and protests by agricultural workers in the Western Cape from 27 August 2012 to the 22 January 2013. The events led to the deaths of 3 workers, R160 million in damages as well as a 52% increase in the official minimum wage. The protests mostly took place the towns of De Doorns and Worcester with smaller protests in Ceres, Robertson, Grabouw, Wolseley and Villiersdorp. The main cause of the strikes was low worker pay of R69 per day and high unemployment.
