Cesar Chavez :: Cesar Estrada Chavez Migrant Workers

Cesar Estrada Chavez was born March 31, 1927, on the small kick upstairs near Yuma, Arizona that his grandfather homesteaded during the 1880s. At age 10, life began as a migrant bring on worker when his father lost the push down during the Depression. These were bitterly poor years for Cesar, his parents, brformer(a)s and sisters. Together with thousands of other displaced families, the Chavez family migrated throughout the Southwest, push in fields and vineyards. Cesar left school after the eighth bulls eye to help support his family.Cesar served as CSO national director in the recently 1950s and early 1960s. But his dream was to create an organization to help elevate workers whose suffering he had shared. In 1962, after failing to convince the CSO to rive itself to elicit worker organizing, he resigned his paid CSO job, the first regular give job he had. He moved to Delano, atomic number 20 where he founded the study raise Workers Association (NFWA).In September 1965, Cesars NFWA, with 1200 member families, joined an AFL-CIO sponsored due north in a strike against major Delano area table and vino grape growers. Against great odds, Cesar led a successful five-year strike-boycott that rallied cardinals of supporters to the United Farm Workers. He forged a national support coalition of unions, church building groups, students, minorities and consumers. The two unions merged in 1966 to form the UFW, and it became affiliated with the AFL-CIO.Cesar called for a newly worldwide grape boycott. By 1975, a Louis Harris poll showed 17 million American adults were valueing the grape boycott. It forced growers to support then California Governor Jerry Browns collective bargaining law for farm workers, the 1975 Agricultural labor movement Relations Act. Since 1975, the UFW won most of the union elections in which it participated. Despite the farm labor boards bureaucratic delays, farm workers made progress. By the early 1980s farm workers numbered in th e tens of thousands were working under UFW contracts enjoyed higher pay, family health coverage, pension benefits and other contract protections.In 1991, Cesar received the Aguila Azteca (The Aztec Eagle), Mexicos highest award presented to people of Mexican inheritance who have made major contributions outside of Mexico. On August 8, 1994, Cesar became the stand by Mexican American to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States. President Bill Clinton presented this award posthumously.Cesar Chavez passed away on April 23, 1993, at the age of 66.