United Farm Workers
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| Full name | United Farm Workers of America |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1962 |
| Members | 10,278 (2013) |
| Affiliation | Change to Win Federation |
| Key people | Arturo Rodriguez, president |
| Office location | Keene, California |
| Country | United States |
| Website | www |
The United Farm Workers of America , or more commonly just United Farm Workers (UFW), is a labor union for farmworkers in the United States. It originated from the merger of two workers' rights organizations, the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) led by organizer Larry Itliong, and the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) led by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta. They became allied and transformed from workers' rights organizations into a union as a result of a series of strikes in 1965, when the mostly Filipino farmworkers of the AWOC in Delano, California initiated a grape strike, and the NFWA went on strike in support. As a result of the commonality in goals and methods, the NFWA and the AWOC formed the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee on August 22, 1966. This organization was accepted into the AFL-CIO in 1972 and changed its name to the United Farmworkers Union.
Dolores Huerta grew up in Stockton, California, which was in the San Joaquin Valley, an area filled with farms. In the early 1950s, she completed a degree at Delta Community College, part of the University of the Pacific. She briefly worked as an elementary school teacher. Huerta saw that her students, many of them children of farm workers, were living in poverty without enough food to eat or other basic necessities. To help, she became one of the founders of the Stockton chapter of the Community Service Organization (CSO). The CSO worked to improve social and economic conditions for farm workers and to fight discrimination.
By 1959, César Chávez had already established professional relationships with local community organizations that aimed to empower the working class population by encouraging them to become more politically active. In 1952, Chávez met Fred Ross who was a community organizer working on behalf of the Community Service Organization. This was a group which was affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation which was headed by Saul Alinsky.
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