Updated June 10, 2026 at 6:33 AM PDT

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It's a problem the labor movement has decried for years: After a successful union election, it takes far too long — an average of 465 days, according to Bloomberg Law — for workers and their employers to reach a first contract.

In some cases, it takes even longer. Neither the Buffalo, N.Y., Starbucks baristas who unionized in late 2021 nor the Staten Island Amazon warehouse workers who unionized in the spring of 2022 have a contract.

Now, by a vote of 230 to 193, the House has approved a bill that would force employers to the table, allow federal mediators to get involved if a deal is not reached within 90 days, and — if needed — settle the matter through arbitration shortly thereafter.

Twenty Republicans joined Democrats in voting on Tuesday evening to pass the measure, called the Faster Labor Contracts Act.

"No more stop the steals. You got an election, you can get a contract," said New Jersey Democrat Donald Norcross, a union electrician and the bill's sponsor, at a press conference last fall.

Norcross says the measure would be the most significant new protection for workers since before World War II, an assertion echoed by labor leaders.

"This is one of the most consequential labor bills to come before Congress in generations," said Teamsters General President Sean O'Brien in a statement earlier this year. "It has the potential to hold Corporate America accountable for endlessly dragging out negotiations and denying workers the first union contracts they deserve."

Republicans opposed to the bill described it as government overreach, something that would be bad for employers, employees and the economy.

A discharge petition got the bill to the House floor

The bill reached the House floor via a procedural tactic known as a discharge petition — the same tactic used to force a House vote on the release of the Epstein files. Democrats have increasingly turned to discharge petitions, which require a simple majority, to circumvent House Speaker Mike Johnson. Seven Republicans joined Democrats in signing the discharge petition to get the Faster Labor Contracts Act to the House floor.

Now, the measure heads to the Senate, where it faces steeper odds, although it does have the support of several Republicans, including Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, one of the bill's sponsors.

An expedited timeline to get to a contract

For years, Democrats have unsuccessfully pushed for far more sweeping reform to federal labor law through a bill called the PRO Act. The Faster Labor Contracts Act replicates one provision of that bill, creating an expedited timeline for what has to happen once workers vote to unionize.

Within 10 days, employers must begin contract negotiations. If no agreement is reached after 90 days, either party can bring in the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, a federal agency tasked with handling labor disputes, both within government and in the private sector.

If there is still no agreement after another 30 days, the dispute would be settled by a three-member arbitration panel, which would take into consideration the employer's financial status, the employees' cost of living, and the wages and benefits at comparable companies, among other factors. The agreement would be binding for two years or until the two sides settle on something else.

Opponents say it's a "draconian" measure

The CHRO Association, which represents chief human resource officers at 350 large corporations, called the measure "draconian" in a letter to Speaker Johnson.

"Sometimes [contract negotiations] do take time, as frustrating as it is," says Gregory Hoff, the association's general counsel, noting that union contracts can run hundreds of pages long and be in place for years. "It's very, very important to get these things right the first time."

While the CHRO Association does support some kind of reform to speed up the negotiation process, Hoff says giving the government the ability to impose a contract so soon after a union election is not the right solution.

"It's not their fault, but it's unreasonable to expect that the government arbitrator would have a better idea of what's going on on the ground than people who actually work there along with their union representatives, along with the employer," Hoff says.

Another complication is that the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service has been diminished by the Trump administration. The agency is now down to about 90 employees, less than half of what it was before President Trump signed an executive order targeting a number of entities to be "eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law."

"When you think about all the first contracts that might pop up in even just a given year… I think the idea that they could handle all this is highly optimistic," says Hoff.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Southern California stadium workers who threatened to strike for the U.S. men’s soccer team's opening World Cup match said Tuesday they expect to stay on the job after reaching a tentative contract deal with higher wages and more labor protections.

The union representing 2,000 bartenders, servers, cooks and dishwashers at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, announced the deal at a news conference and said workers would vote Wednesday on whether to ratify it. It came after workers last week voted to authorize a strike as contract talks had stalled with the stadium’s food service provider, Legends Global.

In a statement, Legends Global said the company was pleased to reach an agreement with workers and looks forward to providing “an outstanding hospitality experience” at the World Cup matches in Inglewood. Eight matches are scheduled for SoFi Stadium, starting with Friday’s match between the U.S. and Paraguay. The stadium, which opened in 2020, seats 70,000 people and is home to the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers.

Workers said they won wage increases and protections from subcontracting. The tentative contract will give stadium cooks among the highest wages for the job in the country, with many earning $40 an hour in about two years, said Kurt Petersen, co-president of UNITE HERE Local 11, which represents the workers. That's well above California's minimum wage.

“Economically, it is the strongest agreement at any NFL stadium,” Petersen told reporters outside the stadium near Los Angeles, while workers cheered. “In short, we won every major issue that we brought to the table.”

The contract would last through April 2028 — just ahead of the Olympic Games in Los Angeles — and includes protections against subcontracting and a contribution to build housing for hospitality workers. Some cooks currently make about $31 an hour and will see their hourly wages rise over the next two years to $38 or $39, said Islagisbel Castillo, 21, a suite cook on the bargaining committee.

