Unions
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The various labor movements in California have been among the most important in our nation. As a state with a tremendously diversified economy, California's workers are employed in every industry imaginable; from our huge agriculture base, to our docks, to aerospace, to construction, to the entertainment industry-the list is endless. And in each industry, workers struggled to organize themselves into collectives to shape the labor landscape of California. Some of California's labor movements have represented significant political events on a national if not a global scale-as in the historic struggle of labor activists Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. The gains made be the United Farm Workers inspired workers every where to fight for living wages and reasonable working conditions, and it proved that poor
people can claim their rights when they organize and speak in one voice. In a word, labor unions equal POWER. But it didn't start with Chavez. In 1894, California held its first strike organized by San Francisco and Sacramento Carpenters who pushed for a whole sixteen dollars a day. Well, they settled for fourteen. However, a year later the first official union was organized in California, the San Francisco Typography Socie
The various labor movements in California have been among the most important in our nation...