Word: munoz
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...Munoz's effort is part of the third and largest boycott that the Chavez union has attempted since it first went out on strike against Delano Vineyards in September of 1965. Similar groups of farmworkers have been stationed in large cities throughout the country...
That the union which he helped organize in 1962 has come far enough to mount an effective coordinated national effort in such a short time is a source of pride, almost awe to Munoz. He recalls first meeting Cesar Chavez in the early sixties: "He was just a bum like the rest of us. We were working down in Bakersfield picking potatoes. Chavez started talking around and we decided none of us could make it any longer on the wages we were getting. We knew we had to do something--get organized or something...
...Chavez, Munoz and several other Mexican-Americans from the Delano area then began to lay the groundwork for the National Farm Workers' Union. Beginning in the Mexican-American community in the small farm town of Delano, they established a credit union and a food cooperative, and began making plans for further community services. Then, in 1965, the Filipino grape pickers in the Delano area spontaneously went out on strike. The National Farm Workers were unprepared for the move, with only $52.50 in the union treasury, but voted anyway to join the Filipinos in a massive walkout of some 5000 grape...
...Munoz claims that the success of the Farm Workers' Union in resisting the growers' attempts first to ignore it, and then to destroy it has enormously boosted the confidence of Mexican-American migrant workers. "In the old days," Munoz relates, "the boss told us we were cows and we just smiled and said nothing. They can't get away with that...
...many of the strikers, the union represents the first chance to establish a settled, reasonably stable community. Like a number of California's two million Mexican-Americans, Munoz was born in Mexico, but came to this country when he was thirteen to join the stream of migrant fruit and cotton harvesters. Whether migrating, or working at seasonal labor in the Delano area, he had no job security, no defense against the high risk of injury in the fields. One of the union's first moves was to write a life insurance policy for every member, and each union contract signed...