Cesar Chavez, labor leader, worker, fighter for human rights

César Chávez was born on March 31, 1927 in Yuma Arizona.in to a Mexican American family. He dropped out of school in 8th grade to become a full-time migrant worker.  Reportedly, he went to work so that his mother would not have to work in the fields. 

Two years later, at the age of 17, Chavez joined the US Navy in the hope of learning skills he could use in civilian life.  He soon found that options for Mexican American’s in the Navy were as bad if not worse than society as a whole.  Menial work was all that was available. Chavez described his time in the Navy as the “Worst two years of my life” which says something about the level of racism in the military.  Work in the fields was hard, but most of his co-workers would have been Latino’s and other ethnic minorities. After the Navy, Chavez married and moved to San Jose California.  He worked in the fields until 1952 when he joined the Community Service Organization (CSO), a Latino civil rights group. 

Chavez is known internationally as one of the founders of the United Farm Workers of America (UFWA) .  The Union arose out of the merging of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee and Chavez’s National Farm Workers Association. Chavez and the NFWA supported the mostly Filipino workers of AWOC when they struck the grape growers in Delano, California demanding a wage increase that would equal the federal minimum. The Delano strike, the grape boycott, marches and support from Unions like the ILWU eventually forced grape growers to sign a collective bargaining agreement with the UFWA.

Chavez was an admirer of Ghandi and Martin Luther King and their tactics of non-violent direct action. Chavez’s name was associated with the hunger strike but particularly the boycott. The New Deal’s Wagner Act of 1935 excluded domestics and agricultural laborers, most of whom were ethnic minorities and this exclusion allowed the farmworkers to use secondary boycotts as a legal weapon as 1947’s Taft Hartley amendment which made them illegal didn’t apply due to their exclusion.

Cesar Chavez is revered among Latino workers for the struggle he waged on their behalf. But he was first and foremost a workers’ leader.  Growing up as he did it was natural he would organize among agricultural workers, some of the most exploited among us.  He was a man of great courage and principle.  Despite the differences people may have with his methods or tactics, this can’t be denied. 

His orientation toward the established workers’ organizations was correct despite its failings including the competition the UFW faced from the Teamsters union that signed sweetheart deals with employers to keep the UFWA out.  His efforts improved the lives of all workers but agricultural workers, the low waged, and Latinos in particular

Agricultural workers still work in difficult conditions for inadequate pay. Over the years, they have also suffered serious affects due to the use of pesticides and chemicals in that industry. Many of these workers are immigrant workers who also face the same discrimination that Cesar Chavez suffered.

Here in San Leandro, Latino’s have risen from 20% to 27% of the city's population. As an immigrant myself, I worked in the streets of Oakland and San Leandro and the older workers of color used to tell me about San Leandro and how bad it was for them in the 50’s and early 60’s. Some of them referred to it as “Klan” Leandro.

Times have changed for the better. We are a very diverse predominantly working class community. California is one of the three states that have this day as a state holiday and today we honor with our Latino brothers and sisters and all workers, the birthday of Cesar Chavez: Born March 31, 1927, died April 23, 1993