Portal:Organized Labour

Cesar Chavez (born Cesario Estrada Chavez /ˈtʃɑːvɛz/; Spanish: [ˈt͡ʃaβes]; March 31, 1927 – April 23, 1993) was an American labor leader and civil rights activist. Along with Dolores Huerta, he co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), which later merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) to become the United Farm Workers (UFW) labor union. Ideologically, his world-view combined leftist politics with Catholic social teachings.

Born in Yuma, Arizona to a Mexican American family, Chavez began his working life as a manual laborer before spending two years in the United States Navy. Relocating to California, where he married, he got involved in the Community Service Organization (CSO), through which he helped laborers register to vote. In 1959, he became the CSO's national director, a position based in Los Angeles. In 1962, he left the CSO to co-found the NFWA, based in Delano, California, through which he launched an insurance scheme, a credit union, and the El Malcriado newspaper for farmworkers. Later that decade he began organizing strikes among farmworkers, most notably the successful Delano grape strike of 1965–1970. Amid the grape strike his NFWA merged with Larry Itliong's AWOC to form the UFW in 1967. Influenced by the Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, Chavez emphasized direct but nonviolent tactics, including pickets and boycotts, to pressure farm owners into granting strikers' demands. He imbued his campaigns with Roman Catholic symbolism, including public processions, masses, and fasts. He received much support from labor and leftist groups but was monitored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

In the early 1970s, Chavez sought to expand the UFW's influence outside California by opening branches in other U.S. states. Viewing illegal immigrants as a major source of strike-breakers, he also pushed a campaign against illegal immigration into the U.S., which generated violence along the U.S.-Mexico border and caused schisms with many of the UFW's allies. Interested in co-operatives as a form of organization, he established a remote commune at Keene. His increased isolation and emphasis on unrelenting campaigning alienated many California farmworkers who had previously supported him and by 1973 the UFW had lost most of the contracts and membership it won during the late 1960s. His alliance with California Governor Jerry Brown helped ensure the passing of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, although the UFW's campaign to get its measures enshrined in California's constitution failed. Influenced by the Synanon religious organization, Chavez re-emphasized communal living and purged perceived opponents. Membership of the UFW dwindled in the 1980s, with Chavez refocusing on anti-pesticide campaigns and moving into real-estate development, generating controversy for his use of non-unionized laborers. (Full article...)

Significant dates in labour history.

• April 01 - Burston Strike School began in 1914 the U.K.; the 1972 Major League Baseball strike began in the U.S. and Canada; the 1980 New York City transit strike began; the U.S. Supreme Court decided NLRB v. Truck Drivers Local 449; the Federation of Unions of South Africa was founded; the Allied Pilots Association was founded; the Loray Mill strike began in the U.S. in 1929; Sol Chick Chaikin died
• April 02 - Weldon Mathis was born; Eugene Hanley was born; the 1994–95 Major League Baseball strike ended in 1995
• April 03 - Percy Wells died
• April 04 - The On-to-Ottawa Trek began in Canada in 1935; William Quesse was born; the 2006 Minor League Baseball umpire strike began in the U.S.
• April 06 - Rose Schneiderman was born; the 1905 Chicago Teamsters' strike began as the Teamsters engaged in a sympathy strike; B. T. Ranadive died
• April 07 - The U.S. Supreme Court decided Lochner v. New York; Basawon Singh (Sinha) died
• April 08 - The 1998 Australian waterfront dispute began
• April 09 - John H. Dent died; the U.S. Supreme Court decided Adkins v. Children's Hospital and Bunting v. Oregon; Chris Watson was born; President Harry S. Truman nationalizes all steel mills in anticipation of the 1952 steel strike; Natascha Engel was born; Thomas Jackson was born
• April 10 - Harold J. Gibbons was born; Dolores Huerta was born; Joseph Diescho was born; George Lippard was born; Edward J. Carlough was born; Lee Batchelor was born; Anna Walentynowicz died
• April 11 - The 1980 New York City transit strike ended
• April 12 - Tom Addison was born; the U.S. Supreme Court decided NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp.; the Auto-Lite strike began in 1934 in the U.S.; the Union Label Department, AFL–CIO was founded; the Memphis sanitation strike ended; the Queensland Council of Unions was founded; the Sons of Vulcan was founded
• April 13 - Henk Sneevliet died; the Laborers' International Union of North America was founded
• April 14 - Dorothy Jacobs Bellanca was born; Marvin Miller was born; Ernest Bevin died
• April 15 - A. Philip Randolph was born; Pablo Manlapit died; the American Federation of Teachers was founded; "Black Friday" occurred in 1921 in the U.K.; Aleksei Gastev died; the Trade Unions Forum was founded; Margaretta Scott was born
• April 16 - Joseph Havelock Wilson died
• April 17 - Manwel Dimech died
• April 18 - Joseph Labadie was born; R. J. Thomas died
• April 20 - Gro Harlem Brundtland was born; The Ludlow Massacre occurred in 1914 in the U.S.; the International Harvester strike of 1979–80 ended
• April 21 - The Bituminous coal miners' strike of 1894 began in the U.S.; the First Employment Contract is repealed in France in 2006
• April 22 - Frederick Nicholas Zihlman died
• April 23 - Russell Crowell was born; the Canadian Labour Congress was formed; Cesar Chavez died; the Hock Lee bus riots occurred in 1955 in Singapore; Edward Lamb was born
• April 25 - Arnold Miller was born
• April 26 - United Trade Union Centre (Lanin Sarani) was founded
• April 28 - Workers' Memorial Day; Roy Lee Williams died; Bob White was born; Greg Combet was born; Jerry Horan died; Joseph Glimco died
• April 29 - The Coeur d'Alene miners' dispute of 1899 occurred in the U.S.

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• ... that Ottilie Baader was one of the founders of the first trade union organization for women in Germany?
• ... that following the ban of its labour unions in 1934, the Romanian United Socialist Party would rely on its youth and women's wings for political action?
• ... that the day after returning to Atlanta following his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance in 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. joined picketers who were on strike against Scripto?
• ... that a strike by uranium miners in 1974 in Ontario led to the creation of the Occupational Health and Safety Act?
• ... that a 1994 lightning strike in Egypt led to 469 deaths after oil tanks were ignited and flooded the village of Dronka with burning fuel?
• ... that after ice hockey executive Hanson Dowell suspended players on Cape Breton Island, local coal miners threatened to strike in protest?

"The first thing a dictator does is abolish the free press. Next he abolishes the right of labor to go on strike."

— George Seldes

• ...that although an Iron Workers union member planted the dynamite in the 1910 Los Angeles Times bombing, the 21 people who died in the explosion and fire were all workers and not managers?
  
• ...that the Jiu Valley miners' strike of 1977 was the largest protest movement against the Communist regime in Romania before the Romanian Revolution of 1989?
  
• ... that although formally banned, the Iranian communist Central Council of United Trade Unions was able to revive its activities under the rule of Mohammad Mosaddegh in the early 1950s?

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