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Famous Labor Leaders

Latinos have been involved in the fight for worker rights as part of a broader ethnic and cultural struggle for inclusion and social justice.  Latino labor leaders fought for the rights of some of the most powerless members of American society, and inspired thousands of people to better their own lives and the lives of those around them.

César Estrada Chávez (March 31, 1927 – April 23, 1993) was an American farm worker, labor leader, and activist who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers (UFW). One of Chávez' great insights was that a successful union of farm workers had to be one they formed themselves. Much of his time was spent recruiting, training, and inspiring farm workers to take on the monumental task of forming a union, negotiating contracts with hostile growers and withstanding the sometimes violent reactions of the communities that hated the idea of a farm workers union and hated the man who led them.

"Si se puede!" ("Yes We Can!") was a rallying cry of the UFW, and in part it meant that the people in the union, whom no one thought were capable of doing anything more than picking fruit and vegetables, could indeed fight for their rights as workers and human beings and succeed.

In 1952, Chávez joined the Community Service Organization (CSO) and became a community organizer, sometimes helping fellow farm workers with their everyday problems, encouraging them to register to vote or to become U.S.citizens. He tried to convince the CSO leadership that farm workers needed a union devoted to their interests. When the leadership refused, he resigned from the CSO, took his life savings of $1,200 and formed the National Farm Workers Association, the precursor of the United Farm Workers union (UFW). In 1965, the UFW reached a turning point. 

Migrant grape pickers had gone out on strike, demanding a raise from the dollar an hour they were paid. More and more workers joined the Huelga (Spanish for "strike"), even in the face of threats from farm owners and labor contractors. Chávez worked tirelessly in support of the strike. In March, 1966 he led a group of strikers on a 250 mile march from Delanoto Sacramento, to take the union's demands to the state government and to bring national attention to the cause of the UFW. By the time the group arrived in Sacramento, one of the large Delanogrape growers had settled with the union, signing a contract guaranteeing better pay and working conditions for migrant workers. The battle for the rights of the workers would continue. In 1968, to draw more attention to the strike, Chávez began a 25-day hunger strike, organized more rallies and demonstrations and called for a national boycott of grapes. By 1970, the grape growers had agreed to a contract with the UFW which gave the workers health care benefits and a raise in pay. A similar call for a boycott of lettuce was less successful, but in 1975 Governor Jerry Brown signed the Agricultural Labor Relations Act-the first bill of rights for farm workers ever passed in the United States. It gave workers the right to vote on which union would represent them for the first time. The UFW easily defeated the Teamsters in an election to represent the lettuce pickers.

César E. Chávez continued to fight for the rights of farm workers as head of the UFW until his death in 1993. Over 50,000 mourners came to pay their respects to the humble man from Delano whose simple, humble manner belied a man of iron principles whose commitment to social justice was absolute and whose efforts to better the lives of his fellow men made him, in the words of Robert F. Kennedy, "One of the heroic figures of our time." He was awarded posthumously the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, by President Clinton in 1994.

 

Dolores Huerta was born in Dawson, New Mexico April 10, 1930, about seven  months after the infamous stock market crash. In the 1950's after graduating from Stockton  College, Dolores began teaching in a farm workers' community. As she witnessed the heartbreaking hunger of her students, she knew she needed to take direct action to eliminate the brutal conditions of poverty that defined their lives and their aspirations.

Dolores Huerta became involved in a community group supporting farm workers which merged with the AFL-CIO's Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC). 

Dolores Huerta served as secretary-treasurer of the AWOC.  It was during this time that she met César Chávez.  In 1962 along with César Chávez, she co-founded what would become the United Farm Workers Union (UFW). Using tactics of non-violence, she organized a successful boycott of Californiatable grapes. She successfully lobbied for the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, the first law of its kind in the United Stateswhich grants farm workers the right to collectively organize and bargain for better wages and working conditions.  She continues with the goal of empowering farm workers with information and skills to help them secure better living and working conditions.

