Huerta, Dolores, 1930-
- Biography:
- American labor leader and activist whose work on behalf of migrant farmworkers led to the establishment of the United Farm Workers of America. In the late 1950s Huerta became interested in the conditions of farmworkers and met Cesar Chavez, a CSO official who shared that interest. Their attempts to focus the CSO's attention on the inequities plaguing rural workers failed, and both eventually left that organization. By 1962 they had cofounded the National Farm Workers Association, forerunner of the United Farm Workers (UFW), an influential union whose grape boycott in the late 1960s forced grape producers to improve working conditions for migrant farmworkers. As coordinator of nationwide lettuce, grape, and Gallo wine boycotts in the 1970s, Huerta helped create the national climate that led to the passage in 1975 of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, the first law recognizing the rights of California farmworkers to bargain collectively. -- Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Associated Subjects:
- Huerta, Dolores, 1930-
- Educator Resources:
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