United Farm Workers

The United Farm Workers of America (UFW) are a labor union that evolved from unions founded in 1962 by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta. This union changed from a workers' rights organization that helped workers get unemployment insurance to that of a union of farmworkers almost overnight, when the National Farm Workers Association went out on strike in support of the mostly Filipino farmworkers in Delano, California in 1965. The NFWA, soon renamed the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee and then the United Farm Workers, launched a boycott of table grapes that, after five years of struggle, finally won a contract with the major grape growers in California. The union then brought in thousands more lettuce workers in the Salinas and Imperial Valleys and orange workers in Florida employed by subsidiaries of Coca-Cola.

Further reading

• Eugene Nelson, "Huelga! The First One Hundred Days of the Delano Grape Strike"