The Way We Fought for Workers

When you honored me by electing me leader of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor in 1996, my thoughts kept returning to my roots in the farm workers union.

For those who do not know me, I’ve been a union man since that day in 1973 at 4:30 a.m., when the ranch supervisor and crew bosses assembled the entire Contreras family in front of our little home in Dinuba. With the headlights from their pickup trucks glaring in our eyes, they fired us all because, as the supervisor told my father, “Julio, you’re the best worker we ever had, but we can’t have any more Chavistas [followers of Cesar Chavez].”

I’ve been a union man since that day when being put on the growers’ blacklist was my dad’s only reward for 24 years of hard labor at that ranch.

I’ve been a union man since my father and I led the strike at L.R. Hamilton Farms, and I was arrested with my dad 18 times in three months for violating anti-picketing injunctions.

I’ve been a union man since I learned the same lessons on the picket line from my father that I learned from Cesar Chavez about courage and self-worth. Those lessons are still with me.

I remember the day I first believed in the power of people united in common purpose against abuse and oppression. I remember what it meant when I first called someone who wasn’t related to me brother or sister.

Back in 1996, I asked myself, what could we do with this federation to fulfill the mission of our movement? I asked myself, how do we ensure workers have jobs that help them realize their piece of the American dream that is fast becoming more of a myth than a reality? How do we produce jobs that supply basic needs, from healthcare and retirement to dignity and respect? How do we help workers provide a better life for their children than they had? ...

For me, the answer was simple: We needed to change directions.

We changed the way unions deal with politics in L.A. We stopped being an ATM for political parties and a piggy bank for politicians. Instead, we invested resources reaching out to the rank-and-file: getting them to become citizens, registering them to vote, educating them on the issues, and getting them to the polls. We became a powerful force for progressive change in L.A. politics.

We directly assisted our affiliates in their organizing and bargaining efforts. Los Angeles has become the stage for the highest-profile labor battles anywhere in America. We have formed fresh alliances with dozens of community and religious allies that transcend traditional labor-management disputes....

Today I commend you for adopting the first public policy agenda to be advanced by L.A. labor, a first-in-the-nation initiative providing approximately $1,000 a year for full-time community college students in L.A. to buy the textbooks and tools they need. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the first exposure to unions for tens of thousands of community college students in L.A. was not in textbooks, but in the fact students purchased their textbooks through a fight this federation led and won?

What we do here will set the pace for organized labor across the country. We can create a new vision of what a labor movement can do to make ourselves more effective and relevant for the people we represent.

If we fail to act, I fear our movement will atrophy; we will increasingly become a dinosaur. If we fail to act, who will speak for the middle class in Los Angeles? There is no one else....