Us Citizenship Podcast

Happy Cesar Chavez Day! César Chávez Estrada was born on March 31, 1927 – April 23, 1993.  He was a Mexican American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist who, with Dolores Huerta, co-founded United Farm Workers union. They started the United Farm Workers union, because farmworkers did not have "the legal right to organize and to vote for collective bargaining. They didn't have the right to have clean drinking water, access to portable toilets, lunch breaks, or short rest breaks during workdays. And they were not entitled to the minimum wage or unemployment insurance." From 1965 to the early 70s, the UFW organized a series of succesaful strikse and boycotts against the unfair labor practices of grape and lettuce growers which eventually lead to the passage of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which gave collective bargaining rights to farm workers.  The UFW also worked to get the amnesty provisions into the 1986 federal immigration act. Cesar Chavez lived in San Jose for many y