Monday, September 30, 2013

                                 
                                            DELORES HUERTA

Today in #LaborHistory : September 30 -- via -- www.unionist.com


Cesar Chavez, with Delores Huerta, co-founds the National Farm Workers Association, which later was to become the United Farm Workers of America – 1962

Dolores Clara Fernandez Huerta (born April 10, 1930) is a labor leader and civil rights activist who, along with César Chávez, co-founded the National Farmworkers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers (UFW). Huerta has received numerous awards for her community service and advocacy for workers', immigrants', and womens' rights, including the Eugene V. Debs Foundation Outstanding American Award, the United States Presidential Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. As a role model to many in the Latin community, Huerta is the subject of many corridos (ballads) and murals.



Career as an activist
 
In 1955, Huerta co-founded the Stockton chapter of the Community Service Organization, (CSO) and in 1960 co-founded the Agricultural Workers Association which set up voter registration drives and pressed local governments for barrio improvements. In 1962, she co-founded the National Farm Workers Association with César Chávez, which would later become the Unit's Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee. In 1966, she negotiated a contract between the UFWOC and Schenley Wine Company, marking the first time that farm workers were able to effectively bargain with an agricultural enterprise. Through her work with the CSO Dolores met Cesar Chavez the Executive Director of the CSO. The two soon both realize the need to organize farm workers. In 1962, after the CSO turned down Cesar's request, as their president, to organize farm workers, Cesar and Dolores resigned from the CSO. With Cesar Chavez she co-founded the National Farm Workers Association which would later merge with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to become the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee. Dolores' organizing skills were essential to the growth of this budding organization.

In 1965, Huerta directed the UFW's national boycott during the Delano grape strike, taking the plight of the farm workers to the consumers. The boycott resulted in the entire California table grape industry signing a three-year collective bargaining agreement with the United Farm Workers in 1970.

In addition to organizing she has been highly politically active, lobbying in favor of (and against) numerous California and federal laws. The laws that she supported included the following:
1960 bill to permit people to take the California driver's examination in Spanish
1962 legislation repealing the Bracero Program
1963 legislation to extend Aid to Families with Dependent Children to California farmworkers
The 1975 California Agricultural Labor Relations Act


As an advocate for farmworkers' rights, Huerta has been arrested twenty-two times for participating in non-violent civil disobedience activities and strikes. She remains active in progressive causes, and serves on the boards of People for the American Way, Consumer Federation of California, and Feminist Majority Foundation.

On June 5, 1968, Huerta stood beside Robert F. Kennedy on a speaker's platform at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles as he delivered a victory statement to his political supporters shortly after winning the California Democratic presidential primary election. Only moments after the candidate finished his speech, Huerta was a safe distance behind Kennedy as he and five other people were wounded by gunfire inside the hotel's kitchen pantry. Only 15 min before the shooting, Huerta had walked through that pantry alongside the US Senator from New York while Kennedy was on his way to deliver his victory speech. Kennedy died from his gunshot wounds on June 6.

In September 1988, in front of the St. Francis Hotel in Union Square, Huerta was severely beaten by San Francisco Police officers during a peaceful and lawful protest of the policies/platform of then-candidate for president George H.W. Bush. The baton-beating caused significant internal injuries to her torso, resulting in several broken ribs and necessitating the removal of her spleen in emergency surgery. The beating was caught on videotape and broadcast widely on local television news, including the clear ramming of the butt end of a baton into Huerta's torso by one of the helmeted officers. Later, Huerta won a large judgment against the SFPD and the City of San Francisco, the proceeds of which were used for the benefit of farm workers. The assault is credited with starting yet another movement to change SFPD crowd control policies and the manner in which officer discipline is handled.

Following a lengthy recovery she took a leave of absence from the union to focus on women’s rights. She traversed the country for two years on behalf of the Feminist Majority’s Feminization of Power: 50/50 by the year 2000 Campaign encouraging Latinas to run for office. The campaign resulted in a significant increase in the number of women representatives at the local, state and federal levels. She also served as National Chair of the 21st Century Party founded in 1992 on the principles that women make up 52% of the party’s candidates and that officers must reflect the ethnic diversity of the nation.