“This is a very proud moment for all of us,” said Yolanda Fierro, who works at the stadium. “We really want to secure the safety of all our employees.”

One of the key sticking points in contract negotiations was workers' demand for protection on the job in the event of immigration raids, Petersen said.

The Los Angeles area was a target of ramped-up enforcement last summer, and community and union groups have raised concerns about the potential for federal raids during the World Cup. Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna last week said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had assured him federal authorities would be at matches to assist with security, not civil immigration enforcement.

Under the deal, Petersen said workers retained the right to strike in case of an immigration raid at work. He said no other collective bargaining agreement in the country includes such a provision.

“We hope we never need to use that right," Petersen said.

The World Cup is expected to draw millions of fans to matches across the U.S., Canada and Mexico, over 39 days this month and next.

Taxin reported from Santa Ana, Calif.

Martin Rivera works at the Quito Village Development Project in Saratoga on April 13, 2023. Photo by Martin do Nascimento, CalMatters This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

When is a minimum wage hike of more than $11 per hour actually a pay cut?

That question has dominated the debate over a current California housing bill that has riven the state’s two most powerful construction worker unions and many state legislative Democrats reluctant to get on the wrong side of either group.

Assembly Bill 1751, authored by Fullerton Democrat Sharon Quirk-Silva, would kick aside regulatory barriers to building townhouses — tightly clustered, multistory homes. In exchange for this fast-tracked approval process, townhouse developers would be required to pay their workers at least $28 per hour.

That’s a significant pay bump over the statewide minimum wage of $16.90.

But the fiercest opposition to the bill has come from what might seem like an unexpected source: The State Building and Construction Trades Council, an umbrella organization that represents electricians, plumbers, sheet metal workers and other skilled construction trade unions.

The trades — as the council is colloquially known — argue that the new wage floor could have the paradoxical side-effect of driving down the “prevailing wages” enjoyed by many of their members. Prevailing wages are mandatory minimum pay rates for publicly-funded or supported construction projects, which include many affordable housing developments and other projects propelled forward by recent state law in California. State and federal regulators set prevailing rates based on surveys of the most common wages in each field and geographic area. Because union pay scales can cover hundreds of similarly employed workers, those union-level wages often set the prevailing wage.

In a testy debate on the Assembly floor earlier this month, Quirk-Silva stressed — repeatedly — that the bill would in no way affect the state-set wage rates.

“It does not replace prevailing wage,” she said. “It does not undercut prevailing wage. This bill leaves prevailing wage exactly where it stands in current law.”

The trades aren’t buying it, noting that the federal government sets its own rates for federally-supported projects. But the group’s bigger beef may boil down to precedent.

For years, the building trades have battled any legislation aimed at easing regulations on the construction of new housing unless it also included pro-union guarantees. Those are either union-level prevailing wage pay requirements or, in more recent years, even more restrictive “skilled and trained” rules that require developers to hire apprenticeship program graduates, the vast majority of whom are union members.

Quirk-Silva’s townhouse streamlining bill introduces a new standard: a minimum wage far lower than what most trades members already make.

Making a meager minimum wage hike the new bone that pro-housing bills throw to construction workers would “signify the new norm,” said Chris Hannan, president of the Trades Council. “When you start a trend of doing a minimum wage, then that becomes the new go-to.”

The trades and carpenters, at it again

Standing on the other side of the debate, supporting the new wage standard, are California’s unionized carpenters.

The trades battling the carpenters is a familiar face-off in Sacramento. This isn’t even the first time the groups have publicly locked horns over this specific wage proposal.

Last summer, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat and longtime ally of the carpenters, inserted a residential construction worker minimum wage of between $28 and $40 per hour into a budget bill in the final hours of the fiscal year. Aside from high-rise construction developments where the use of steel and concrete tends to draw more specialized workers, unions represent relatively few laborers who build California homes, the carpenters argued at the time. The new wage standard would be a modest corrective for those non-union laborers whose current wage floor is the state minimum wage.

For years, carpenters union leaders have argued that improving working standards for low-wage workers presents an “organizing opportunity” for the union.

The trades were apoplectic. Dozens of union members crowded in the budget bill hearing to decry what they saw as an anti-union reversal of state labor policy. One representative likened the measure to “Jim Crow” laws. Many labor-friendly Democrats on the committee recoiled; the proposal was shelved.

This year, the idea has been given a bit more time for debate, though the trades and some lawmakers have still complained of a process they see as rushed.

When Quirk-Silva’s bill was introduced in early February, it focused solely on townhouse regulations. The wage language was added only in time for its second committee hearing in late April. (Quirk-Silva’s staff declined to make her available for an interview to explain that delay or discuss the bill in general, citing personal family matters. On the Assembly floor, she explained the late addition in part by noting “severe health issues” among staff and family members.)

Since then, the entirety of the legislative debate has been focused on the wage issue.

That itself is a notable development: The bill exempts the construction of townhomes from both environmental review and the jurisdiction of elected local city councils and planning boards. Just a few years ago, such a proposal would have made for a Capitol-shaking, headline-grabbing fight. But a year after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law exempting most urban housing developments from environmental litigation, the land-use implications appear to be an afterthought.