As an advocate for immigrant workers rights, Dolores has been arrested 22 times for non-violent peaceful union activities.  At age 76, Dolores Huerta still very active in public life. She is President of the Dolores Huerta Foundation dedicated to developing indigenous leadership through community organizing. Dolores is a board member for the Feminist Majority Foundation (visit www.feminist.org) that advocates for gender balance. She is also teaching a class on community organizing at the University of Southern California. Dolores C. Huerta is also Secretary-Treasurer Emeritus of the United Farm Workers of America, AFL-CIO (UFW). 

Luisa Moreno (1906 – November 4, 1992) was a leader in the United States labor movement and a social activist. She unionized workers, led strikes, wrote pamphlets in English and Spanish, and convened the 1939 Congreso de Pueblos de Hablan Española, the "first national Latino civil rights assembly",[1] before returning to Guatemala in 1950.

Moreno was born Blanca Rosa López Rodríguez to a wealthy family in Guatemala City, Guatemala. While still a teenager, she organized La Sociedad Gabriela Mistral, which successfully lobbied for the admission of women to Guatemalan universities. Rejecting her elite status, she went to Mexico City in her teens to pursue a career in journalism.  She moved to New York City in 1927. 

In 1935, Moreno was hired by the American Federation of Labor (AFL) as a professional organizer. She left her husband, who had become physically abusive, and settled with her daughter in Florida, where she unionized African-American and Latina cigar-rollers. She joined the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and became a representative of the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA), becoming the editor of its Spanish-language newspaper in 1940.  As a UCAPAWA representative, she helped organize workers at pecan-shelling plants in San Antonio, Texas, and cannery workers in Los Angeles. There, she encouraged alliances between workers at different plants. Her leadership was of the type that empowered other workers, especially women, and she strongly encouraged women to take leadership roles in union organizations.  She continued to work in the labor movement throughout the 1940s. In the city of El Monte, she represented walnut pickers, receiving the assistance of the California Walnut Growers Association. One Association representative "came to have a high regard for her character, ability and honesty."

As a union consultant for the cannery workers in San Diego, Morenoargued that legal and illegal Mexican immigrants used fewer government resources than native-born citizens. She pointed out that they contributed more to the public coffers in taxes then what they took from the region. She spoke out against those who thought that Mexican immigrants drained the resources of the region. Of the conservative anti-Mexican movement, Morenosaid, "It failed. Powerful agricultural growers and contractors needed them to survive."

In the late 1940s, Moreno established a San Diego chapter of the Mexican Civil Rights Committee. In speeches to chapters of the Young Progressives of America, she warned that racial tensions and communist hysteria provoked racial profiling, stereotyping and police brutality against Mexican Americans and other ethnic minorities. On November 30, 1950, Moreno and her husband left the United States via Ciudad Juárez, slowly making their way to Mexico City. Her warrant of deportation had been issued on the grounds that she had once been a member of the Communist Party.  Eventually, the couple settled in Guatemala, but were forced to flee when a CIA-sponsored coup ousted progressive President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán. She later returned to Guatemala, where she was interviewed by several historians before she died.  Luisa was a single-minded tough realist about labor organizing and politics. As she said, "If you want to survive in politics, you need to be thick-skinned and not be baited by distractions or turbulent individuals."

Bert Corona (1918-2001), a political activist, union organizer and professor, was born in El Paso Texas.  Between 1936 and 1942 he was heavily involved in union organizing for the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO) and its affiliate, the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America.

In 1938, Corona campaigned for the election of Latino politician Eduardo Quevedo and later Edward Roybal. By 1950, he was regional organizer for the National Association of Mexican Americans and was passionately involved in opposing the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act. In 1959, he and Quevedo among other activists gathered to organize the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA). In 1960, he served on the national Viva Kennedy Campaign Committees and then on the Viva "Pat" Brown and then again in 1964 on the Viva Johnson campaigns. In 1967, he was appointed to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. During the mid 1960s Corona was deeply involved in the immigration issue as a consultant to the Labor Department. He continued that leadership through the 1970s and 1980s.

