United Farm Workers

The United Farm Workers has signed 10,000 new members this year and won seven union representation elections, organizers said at the union's 12th national convention, the first since the death of founder Cesar Chavez. "(There is) a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of commitment to carry on Cesar's work," union President Arturo Rodriguez said of the 500 delegates who attended the convention Saturday and Sunday. Federal housing chief Henry G.

Dolores Huerta runs on righteous ferocity the way cars run on gasoline. The woman who co-founded the United Farm Workers union 50 years ago with Cesar Chavez has harried, prodded, hectored, rallied and protested. She's been arrested more than a score of times, and once, picketing in San Francisco, she was beaten so badly by a police officer that her spleen was ruptured. You'd be hard-pressed to tell, the way she bounces around the Central Valley, a woman on many missions. So, can she stand still next week in Washington long enough for President Obama to present her with the Medal of Freedom, along with honorees such as Toni Morrison, John Glenn and Bob Dylan?

Peter G. Velasco, 85, pioneering leader and fund-raiser of the United Farm Workers. Born in Asingan, the Philippines, Velasco came to Los Angeles in 1931 and worked for a decade in area restaurants. He served in the U.S. Army in Europe during World War II and became a U.S. citizen. For the next 20 years he worked on small farms in the Coachella Valley and in Delano. On Sept.

Two months after an acrimonious late-night standoff on a related issue, Gov. Jerry Brown and farmworker advocates have struck a deal to give state regulators new powers that could help agriculture workers unionize. The measure, introduced in the Legislature on Friday, would allow the state's Agriculture Labor Relations Board to certify a union if it finds that a grower has acted illegally to affect the outcome of a labor election. The legislation would also accelerate the mediation process for workers in disputes with their employers.

When she was growing up in the San Jose suburb of Morgan Hill, Christine Chavez-Delgado said, teachers never allowed her to even utter her grandfather's name at school. But on Sunday afternoon, she regaled a crowd of more than 1,000 people with stories about her famous grandfather, Cesar E. Chavez, during a celebration of his birthday and his contributions to the cause of U.S. farm workers. The program, the sixth annual Peregrinacion March for Justice, was held at Brand Park.

A group of about 35 labor organizers and fieldworkers protested Tuesday outside the Dole Food Co. headquarters in Westlake Village over the dismissal of two Oxnard celery pickers who said they were fired because they were campaigning to start a chapter of the United Farm Workers Union.

A son of the late labor leader Cesar E. Chavez called the dedication of a new building at Santa Ana College on Mexican Independence Day on Tuesday a fitting tribute to his father. "The best way to honor his legacy is not only by naming parks, streets and buildings after him but by being active in your community," said Chavez's 40-year-old son, Paul F. Chavez, of La Paz, Calif. "My father knew his work would not be finished in his lifetime. He knew that it would take a long-term commitment."

Capping off a string of successful organizing efforts after years of setbacks, the once-powerful United Farm Workers of America on Friday signed its biggest labor contract in recent years--with Bear Creek Production Co., the nation's largest rose grower. The union has won seven other, smaller contracts in the past year. But adding the 1,400 workers at Bear Creek, formerly known as Jackson & Perkins, is on the scale of the good old days of its organizing efforts.

When the United Farm Workers union marched from Delano to Sacramento in April to announce a return to organizing campesinos in the fields, many growers throughout the state derided the event as a publicity stunt with more bark than bite. But in the months since the pilgrimage, the UFW appears to be making good on its promise. It has won three elections outright and possibly a fourth at fruit and vegetable companies from Coachella to Kings County involving more than 1,000 workers.

Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante on Saturday visited the birthplace of the United Farm Workers movement, where more than 200 members of the union gathered on a dusty field vowed to back his campaign for governor and keep the Republicans from taking power. Chanting "Recall no, Bustamante si," farm workers clad in the union's signature red T-shirts welcomed the lieutenant governor to the Central Valley spot where Sen. Robert F.

A funeral service for labor organizer Richard Chavez will be held at 9 a.m. Monday at the United Farm Workers' 40 Acres complex at 31068 Garces Highway in Delano, Calif. An all-night vigil will begin at 7 p.m. Sunday. Chavez, younger brother of UFW co-founder Cesar Chavez, died Wednesday at 81.