At an Assembly floor vote last month, San Diego Assemblymember Chris Ward referred to the minimum wage issue as the “900 pound gorilla.” He, like many Democrats who spoke on the bill, said that he supported the legislation in general, but that he remained wary of the “unresolved” questions about how the new wage rate would affect existing labor standards.

The bill needed 41 out of 80 “yes” votes to move onto the Senate. It passed with just 47.

Hike or pay cut?

Quirk-Silva’s office tried to get around the prevailing wage fight early on.

Prevailing wages are required of publicly funded works, including many affordable housing projects. They are set by the California Department of Industrial Relations, which sets its rates based on the most common wage for each job type in each region of the state.

Quirk-Silva’s bill specifically bars the state department from taking the new $28 per hour townhome wages into account when running those calculations, lest a glut of townhome builders inadvertently bring down the wages owed to union roofers and plumbers.

The trades aren’t satisfied with that concession. That’s because the federal government conducts its own wage surveys and sets its own prevailing wage for federally-funded infrastructure projects.

The current federal prevailing wage required for a residential roofer in Sacramento, for example, is $46.73 per hour plus benefits. That number is based on the most common wage paid for that job in the area or — if no single rate is paid to at least 30% of the workers in the survey — on the regional average.

“The federal government won’t give a rat’s ass about what this bill says,” Scott Wetch, a lobbyist for Trades-affiliated unions, said at the bill’s April hearing. “And they will set the prevailing wage rate for all the crafts at $28.”

The trades “have a case” in this argument, said Kevin Duncan, an economist at Colorado State University Pueblo who has studied prevailing wage policy’s effect on construction costs. Imagine a smaller market with a relatively low unionization rate. If the bill uncorked a geyser of contractors paying all their low-wage workers exactly $28 per hour, “that would be the prevailing rate — and with zero benefits,” he said.

Backers of the bill dispute that, saying such a specific outcome is unlikely given how many contractors are likely to use this specific townhouse bill. They also argue that vanishingly few residential roofers do federal public works jobs in Sacramento — or anywhere in California — so changes in the federal prevailing wage for residential projects aren’t likely to affect many workers anyway. Instead, most roofers are non-union on privately funded projects and many are being paid less than $28 per hour, said Danny Curtin, director of the California Council of Carpenters.

To say that raising those wages “will actually bring everybody else's wages down, defies comprehension,” he said at the hearing.

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer is leaving her post amid an internal investigation brought on by complaints about misconduct.

White House Director of Communications Steven Cheung announced the departure on X, writing "she has done a phenomenal job in her role by protecting American workers, enacting fair labor practices, and helping Americans gain additional skills to improve their lives." Cheung said Chavez-DeRemer was taking a position in the private sector.

A senior official at the Labor Department not authorized to speak publicly about the departure said the secretary had resigned.

Chavez-DeRemer is the third cabinet member to leave during President Trump's second term.

In early March, Trump fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem shortly after lawmakers on Capitol Hill berated her over her agency's handling of immigration enforcement — as well as its $220 million ad campaign featuring the secretary on horseback.

A month later, Attorney General Pam Bondi left amid simmering frustration over her leadership of the Justice Department and her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

While Chavez-DeRemer has played a far less visible role than Bondi or Noem in Trump's second term, her tenure has also been marked by controversy.

In January, the New York Post first reported that the Labor Department's inspector general was looking into complaints that Chavez-DeRemer was having an affair with a subordinate, drinking alcohol on the job and using taxpayer-funded travel to visit with friends and family members.

NPR has not independently verified the contents of the investigation.

While in office, Chavez-DeRemer spent much of her time away from Washington. A year ago, she launched her "America at Work" listening tour, an initiative that took her to all 50 states.

Chavez-DeRemer's chief of staff and deputy chief of staff, who had been on leave since January, resigned in early March. A third senior member of her staff, Melissa Robey, said in a statement issued March 26 that she had been fired a couple days earlier, after giving a four-hour interview to the Office of the Inspector General.

Meanwhile, the New York Times was first to report that Chavez-DeRemer's husband, Shawn DeRemer, an anesthesiologist in Portland, Ore., had been barred from Labor Department headquarters in Washington, D.C., after at least two staffers reported he had touched them inappropriately. Washington, D.C. police and federal prosecutors closed the investigations without bringing charges.

An unconventional choice

Trump's selection of Chavez-DeRemer to lead the Labor Department was seen by many as a concession to Teamsters President Sean O'Brien. O'Brien had been friendly with Trump through the presidential campaign, taking a prime-time speaking slot at the 2024 Republican National Convention and later declining to endorse Trump's opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

O'Brien had pushed for Chavez-DeRemer's selection, noting that she was one of only a few Republicans in Congress to have supported the PRO Act. That bill aimed to make it easier for workers to organize unions, including by overturning state Right to Work laws, which weaken unions.

At the time, Trump wrote, "Lori's strong support from both the Business and Labor communities will ensure that the Labor Department can unite Americans of all backgrounds."

Deputy Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, who has already been running much of the day-to-day operations of the Labor Department, has been named acting secretary, according to Cheung's post on X.

Sonderling previously served at the Labor Department during the first Trump administration and at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission under the Biden administration, having been nominated by Trump during his first term to fill a Republican seat.