In addition to the groups listed above, Corona organized or helped to organize the Hermandad General de Trabajadores, the National Congress of Spanish-Speaking People, the Community Service Organization, and the Mexican Youth Conference. In many cases he served in an authoritative role in each of these organizations.

As a Professor he has lectured at Stanford, San Diego State University at Northridge, California State University, Los Angeles, and was President of the Association of California School Administrators.

Jesus Salas is the founder of Obreros Unidos, an independent farm labor union established in Wisconsin in 1966 and supported by funding from the AFL-CIO.

In the summer of 1966 Salas and other migrants, emulating Chávez’ farm workers’ march to Sacramento that same year, organized a March on Madison to shed light on the problems of Wisconsin's migrant Workers.  Salas’ hope was that the march would arouse “the social conscience of progressive Wisconsin.” Among other reforms, the marchers demanded and eventually got public restrooms for migrants in Wautoma and increased enforcement of state housing and minimum wage laws. In the fall of 1966 the migrants, with help from leaders of La Raza Unida, went on to form the Obreros Unidos (United Workers) labor union, which only survived for a few years but left a considerable legacy of activism in the Midwest.  In the late 1960s, he also worked for the United Farm Workers and César Chávez on the UFW Grape Boycott.

A native of Crystal City, Texas and former migrant worker, Salas has served as coordinator and board member of United Migrant Opportunity Services (UMOS) Inc., an employment and training program that assists Wisconsin's migrant workers. Salas also has worked in Democratic Party politics in Wisconsin and played a role in the operation of La Raza Unida Party in Wisconsin, and in Crystal City, Texas, where he worked on Economic Development for the party. Salas is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's School of Education, and received his master’s degree in political science from the University of Wisconsin. Salas has taught social studies courses at Milwaukee Area Technical College since 1987. Salas is a former lecturer at UW-Madison in Chicano Studies and presently teaches an introductory course in Latino Studies at University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

Baldemar Velasquez (1947-), is president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO, an organization he founded in 1967 in Toledo, Ohio. Velasquez was born into a migrant farm worker family and began agricultural work when he was six years old.

Velasquez made FLOC a national organization in 1978 when he led more than 2,000 workers in one of the largest agricultural strikes in the history of the Midwest. He issued a call for unprecedented trade union recognition in a multi-party collective bargaining agreement.

In 1979, FLOC launched a nationwide boycott of Campbell's tomato harvesting operations to pressure the company into labor negotiations. In 1983, Velasquez led 600-mile march of 100 farm workers from FLOC headquarters in Toledo, Ohio to Campbell's headquarters in Camden, New Jersey. In February 1986, the migrant workers, growers and Campbell's announced a three-way pact in which the growers agreed to give limited medical insurance, a paid holiday and a wage increase to 600-800 workers on 28 farms. It was the first three-way pact in labor history. FLOC and Velasquez called off the boycott after Campbell's and their subsidiary Vlasic signed the contracts.

Velasquez has also served as an organizer of the National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in 1991. In 1994, 29 national Hispanic organizations chose him as the recipient of the Hispanic Heritage Leadership Award. That same year he also received Mexico's Aguila Azteca Award - the highest award Mexico can award a non-citizen. The University of Toledo awarded him an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters degree in 1998. In 1998, Velasquez led the national FLOC boycott of Mt. Olive Pickle Co. in the campaign to organize the workers in North Carolina and the South. In 1999, Velasquez and FLOC played a key role in the creation of the National Coalition for Dignity and Amnesty for Immigrants. Velasquez has attended the International Labor Conference in Paris (2001) and has met with the leaders of French labor unions, and attended the Open World Conference in Berlin (2002) where he opened dialog with international unions on halting the shipping of pickles by Mt. Olive to the United States. In 2002, Velasquez led a delegation to the White House to meet with President George W. Bush's staff on the Freedom Act legislation developed by the National Coalition for Dignity and Amnesty for Undocumented Immigrants.

In the summer of 2004, Velasquez with a team of workers negotiated the first union contract with the North Carolina Growers' Association and an agreement with the Mt. Olive Pickle Co. to end the four and a half year boycott of the company.