Victoria "Tory" Gavito is an American activist. [1] As an attorney, Gavito has represented unions, immigrant and migrant workers, and individuals regarding a variety of labor law, wage payment and employment discrimination matters. [2]
Gavito is the co-founder and president of Way to Win, [1] the founding executive director of the Texas Future Project, [3] and founder of the Texas Future Project Research Center.
Gavito received a BA in political science and Spanish from St. Olaf College in 2000. She graduated from St. Mary's University School of Law in 2004.[ citation needed ]
From 2004 to 2006, Gavito received the New Voice Fellowship and the Yale Initiative for Public Interest Law Grant to work as a Staff Attorney at the Central Texas Immigrant Workers’ Rights Center, a wage claim project affiliated with the Austin, Texas Equal Justice Center. There she supervised law students in the Transnational Workers’ Rights Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law, and led a wage-claim litigation project for low-wage immigrant workers in contract and labor disputes. The project resulted in the creation of the Austin, Texas Workers’ Defense Project (WDP), a membership organization for low-wage workers.[ citation needed ]
In 2018, Gavito co-founded Way to Win, and currently serves as its president. [4] Way to Win is a progressive electoral organization that backs candidates. [5]
Gavito is currently an advisory board member of the Center for Migrant Rights and the Workers Defense Project. Gavito is also on the board of the State Innovation Exchange-Action. [6]
Gavito also served as a research assistant at the Immigration Human Rights Clinic at the Center for Legal and Social Justice at St. Mary's Law School, and as an AmeriCorps Volunteer with the American Friends Service Committee in Denver, Colorado.[ citation needed ]
Collective bargaining is a process of negotiation between employers and a group of employees aimed at agreements to regulate working salaries, working conditions, benefits, and other aspects of workers' compensation and rights for workers. The interests of the employees are commonly presented by representatives of a trade union to which the employees belong. A collective agreement reached by these negotiations functions as a labour contract between an employer and one or more unions, and typically establishes terms regarding wage scales, working hours, training, health and safety, overtime, grievance mechanisms, and rights to participate in workplace or company affairs. Such agreements can also include 'productivity bargaining' in which workers agree to changes to working practices in return for higher pay or greater job security.
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 National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) led by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta and the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) led by organizer Larry Itliong. They allied and transformed from workers' rights organizations into a union as a result of a series of strikes in 1965, when the Filipino American and Mexican American 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.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, also known as the Hart–Celler Act and more recently as the 1965 Immigration Act, is a landmark federal law passed by the 89th United States Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The law abolished the National Origins Formula, which had been the basis of U.S. immigration policy since the 1920s. The act formally removed de facto discrimination against Southern and Eastern Europeans as well as Asians, in addition to other non-Western and Northern European ethnicities from the immigration policy of the United States.
Ernesto Cortés Jr. is the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) co-chair and executive director of the West / Southwest IAF regional network.
Labor rights or workers' rights are both legal rights and human rights relating to labor relations between workers and employers. These rights are codified in national and international labor and employment law. In general, these rights influence working conditions in the relations of employment. One of the most prominent is the right to freedom of association, otherwise known as the right to organize. Workers organized in trade unions exercise the right to collective bargaining to improve working conditions.
The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) is a labor union representing migrant farm workers in the Midwestern United States and North Carolina.
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 American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) is a New York-based national organization founded in 1974 that seeks to protect and promote the civil rights of Asian Americans. By combining litigation, advocacy, education, and organizing, AALDEF works with Asian American communities across the country to secure human rights for all.
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.
Emigration from Mexico is the movement of people from Mexico to other countries. The top destination by far is the United States, by a factor of over 150 to 1 compared to the second most popular destination, Canada.
Physicians for Human Rights–Israel is a non-governmental, non-profit, human rights organization based in Jaffa. Physicians for Human Rights–Israel was founded in 1988 with the goal of promoting "a just society where the right to health is granted equally to all people under Israel’s responsibility."
Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Austin, Texas, that advocates for voting rights, racial justice, economic justice, and criminal justice reform. It was formed in 1990 by attorney James C. Harrington.
David Rolf is an American labor leader, writer, and speaker. He was the Founding President of Seattle-based Local 775 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents health care workers, and formerly served as international vice president of SEIU. He is the author of The Fight for Fifteen: The Right Wage for a Working America about the movement by low-wage workers to earn a higher minimum wage, and A Roadmap to Rebuilding Worker Power. Rolf was a founder of the Fair Work Center in Seattle, Working Washington, The Workers Lab in Oakland, and the SEIU 775 Benefits Group.
Matthew McDade Phelan is an American real estate developer and politician. A member of the Republican Party, he serves in Texas House of Representatives representing District 21, which includes most of Jefferson and all of Orange and Jasper counties in the southeast corner of the state. He has been Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives since January 2021. He has been censured by the Texas Republican Party.
Barbara Hines is an American immigration rights attorney. She is the founder of the University of Texas Law School immigration clinic. Hines is recognized for her defense of the rights of immigrants, coming to national attention for her work in winning the release of families detained in the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas in 2008.
Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez is an American labor organizer and writer. From August 12, 2019 until March 3, 2020 Tzintzún Ramirez was a potential challenger to incumbent United States Senator John Cornyn in the 2020 United States Senate election in Texas as part of a twelve-person Democratic primary, in which she placed third.
Sarumathi "Saru" Jayaraman is an American attorney, author, and activist from Los Angeles, California. She is an advocate for fair wages for restaurant workers and other service workers in the United States. In the aftermath of September 11, she co-founded the non-profit public service organization Restaurant Opportunities Centers United. And in 2013 she founded a new organization to work on these issues, called One Fair Wage. Jayaraman is a recipient of the Ashoka fellowship in 2013 and the Soros Equality Fellowship in 2020.
James C. Harrington is a Texas civil rights lawyer and founder of the Texas Civil Rights Project. Dedicated to social justice, he fought for workers' rights alongside Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. Harrington had a reputation for taking on powerful adversaries, including the Texas Supreme Court and the Texas State Bar. He worked on a variety of cases, including civil rights, worker's rights, racial discrimination, as well as many cases under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Harrington was an adjunct law professor at University of Texas, popular with students who sought more than a theoretical perspective.
Gregorio Eduardo Casar is an American politician who is the member for Texas's 35th congressional district in the United States Congress since 2023. He served as a member of the Austin City Council from the 4th district from 2015 to 2022. Casar is a member of the Democratic Party and was endorsed by the Working Families Party in his run for Congress. Casar is an unendorsed member of the Democratic Socialists of America. He was first elected to the Austin City Council in 2014, representing District 4. He was reelected in 2016 and 2020. He was elected to Congress in 2022.
Rosalinda Guillen is a farmworker and community organizer from Washington state. She was a leading organizer in a union drive at the Chateau Ste. Michelle winery in the Yakima Valley from 1987 to 1995 and is the founder of the nonprofit Community to Community Development.