Copyright 2026 NPR

If AI could save you five hours a week, the government wants to know: "what would [you] do with that time?" Would you spend "More time with family? Finally launch that Etsy shop? Fix the garage once and for all?"

That's the hopeful opening of a new AI literacy course from the Department of Labor. "Just keep it in mind. That's your WHY for being here."

Late last month, the department launched the course titled "Make America AI-Ready" with a goal to, in the course's own words and emojis, "make AI feel less like a mystery and more like a tool you actually want to use. 💪"

The Trump administration has largely supported the needs of the AI industry. It installed Silicon Valley executives in the White House, repeatedly tried to preempt state AI laws and pushed for hundreds of billions of dollars in AI-related infrastructure investments.

The Labor Department says in a press release that the course is one of its contributions to carrying out the Trump administration's AI Action Plan.

While AI and media literacy teachers praised the overall content and framework of the course, some of the course materials raise government ethics questions. Labor organizers also question whether courses like these will be helpful when it comes to addressing potential workforce changes driven by AI.

The course is solid overall, AI literacy teachers say

There's a great demand for AI literacy courses, said Peter Stone, chair of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin. He co-created a course titled "The Essentials of AI for Life and Society" in 2023, which boasts hundreds of students a year.

"There's these sort of hype cycles in artificial intelligence," said Stone. "I think it's important for people to be able to cut through to what's true and also be able to be literate with artificial intelligence, because they're going to need it."

The course totals seven brief daily modules that take less than 10 minutes apiece and is delivered via text message. Every day starts with a lesson, followed by multiple quiz questions.

"For a course that size, there's a limited number of things you can do," said Mike Caulfield, a digital literacy expert at University of Washington Bothell who was not involved in making the course. "I think it's a nice little course in general."

The course covers the principles of using AI effectively, Caulfield said. He reviewed the materials, and found they do a good job addressing the importance of context, being specific about what you want and stressing the need to verify AI's outputs.

But, Caulfield said, "I don't know if the tone is always perfect in some of those responses," He said that "there were just a couple of places where it seemed a little too rosy."

For example, the course kept reminding students of the potential time-saving benefits of AI, which could allow them to do more things outside of work. However, early research evidence suggests that's not happening for most people. In some occupations, like software development, people say AI's introduction has led to "work intensification," where workers end up working on more difficult tasks while AI takes on simpler ones.

The Labor Department's course also links to at least one risky piece of advice, directing students to check out a video titled "101 ways to use AI." The video suggests that students can ask a chatbot whether or not it's okay to eat a foraged mushroom, which could lead to poisoning.

Taylor Stockton, the Department of Labor's chief innovation officer, declined to answer questions related to that particular piece of advice and DOL did not respond to NPR's follow-up requests for comment.

The presence of private companies raises ethics questions

The Labor Department partnered with technology company Arist to deliver the course. The company specializes in delivering short text message-based courses and has worked with organizations including Etsy, the Poynter Institute and the California's governor's office. While DOL developed the course content, Arist delivered the content for free as part of the White House's Pledge to America's Youth initiative without a contracting process, Stockton said.

That arrangement is unusual, said Craig Holman, an expert on ethics, lobbying and campaign finance rules at the nonprofit, Public Citizen. "[A] company running a government program and not getting paid by the government to do it … sounds exceedingly suspicious to me."

Arist didn't respond to NPR's request for an interview.

Arist was not the only corporate presence in the course. The lesson titled "Put AI to Work For You" lists over a dozen tools. "You're choosing how AI supports your work. Here are a few worth exploring," the course says. It goes on to list chatbots created by well-known AI companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind and xAI, as well as more purpose-specific tools.

Also on the list was the data visualization tool, DataWrapper, which doesn't use AI in any way, according to the company.

Simply listing the products on a government training course, even if no money has changed hands, also raises ethical concerns, Holman said. "That is actually using public resources to promote private interests."

There are laws prohibiting such actions, and it's up to the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute violations. But Holman said the current administration has not been enforcing them.

Stockton said DOL staff are not using this course to endorse any private companies. "We've identified a diverse number of different tools and companies that are out there that [Americans] may or may not choose to consider."

Labor advocates say the course leaves out important context

The Labor Department's stated mission is, in part, to "foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners, job seekers, and retirees of the United States" and "advance opportunities for profitable employment."

But labor advocates say this course doesn't look like effective worker training.

"Does this [training] make workers' jobs better or safer? Will it help people who want to find a job access high quality, union jobs?" asked Lauren McFerran, executive director of AFL-CIO's Tech Institute and a former chair of the National Labor Relations Board. "I'm not sure that teaching someone how to prompt an LLM is necessarily going to accomplish those goals."

McFerran said the course leaves out key context to help workers navigate the changing workforce shaped by AI. "I just think telling trainees that really the big danger in AI use is that you need to fact check is kind of misleading at best."

She said workers are worried about how management is using AI. "Are you training a product that will eventually take your job? Is your employer going to start demanding unrealistic productivity if, all of a sudden, it's decided that AI can make you ten times faster?"

