United Farm Workers

Hello. We are the United Farm Workers, but many people know us by our initials, UFW. We are a special kind of team called a labor union. Have you ever been part of a team to play a sport or work on a school project? A labor union is similar, but it’s a team for workers. We believe that when workers join together, they have a much stronger voice than if each person tries to speak alone. Our members are the people who do some of the most important work in the country: the farmworkers. They are the ones who plant the seeds, care for the growing crops, and harvest the fresh fruits and vegetables that you find in the grocery store and on your dinner table. Our main goal, since the very beginning, has been to win fair pay, safe working conditions, and the respect that these essential workers deserve for their hard work.

Our story began in a town called Delano, in California, back in 1962. At that time, we weren't called the UFW yet. Our first name was the National Farm Workers Association, or NFWA. Our founders, including two dedicated leaders named Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, looked at the lives of farmworkers and saw that something was deeply wrong. The people who fed the nation were often struggling. They had to work for many long hours under the hot sun, but they received very low pay that made it difficult to support their families. In the fields where they worked, they often had no access to clean drinking water or even a simple restroom. To make matters worse, they were often exposed to harmful chemicals called pesticides, which are used to protect crops from insects, but without any protective gear to keep themselves safe. We knew we had to help them find a way to change these terrible conditions. We were created to give these workers a powerful, unified voice to demand better treatment.

Just a few years after we were founded, we took on our first major challenge. In 1965, we joined a major strike against the grape growers in Delano. A strike is when workers stop working to protest unfair conditions. Our leaders insisted that we follow a path of nonviolence. This was very important to us. It meant that we would fight for our rights without ever using violence. Instead of fists, we used our voices, our feet, and our community’s support. We organized long marches to bring attention to our cause. We also started a boycott, which is a powerful way to ask the public for help. We asked people all across the United States to stop buying California grapes. We wanted the growers to see that people everywhere cared about how farmworkers were treated. This Delano Grape Strike was not easy; it lasted for five long years. But the workers never gave up, and people across the country supported them.

The struggle helped us grow stronger and more unified. During the grape strike, in 1966, we joined forces with another farmworker union. By merging together, we became the United Farm Workers. This was when we created our famous flag, which became a symbol of our movement. It has a bold, black eagle inside a white circle, all on a bright red background. Our hard work during the strike finally paid off in 1970. The growers, seeing that the boycott was hurting their business and that we would not give up, finally agreed to sit down and talk with us. They signed contracts that guaranteed better wages and safer working conditions for thousands of farmworkers. It was a huge victory, but our work was not over. Our biggest victory was still to come. In 1975, we used our collective voice to help pass a brand-new law in California. This groundbreaking law gave farmworkers the legal right to join a union and vote for representatives to speak for them in negotiations with their employers. Before this, they had been excluded from laws that gave these rights to most other workers in the country.

Today, we are still a strong and active union, carrying on the mission that started so many years ago in those Delano fields. We continue to protect and empower farmworkers throughout the United States. The fight for fairness never really ends, as new challenges always arise. We work to negotiate new contracts that ensure fair wages and benefits. We advocate for better protections for workers, especially against modern dangers like extreme heat. We also push for new laws that will create a better, safer, and more just life for the people who do the demanding physical labor of feeding our nation. Our story is one of persistence and hope, and the harvest of our work continues. We know our work is not finished.