Huerta is president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, which she founded in 2002. The Dolores Huerta Foundation is a 501(c)(3) "community benefit organization that organizes at the grassroots level, engaging and developing natural leaders. DHF creates leadership opportunities for community organizing, leadership development, civic engagement, and policy advocacy in the following priority areas: health & environment, education & youth development, and economic development." At 82, Dolores Huerta continues to work tirelessly developing leaders and advocating for the working poor, women and children.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolores_Huerta


VIDEO- Chicano! PBS Documentary - The Struggle in the Fields

http://youtu.be/FIgIaI5AVpY
 
 
MOTHER JONES
 
Today in #LaborHistory : September 30 -- via -- www.unionist.com
70-year-old Mother Jones organizes the wives of striking miners in Arnot, Pa., to descend on the mine with brooms, mops and clanging pots and pans. They frighten away the mules and their scab drivers. The miners eventually won their strike - 1899
The Autobiography of Mother Jones
In Arnot, Pennsylvania, a strike had been going on four or five months. The men were becoming discouraged. The coal company sent the doctors, the school teachers, the preachers and their wives to the homes of the miners to get them to sign a document that they would go back to work.
The president of the district, Mr. Wilson, and an organizer, Tom Haggerty, got despondent. The signatures were overwhelmingly in favor of returning on Monday.
Haggerty suggested that they send for me. Saturday morning they telephoned to Barnesboro, where I was organizing, for me to come at once or they would lose the strike.
"Oh Mother," Haggerty said, "Come over quick and help us! The boys are that despondent! They are going back Monday."
We got into Arnot Sunday noon.
I told the men to stay home with the children for a change and let the women attend to the scabs.
http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/jones/ch05.htm

Be sure to check out the whole slide presentation and extra links for more information on this extraordinary woman just click on the link below.

https://sites.google.com/site/wewerenotborntofollow2013/herstory-is-ourstory

Tuesday, September 17, 2013


                                            SUSAN B. ANTHONY

Today in #LaborHistory : September 17 -- via -- www.unionist.com


At a New York convention of the National Labor Congress, Susan B. Anthony calls for the formation of a Working Women's Association. As a delegate to the Congress, she persuaded the committee on female labor to call for votes for women and equal pay for equal work. But male delegates deleted the reference to the vote – 1868



Labor Activist
 
Susan B. Anthony's paper The Revolution, first published in 1868, advocated an eight-hour work day and equal pay for equal work. It promoted a policy of purchasing American-made goods and encouraging immigration to rebuild the South and settle the entire country. Publishing The Revolution in New York brought her in contact with women in the printing trades.

In 1868 Anthony encouraged working women from the printing and sewing trades in New York, who were excluded from men's trade unions, to form Workingwomen's Associations. As a delegate to the National Labor Congress in 1868 Anthony persuaded the committee on female labor to call for votes for women and equal pay for equal work, although the men at the conference deleted the reference to the vote.

In 1870 Anthony formed and was elected president of the Workingwomen's Central Association. The Association drew up reports on working conditions and provided educational opportunities for working women. Anthony encouraged a cooperative workshop founded by the Sewing Machine Operators Union and boosted the newly-formed women typesetters' union in The Revolution. Anthony tried to establish trade schools for women printers. When printers in New York went on strike, she urged employers to hire women instead, believing this would show that they could do the job as well as men, and therefore prove that they deserved equal pay. At the 1869 National Labor Union Congress, the men's Typographical Union accused her of strike- breaking and running a non-union shop at The Revolution, and called her an enemy of labor.

In the 1890s, while president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Anthony emphasized the importance of gaining the support of organized labor. She encouraged Florence Kelley and Jane Addams in their work in Chicago, and Gail Laughlin in her goal to seek protection for working women through trade unions.

http://susanbanthonyhouse.org/her-story/biography.php