Stockton, the DOL's chief innovation officer, said that the AI literacy course is just a starting point, and that the department is engaging with stakeholders including labor unions to "invest in programs that allow not just businesses, but also workers to benefit."

He said DOL is talking with unions to join such an initiative, yet to be launched, called AI Workforce Hub. Unions including AFL-CIO, Communication Workers of America and National Nurses United said they have yet to hear from DOL about the initiative.

One of the Labor Department's goals of the AI literacy course appears to be to get people to use AI more.

To a student who responds "Occasionally," it responds, in part:

To those who respond "A few times a week," it says:

That also appears to be the focus of Arist's CEO Michael Ioffe. "What we found in early data is that the course very, very meaningfully increases AI usage," he said at a conference in late March, where he appeared on stage with Stockton.

Copyright 2026 NPR

After less than a month of negotiations, the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers announced their first steps toward a deal on Saturday.

"Today the WGA Negotiating Committee unanimously approved a four-year tentative agreement with the AMPTP for the 2026 Minimum Basic Agreement (MBA)," the union posted on its website. "Crucially, it protects our health plan and puts it on a sustainable path, with increased company contributions across many areas and long-needed increases to health contribution caps. The new contract also builds on gains from 2023 and helps address free work challenges."

In 2023, the WGA went on a strike that lasted an entire summer and cramped production schedules for months.

The AMPTP said in its announcement that it looks forward to "building on this progress as we continue working toward agreements that support long-term industry stability."

Word of the agreement arrived a few weeks before the expiration of the union's current contract on May 1.

It also comes amid an ongoing dispute between the Writers Guild of America West and its own staff union. The staff union includes workers in fields such as legal and communications. Dozens of them in Los Angeles went on an independent strike in mid-February. The employees allege WGA West management was engaging in unfair labor practices, union-busting activities and bad faith bargaining. In a social media post last week, the staff union said striking members had lost health insurance coverage. NPR has reached out to the WGA for comment on the internal strike. The WGA canceled its annual West Coast award show in March as a result of the staff union strike.

The new four year contract between the WGA and Hollywood studios is expected to contain new rules around the use of artificial intelligence, such as licensing for AI training. According to a social media post from entertainment industry journalist Matthew Belloni, it will also include pension increases and extra compensation for streaming video on demand. The proposed deal, which is a year longer than the usual agreements between the union and studios, was greeted with relief online by a number of writers, performers and producers.

The AMPTP is currently hashing out a new set of agreements with unions that represent screen actors and directors.

The new writers' contract still requires ratification by union members, which could come later this month, the WGA said.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Filipino and Mexican American farmworkers united in 1965 to strike against California grape growers, under the stewardship of Filipino labor leader Larry Itliong and one of the founders of the National Farm Workers Association, César Chavez. It was a pivotal moment that has been highlighted in books, monuments and even a stage musical.

In the wake of recent allegations that Chavez sexually abused young women and girls in the labor rights movement, Filipino Americans — including descendants of the striking workers — are navigating how to celebrate this historic chapter moving forward.

Filipino groups have canceled plans to march on César Chavez Day, and advocates want to rename the March 31 celebration to focus on Filipino and Chicano farmworkers, particularly women, while acknowledging the survivors of Chavez's abuse.

“We really need to kind of center this trauma of women and sexual abuse,” said Dillon Delvo, executive director of Little Manila Rising, a longtime Filipino community hub in Stockton, California. “It’s definitely what the discussion needs to be.”

How Filipino immigrants came to work on US farms

When the U.S. exerted colonial rule over the Philippines from 1898 to 1946, many Filipinos studied English and were authorized to immigrate to America. From the 1920s to the ‘60s, tens of thousands of Filipinos joined the U.S. agricultural workforce, working on farms and in factories and canneries, primarily in the West. The first wave of men — who arrived from the Philippines' Ilocano-speaking region — were known as “manong,” an affectionate term for older brother.

Many Filipino farmworkers suffered discrimination in the form of inferior wages, shabby housing and poor working conditions, just so they could earn money to send home. They also weathered loneliness since few Filipino women immigrated and anti-miscegenation laws prohibited marrying outside their race.

By the 1960s, Filipino farmworkers had formed the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to plan labor strikes.

“It came out of necessity and desperation to protect themselves, to try to live in dignity,” said Dennis Arguelles, Southern California director for the National Parks Conservation Association. The region Arguelles, who is Filipino, monitors includes monuments to Filipino farmworkers and Chavez.

Filipino organizers take strike initiative

Itliong and fellow organizer Philip Vera Cruz led the Committee to vote on Sept. 8, 1965, to strike against grape growers in Delano, California. They demanded to be paid at least the federal minimum wage. Itliong, the more “fiery union leader,” called Chavez who — along with Dolores Huerta — headed the then-named National Farm Workers Association.

“Chavez was hesitant to strike,” Arguelles said. “You didn’t feel like the National Farm Workers Association was ready to take on these powerful agribusiness interests. These business structures were very effective in pitting different ethnicities against each other to break strikes.”

A week later, they officially joined forces as the United Farm Workers. The Delano grape strike lasted five years and rocked the industry, ending in collective bargaining agreements for thousands of laborers.

