Chavez had a different vision of a union movement

By Arturo S. Rodriguez

When Cesar Chavez began building the United Farm Workers on his birthday, March 31, 1962, he had a different vision of what a union movement could be.

He carefully studied why all earlier attempts to organize farm workers failed. Chavez was convinced things had to be done differently. He recognized workers are not just workers. He was convinced it would take more than a union to overcome the crippling burdens farm workers faced; it would take a movement.

So his union began providing badly needed community services such as a death benefit, credit union and cooperative gas station.

Taking from Gandhi and Dr. King, Chavez turned to fasts and boycotts that were supported by millions, novel non-violent strategies for labor.

In the 1960s, farm workers were mostly Latinos, primarily U.S. citizens and legal residents, along with some Filipino Americans, African Americans and even Anglos. Today, most farm workers are Latino, immigrant and undocumented. Poor, low-wage Latinos are now everywhere in America: In Midwest meatpacking plants, making beds and cutting lawns in Las Vegas, and in poultry processing plants across the South.

It’s been 44 years, but today’s Farm Worker Movement is still anchored in the same passion to help people—at the workplace and in the community.
 
The union’s mission is clear and unwavering: Organizing and representing farm workers at the work place.

—There have been dozens of key UFW union contract victories, including the largest strawberry, rose, winery and mushroom firms in California and the nation.
 
 —UFW organizing continues. Last summer’s drive among Central Valley table grape workers produced pay hikes and a near win in one of the largest private-sector union elections in America, at Giumarra vineyards.
 
 —Many new UFW-sponsored laws and regulations aide farm workers, including last year when the union convinced Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to issue the first historic state regulation in the U.S. preventing further heat deaths of farm workers.
 
 —The UFW is pushing its bipartisan, broadly backed AgJobs immigration reform bill.

Meanwhile in the community, the Farm Worker Movement still provides vital services for farm workers and other low-income Latino working families through sister organizations, each with a distinct mission.

Those services include high-quality affordable housing for thousands in poor communities in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. There is an eight-station, three-state network of popular educational Spanish-language radio stations reaching 300,000 farm workers and other recent immigrants and blanketing regions with the greatest concentrations of farm workers in the nation.

The latest program seeks to improve the dismal educational performance of farm worker and Latino children, focusing on literacy in elementary schools and Algebra for middle-schoolers.

There are classes that have helped more than 6,000 farm workers improve job skills and learn vocational English.

Community organizing programs operate in three states, providing an array of services and organizing rural people to bring about basic change where they live, including installation of streetlights and basic public infrastructure, opposing public library closures and improving early childhood development.
 
Finally, the Farm Worker Movement empowers and equips tens of thousands of young people to preserve and promote Chavez’s values, including nonviolent social change and service to others.
 
Much has changed in 44 years. A lot still remains to be done. Chavez inspired millions of people to become socially and politically active. But as we honor his legacy 13 years after his death, more than 400 dedicated men and women live modestly and work hard every day for the organizations he created as they fulfill Cesar Chavez’s vision of what a movement can become.

(Arturo S. Rodriguez succeeded Cesar Chavez as president of the United Farm Workers of America. To learn more, visit www.ufw.org.)