Jake Mckeegan

Cesar Chavez was a leading farm worker representative in the United States.  He knew firsthand how difficult life as a farm laborer was. His family even lost their farm during the Great Depression!  In 1952, he joined the CSO (a Latino civil rights organization in California). Later on, he left the CSO because he wanted to focus solely on farm workers’ rights and founded the United Farm Workers (“UFW”) in 1962.  Chavez was instrumental in helping US farm laborers win better working conditions, higher wages, and the sympathy of the US consumers. 

In 1962, Chavez started the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) along with Dolores Huerta. This was later renamed the United Farm Workers or UFW.  In 1965, the NFWA gained even more importance relative to the other strike organizations when they sponsored a strike and a nationwide boycott of California grapes. Both the boycott and the strike lasted until 1970 (5 years!)!!! They convinced the farmers to stop picking grapes and the consumers to stop buying grapes until the workers got better pay and working conditions.

The boycott largely benefited from the public’s new understanding of racism in middle-class America. It started to make sense to middle-class Americans who were increasingly aware of the civil rights movement. They realized that Latinos should also have higher wages and that they should have the same rights as their white counterparts. This boycott was successful and many Americans stopped buying grapes, which led to the workers receiving better pay and safer working conditions. 

In 1966, the union merged with the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). They merged because they thought that they could better represent farm workers and get better deals for farm workers if they worked together. In 1971, the NFWA was re-formed under its current name (United Farm Workers). The United Farm Workers disaffiliated with the AFL-CIO and entered the labor federation “Change to Win” in 2006. “Change to Win” is a group of unions that all came together because they thought they could make more change together than with the AFL-CIO alone. This was important because the AFL-CIO wouldn’t allow the UFW to affiliate with other regional bodies, and the UFW wanted to have a wider reach and include all of the unions.

            The UFW helped many farm workers, but not every farmer wanted the union’s help. Some people didn’t want to strike. They didn’t want to lose their jobs or income as illustrated by the novel Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan. In the book, Esperanza’s family didn’t want to strike because they needed money to pay hospital bills for the mom, bring Abuelita (their grandmother) to the USA, and buy food. While some people like Cesar Chavez believed in strikes, other people like Esperanza’s family didn’t, there was one thing that everyone believed in: better wages for the laborers. Cesar Chavez helped many farmers get better living wages and housing through the UFW by negotiating on behalf of workers.

            While Chavez helped many farm workers, there is still a lot of work left to be done and we have recently seen other labor unions strike in the US.  Another issue that emerged as a result of Cesar Chavez’s activism is that it created anti-strike feelings amongst many companies.  For example, Walmart is very anti-strike and will even close down a store if people threaten to strike. This can limit the ability of workers to strike as a way to make change, so now they need to focus more on negotiating and political action.  We are also seeing a rise in people being replaced by technology, specifically Artificial Intelligence and advanced robots, which further weakens the laborers’ bargaining position.    

The issue of AI and advanced robotics is very real for laborers.  We all know that history repeats itself, even if each time it changes a little bit. If you think about what could happen with AI and advanced robots, we may see a lot of workers getting replaced by machines (especially if workers demand higher wages and robots can do things cheaper). Consumers may want to boycott AI-made products so that workers keep their jobs, or they may prefer to have lower prices.  We just don’t know yet.  I think that AI and robots also limit workers’ ability to strike because AI and robots would just replace them.  So, if that happens, it will be up to consumers to decide how they feel and the workers won’t have very much power. The recent strike by Long Shore Men on the East Coast of the US is a good example of laborers being replaced by robots and automation, even though some workers won higher salaries the owners won the ability to add more machines and robots that can fully replace people. 

            Cesar Chavez died on April 23, 1993, in San Luis, Arizona, aged 66 from natural causes. He devoted his life to helping farm workers get better wages. Was it worth it? Sure, he inspired political change, but he didn’t completely inspire long-lasting change among the growers. Cesar Chavez once said, “We don’t need perfect political systems; we need perfect participation.” Unfortunately, Chavez was not able to fully succeed in that regard. All in all, the work done by Cesar Chavez and the UFW has helped many farmers such as the California grape pickers get better wages and conditions. The reason he was successful is that he never gave up. Even though Cesar Chavez helped a lot of farm workers, there’s still a lot of work to be done. He spent a lot of his life fighting for farm workers’ rights, but not all the growers really changed. I think that most of them have changed. 

Works Cited Page 

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “United Farm Workers”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 19 Jul. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/United-Farm-Workers. Accessed 17 September 2024.   

AFL-CIO. (2024, September 27). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFL-CIO 

United Farm Workers. (2024, August 18). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Farm_Workers

Cesar Chavez. (2024, September 9). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesar_Chavez   

Delano grape strike. (2024, September 27). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delano_grape_strike 

Criticism of Walmart. (2024, August 29). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Walmart 

Franky Abbott. Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America https://production.dp.la/primary-source-sets/the-united-farm-workers-and-the-delano-grape-strike 

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Cesar Chavez”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 6 Sep. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cesar-Chavez. Accessed 17 September 2024.

ufw.com. (n.d.). Education of the heart: Cesar Chavez in his own words. UFW. https://ufw.org/research/history/education-heart-cesar-chavez-words/