The popular narrative around Itliong's leadership has almost always been attached to Chavez, as they appear together in textbooks, historical exhibits and murals around California.

The allegations against Chavez have sparked warnings against elevating — even deifying — historical figures.

“There always seems to be a need to be like a main character,” Delvo said. “But the problem is that is not what a union is about.”

It's also revived debate about Chavez overshadowing others in the labor movement.

“Maybe this is our opportunity to tell a more accurate and comprehensive narrative of what took place, Arguelles said “I see that as being a positive thing.”

Last week, the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors at a public meeting took steps to rename César Chavez Day as Farmworkers Day. Some suggested moving the holiday, which is Tuesday, to Sept. 8 to honor striking Filipino workers. Itliong's 60-year-old son, Johnny, said Chavez had tried to “erase the history" of how the Delano strike began.

“I’ve spent my whole life speaking up for my father and his generation of men and women who fed America,” Itliong said at the meeting.

Focus on the women

“Larry the Musical: An American Journey,” a musical about the Filipino farmworkers movement, refers to Chavez only once, in a scene when Itliong calls him. The producers also made sure the story included the women in Itliong's life. Recent events have reaffirmed the importance of that creative decision.

“From the beginning, we have always centered this musical on the women of the community as those who keep Larry and the community accountable, and the ones who pass on knowledge to the next generation,” co-producers Gayle Romasanta and Bryan Pangilinan said in a statement.

Vernadette Gonzalez, an ethnic studies professor at University of California, Berkeley, said educators should seize the chance to herald the unsung heroes of the Filipino farmworkers movement. For example, Hispanic female members of the United Farm Workers were busy raising their families and preparing food for meetings.

“Nobody's crediting them in the minutes of the meeting,” Gonzalez said. “Who's missing from the story? In the United Farmworkers movement, folks will say ‘It’s Larry Itliong and the Filipino farmworkers.' But I would also say ‘Where are the women?’”

As damning rape and sexual abuse allegations against American civil rights icon César Chávez emerged two weeks ago, Max Reyes didn’t hesitate.

The next day Reyes removed the labor leader’s name from the César Chávez Day march in the city of Brawley, an event he had organized for two decades. On Facebook, he renamed it the “Brawley El Movimiento March.”

“For those of us who respected and admired César Chávez for his work in the UFW, these are sad times,” Reyes, the son of Mexican American migrant farmworkers, wrote on Facebook. “As accusations rise, we will respect the truth.”

Across California, farmworking communities have been reeling since The New York Times reported in mid-March that Chávez allegedly sexually abused the daughters of two prominent organizers and raped fellow civil rights leader Dolores Huerta, cofounder of the legendary United Farm Workers union.

The allegations have been particularly painful for residents of Brawley, the small Imperial Valley farming city where Chávez lived as a teenager and where his wife, Helen Fabela Chávez, was born.

Here, César Chávez’s name is memorialized along a central street. A painting of the labor icon is emblazoned on the east wall of the school he attended, Miguel Hidalgo Elementary School.

“His history is intertwined with people who still call Brawley home,” Brawley City Council Member Gil Rebollar told KPBS in an email. “He is a part of our city's history.”

Although Chávez is best known for his leadership during farmworkers strikes at Central Valley grape vineyards and the 300 mile-long march to Sacramento in the 1960s, he began his organizing work in the Imperial Valley.

Even back then, the valley’s agricultural sector was a $100 million industry. Farms in the region produced tens of thousands of carloads of alfalfa, sugar beets and lettuce, along with dozens of other crops.

Reyes, the march organizer, saw the farmworkers movement grow firsthand. His mother worked on carrot farms in neighboring Holtville. His father planted cantaloupe seeds and traveled north to work in the Central Valley’s grape and chili packing sheds.

During the summers, Reyes and his siblings would join his father at work up north for a few months before coming back to Brawley for school.

Mexican American farmworkers and other communities of color faced racism, harsh working conditions and violence. Reyes had just graduated from high school when strikebreakers shot and killed Rufino Contreras, a 27-year-old UFW member from Mexicali, during a lettuce strike in 1979.

Chávez and other organizers sought to expose those conditions and uplift the Mexican American community. Many Brawley families rose to join their cause, Reyes said, organizing alongside Chávez or serving as bodyguards and chauffeurs.

“There’s quite a few families here that were touched,” Reyes told KPBS last week. “So all these allegations came out — it was a shock.”

Chávez’s alleged abuse came to light earlier this month after Ana Murgia and Debra Rojas, the daughters of longtime United Farm Workers organizers, told the Times that Chávez abused them both when they were children in the 1970s.

Huerta told the Times that Chávez manipulated her into sex and raped her in the 1960s. In a statement, she said she had stayed silent because she believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworkers movement.

“The farmworker movement has always been bigger and far more important than any one individual,” Huerta wrote. “I have kept this secret long enough.”

In the following days, cities, groups and community leaders have acted decisively. Many have excoriated the alleged abuses and removed Chávez’s name from schools, streets and buildings. Late last week, California lawmakers officially renamed “César Chávez Day” to “Farmworkers Day.”

In Brawley, city officials are currently reviewing options for renaming César Chávez Street. Rebollar, the city councilmember, said they hope to have an open and transparent discussion with residents about the decision.

