Word: ufw
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...United Farm Workers, (UFW) now runs a summer program, a tightly knit experience. The time is spent in a field office working with farmworkers in the central headquarters on administration, and in one of the cities in California on the boycott staff. The boycott staff was established in the late 1960's to bring economic pressure on the growers to pay the workers better and improve working conditions...
After five days we arrived in "La Paz", the union headquarters in the largest agricultural valley in the world. In the country and in the city, participants in the program learn to organize people around the UFW cause. It is full time work, pays room, board, gas, $10 a week and involves every skill imaginable. However, the only prerequisite for joining is a willingness to commit yourself fully and work hard...
...first week of the program was an intensive learning session. All day classes were held on the history of California agriculture, the earlier attempts to unionize, the history of Cesar Chavez and the UFW...
Cesar Chavez has never forgotten this lesson, and today UFW policy is set at the Farmworkers Convention which occurs at least every two years. This year, the summer program ended with the 3rd constitutional convention, Aug. 26, 27, 28, where I saw the farmworkers from ranches all over California, from Minute Maid (alias Coca Cola) in Florida, and representatives from all the boycott cities, set union policy for the next two years. These men and women, most of them farmworkers all their lives, were participating in a democratic process, voting on resolutions, making motions from the floor, receiving reports...
Real sick. But Paco loved it, and laughed every day when he glanced at it right up there next to the UFW eagle. Then he'd go out and put on his ascot and pick up his briefcase and go right back to turning the handle himself...