3. Unified Coalition: UFWOC

UFWOC's Arizona Organizers (Manuel Chavez, Gus Gutierrez, Willie Barrientos, "Pancho" Botello and Manuel Rivera

The merger between AWOC and NFWA greatly improved the strike’s success. Before the merger, groups of Filipinos and Mexicans worked on separate aspects of the strike. "It [was] divided by camps, see," recalled Willie Barrientos. "It has been divided because every camps has a picket line of a group of Pilipinos as well as Mexican [and] other races."[6]

After the merger, AWOC and NFWA personnel worked together on strike operations under the UFWOC banner. Philip Vera Cruz served as the key liaison between Filipino strikers and the strike leadership. Pete Velasco was assigned as the strike coordinator in the Bay Area, tasked with managing the food caravan service for members on the boycott. Velasco's senior position in the organization also required him to support the strike in several parts of California, from Coachella to the Bay Area.[7]

Eventually, the strike and boycott spread throughout the country.  The strike expanded when the Guimarra Vineyard Corporation attempted to circumvent the grape strike by pushing out grapes under competitor’s brand names. As a result, UFWOC was not striking against Delano's table grapes but to all table grape growers in California and around the country. In Arizona, Willie Barrientos, along with Manuel Chavez, Pancho Botello and Fernando Chavez, organized strike operations against Arizona’s grape growers.[8]

UFW members and Mexicali Labor groups meet at the American-Mexican border.

As American grape growers shifted to the international market, UFWOC reached out to international labor groups and sympathizers. In a showing of international solidarity, a joint rally was organized between UFWOC and Mexican labor groups from Mexicali, Mexico. Over 4,000 farmworkers from Coachella and Mexicali met at the American-Mexican border. The international cooperation between the two groups showed UFWOC's "commitment to improving wages and working conditions for all farm workers, regardless of race or nationality.” During this event, Cesar Chavez remarked upon the interracial cooperation and international solidarity, denouncing how "growers have traditionally pitted bracero and green-carder against resident worker, Mexican against Filipino, white against black, to divide the workers and break the unions and strikes of the past."[9]

By 1970, international pressures and economic woes stymied the profits of the grape growers. As a result, Delano’s grape growers signed their first union contracts with the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, greatly improving farmworkers wages, health benefits, and worker protection policies. On 1972, the union officially changed its title to the United Farm Workers, and held it first national convention and officer elections.