“I think the bigger debate will be what comes next,” he wrote in an email. “Do we honor somebody else from Brawley’s history? What is the process of vetting an individual to ensure we do not go through this again?”

The City Council could discuss those changes as soon as their next regular meeting on April 7.

For Brawley, the allegations raise searching questions about how to acknowledge both the deep harm Chávez caused to the women he allegedly abused and the attention he simultaneously brought to farmworker communities like theirs who were exploited and ignored for generations, Rebollar said

“At a deeper level, I also think this says something about men in power,” Rebollar wrote. “Sometimes people do real good in public and real harm in private, and communities are left to wrestle with both.”

Reyes said part of that will be teaching a new history of Chávez. Telling the truth about the Imperial Valley’s past, he said, has always been his goal for the march.

“We are not a cult,” Reyes said. “We won’t hang onto our leaders and their flaws, and try to protect them at all costs.”

“We can’t just say he didn’t exist,” he added. “But we’ll tell the truth.”

DELANO, Calif. – A few hours north of Los Angeles, the small city of Delano is surrounded by miles and miles of grapevines, orange groves and almond orchards. According to Monike Reynozo, everyone here either works in those fields, or knows someone who does.

"This is what drives and fuels our city," she said.

Reynozo works for a youth advocacy group known as Loud For Tomorrow, but she said her parents were farmworkers, and their parents before them.

On a recent spring morning, she's walking down an alley to a brightly colored mural that covers the side of a building in the center of town. It shows people in sun hats harvesting fruit, and a little girl proudly holding a bunch of plump, purple grapes.

"It really showcases some of our local farm labor movement leaders as well as the diverse faces of Delano," she said.

One of the most prominent faces on the mural is Cesar Chavez, who lived in Delano for nine years. The city was also home to the first headquarters of the United Farm Workers (UFW) labor union, which he cofounded in the 1960s and has been lobbying for reforms to farm labor ever since. He's long been considered a local hero.

But earlier this month the New York Times published a bombshell investigation alleging the late civil rights leader sexually abused young girls in the 1970s, and raped his longtime ally and co-leader in the farmworkers labor movement, Dolores Huerta in the 1960s. The investigation came out nearly two weeks before Chavez's birthday – March 31 – which has long been a holiday in many places. And in the aftermath of the allegations, some states, including California, have scrambled to rename the day. Meanwhile, farmworker communities are reeling – especially in Central California, which became the cradle of the farm labor movement.

As Reynozo looks up at his portrait, she says the allegations against him are heartbreaking. He was one of her role models. But she thinks this mural – and the farmworker narrative – don't need him anymore.

"He's just one individual amongst, you know, thousands of people who have been fighting for this and continue to fight for it," she said.

No consensus among Delano residents on how to process allegations

Across California, statues of Chavez are being torn down and elected officials are moving to erase his name from public spaces.

Some in Delano are pushing for similar changes. The Delano Joint Union High School District voted last week to rename Cesar E. Chavez High School. And city leaders are likely to discuss renaming the city's Cesar Chavez Park in a city council meeting in early April.

"Everything that we want to take into account, for how does accountability look like at the Delano level, will be on the table," said city councilmember Bryan Osorio.

But he's not certain the city council will vote to make changes, because there's a lot of resistance here.

Chavez's union helped transform conditions for farmworkers – including higher pay, work breaks, and even bathrooms, which weren't guaranteed in the fields. That changed people's lives. And that's why, Osorio says, many are struggling with the allegations against Chavez. Some even feel angry at his accusers.

"This man was a huge part of Delano's history, is still part of Delano's history," Osorio said. "There's always going to be folks who are skeptical."

That includes Armando Pulido. He picks grapes in the nearby town of Earlimart. And like a lot of farmworkers in the area, he says he doesn't believe Chavez's accusers.

"I think everything is a lie, that they made up, because they came out with it now after Chavez died," he said in Spanish. "Why didn't they bring it up while he was alive?"

Dolores Huerta explained why she waited to come forward in an interview with Latino USA on March 19.

"When people say, why didn't you leave? Why didn't you tell people? Well, this is why, because I felt that my coming out and saying what occurred would have hurt the movement," she said.

The New York Times reported that some people had previously been made aware of abuse claims by two other women – Ana Murgia and Debra Rojas – and nothing came of it. They cited internal emails among union members about Murgia's claims going back over a decade. And they also said Rojas posted a message over ten years ago about Chavez's alleged abuse to a private Facebook group for longtime Chavez organizers and supporters – and "was accused by some who saw it or heard about it of jeopardizing all that had been accomplished." NPR has not independently confirmed these details.

Some see an opportunity for more informed conversations

Whether or not the city ultimately erases Chavez's name from public spaces, some think this is an opportunity to highlight other pivotal labor leaders – including Filipino organizer Larry Itliong.

Itliong, who was born in 1913, organized farmworkers for decades before Chavez and Huerta came along. And Filipino workers under Itliong's leadership started the 1965 Delano Grape Strike, which later led to the founding of the UFW.

"A lot of Filipinos, to this day, we always say: without Larry Itliong, there'd be no Cesar Chavez," said Rogelio Gadiano, who was born in the Philippines and grew up in Delano.