Richard Chavez, who helped his older brother, legendary labor organizer Cesar Chavez, build the United Farm Workers into a force in state politics and agriculture, died Wednesday. He was 81. Chavez died from complications following surgery in a Bakersfield hospital, the UFW announced. "He was one of those little-known giants within the movement. He was extremely effective," Arturo Rodriguez, the union's president, said Wednesday in an interview with The Times. Born on his family's farm near Yuma, Ariz., in November 1929, Chavez was a migrant worker as a child growing up in the Great Depression.

Forty-one years ago, Cesar Chavez and local table grape growers gathered in a squat white building surrounded by vineyards and weeds on the western edge of this Central Valley community to sign contracts that brought large-scale unionization to agriculture for the first time in history. Back then, it was the hub of a United Farm Workers complex known as 40 Acres, and "Huelga! Huelga!" — the Spanish word for "strike" — was the familiar battle cry of fieldworkers and their supporters around the world.

Photographer George "Elfie" Ballis, who walked with the late United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez and led a rebellion against farmers over water, has died. He was 85. Ballis died Sept. 24 at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Fresno. His ailments included prostate cancer, friends said. Ballis took more than 30,000 photographs during the 1950s and '60s.One of his most memorable photographs shows Chavez in March 1966 leading farm workers on a pilgrimage from Delano to Sacramento.

Arturo Rodriguez, president of the United Farm Workers of America, appeared on "The Colbert Report" on Thursday to invite Americans of all races and backgrounds to participate in the farm labor that feeds our nation. The UFW, Rodriguez said, only partly tongue in cheek, is ready to welcome folks who want to put an end to the need for foreign nationals to pick our crops. Colbert volunteered; the audience chortled. But it shouldn't have been all that funny. The truth is, if the very thought of doing farm work didn't make so many Americans laugh, we'd all be better off. I worked in the fields for more than a dozen years in the 1970s and 1980s, picking and packing grapes at Almaden Vineyards, at Tenneco Farming Co. and at David Freedman Co. in the Coachella Valley, all under contract with the UFW. Those were some of the best years of my life.

What do you get when you mix farmworkers, Stephen Colbert, a stunt website and millions of dollars? A spotlight on those who toil in the sun. On Thursday, Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis announced more than $78 million in grants awarded to provide employment training and support services to migrant and seasonal farmworkers nationwide. California is the biggest recipient, with five grants totaling more than $20 million; 44 other states are due to receive at least one grant. The grants will be administered through the National Farmworker Jobs Program, a national organization that supplies job training and employment help for migrant and seasonal farmworkers.

Forty-one years ago, Cesar Chavez and local table grape growers gathered in a squat white building surrounded by vineyards and weeds on the western edge of this Central Valley community to sign contracts that brought large-scale unionization to agriculture for the first time in history. Back then, it was the hub of a United Farm Workers complex known as 40 Acres, and "Huelga! Huelga!" — the Spanish word for "strike" — was the familiar battle cry of fieldworkers and their supporters around the world.

Last April 29, while Angelenos were remembering the turmoil of one year before, farm workers from across the West converged on Delano, an agricultural community just north of Bakersfield. Somewhere between 35,000 and 50,000 people came to honor a fallen leader, Cesar Chavez, co- founder and president of the United Farm Workers. For three decades, Chavez organized field hands in a battle with growers over wages, living conditions and use of pesticides. He took his cause into the cities, organizing a series of successful grape boycotts.

Three decades ago, Dean Florez landed the perfect summer job in this sun-baked, Kern County farm town: filling burlap sacks with 50 pounds of potatoes, then sewing them shut with a steel needle and three loops of twine. It may not sound glamorous, but it was better than his previous job hauling irrigation pipe around rose and vegetable fields for 10 and 12 hours a day in triple-digit heat. Plus, the teenage Florez got to work under a roof, eat lunch in a refrigerated rail car and put in for overtime on long days.

Chavez's legacy Re "Not just to praise Cesar," Opinion, March 31 Thank you for this nuanced article. Indeed, all heroes are human, with real flaws -- and our history books should take note, because that is how we learn how challenging it is to bring about "change," work with others and be aware of our own flaws. I have not read Miriam Pawel's book, but she might have added in the article that even the first part of Chavez's work as a labor organizer should be told with shades of gray.