Gadiano worked in the fields off and on from childhood into middle age. Today, he leads tours of local historical sites that were important to the early farm labor movement. That includes The Forty Acres, a sprawling site on the outskirts of town that held the UFW's first headquarters as well as a retirement village for aging Filipino farmworkers.

Gadiano wishes Itliong's story – and the story of Filipino farmworkers – were better known.

"We got buried in history," he said. "We were the spark, the ultimate spark."

Whatever happens with Chavez's legacy, Gadiano hopes this situation can lead to more informed conversations about farmworker history.

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“For operational security reasons, we are not going to confirm the locations of our officers,” said DHS spokesperson Lauren Bis.

Transportation Security Administration workers at the San Diego airport have been working without pay since the partial government shutdown began on Feb. 14, according to Robert Mack, a lead transportation security officer and the chief steward for the TSA workers’ union.

“Stress is at an all time high right now,” he said. “Morale is at an all-time low.”

This shutdown began just three months after last year’s 43-day shutdown ended.

“You can’t recover from that quickly,” Mack said. “Things are getting real tight.”

More than 400 TSA workers have quit and thousands have called out from work during the shutdown, according to DHS.

On Monday morning, San Diego airport officials updated travel guidance online to suggest that travelers arrive two and a half hours before their flights.

Matthew Raska and Jessica Thomas took that advice. They flew in from Atlanta on Friday.

“It was way worse,” Thomas said, looking at the Terminal two security line on Monday. “We were in line for two and a half hours in Atlanta.”

The Associated Press reported seeing ICE agents at the Atlanta airport on Monday. Thomas said TSA workers are caught in the middle of the federal budget impasse.

“All workers are important, especially federal employees, and one should not be preferred over the other,” she said. “If ICE agents are making money working airport security, then TSA agents should be making money working airport security.”

Democrats have refused to fund DHS without changes to certain immigration enforcement policies. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are still being paid because the One Big Beautiful Bill allocated billions of dollars to the agency last year.

The San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council has set up a hardship fund for local TSA workers.

Mack asked airport travelers to be patient as workers do their best. He said the job already takes a lot of concentration.

“Compounding that with lack of pay, staffing shortages, you're asking them to do a monumental task,” he said.

In the wake of the explosive sexual assault allegations against labor leader César Chávez, municipalities across California are wrestling with the decision to rename the dozens of buildings, parks and roads that are currently named in Chávez’s honor.

Government leaders from across the state have already made calls to change some of these names, including in Fresno and Sacramento. In Bakersfield, city officials announced Wednesday that they would pause efforts to rename a street after the late labor leader.

Several lawmakers around the state — including L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn and state Senator Shannon Grove, who represents a large swath of the Central Valley — have called for César Chávez Day to be renamed “Farm Worker Day” in light of the allegations.

“I am deeply saddened for the victims of Cesar Chavez who have had to carry this secret for decades while every year people celebrate, march, and dedicate a holiday in his name,” Grove said in a statement on social media. “I hope that people reconsider celebrating Cesar Chavez Day and instead celebrate our incredible farm workers who feed and fuel our nation with Farm Worker Day.”

The California Newsroom has compiled a non-exhaustive list of the parks, libraries, schools, monuments and streets named after César Chávez.

Schools

Cesar Chavez Elementary School, Calexico

Cesar Chavez Elementary School, Coachella

Cesar Chavez Academy, Corona

César Chávez Elementary School, Davis

Cesar Chavez Elementary School, Madera

Cesar E. Chavez Elementary School, Bell Gardens

César E. Chávez Elementary School, Sacramento

César Chávez Elementary School, San Francisco

César Chávez Early Learning Center, San Jose

Cesar Chavez School, Oxnard

Cesar Chavez Elementary School, Greenfield

Cesar Chavez Elementary School, Norwalk

César Chávez Elementary School, San Diego

César E. Chávez Elementary School, Salinas

Cesar E. Chavez Middle School, San Bernardino

Cesar Chavez Ravenswood Middle School, East Palo Alto

Cesar E Chavez Middle School, Planada

Cesar Chavez Middle School, Hayward

Cesar Chavez Middle School, Union City

Cesar Chavez Middle School, Lynwood

César Chávez Middle School, Oceanside

Cesar E. Chavez Middle School, Watsonville

Cesar Chavez Junior High, Ceres

Cesar E. Chavez High School, Delano

Cesar E Chavez Learning Academies, San Fernando

César E. Chávez High School, Santa Ana

Cesar Chavez High School, Stockton

Cesar Chavez Community School, Woodland

Cesar Chavez Continuation High School, Compton

César Chávez Campus of the Fresno Adult School, Fresno

University buildings

César E. Chávez Student Center at UC Berkeley, Berkeley

César E. Chávez Student Services Center at Southwestern College, Chula Vista

César E. Chávez Library at San Jose City College, San Jose

César E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at UCLA, Los Angeles

Cesar Chavez Student Center at San Francisco State University, San Francisco

César Chávez Building at Santa Ana College, Santa Ana

César E. Chávez Campus at San Diego College of Continuing Education, San Diego

Parks

Cesar Chavez Plaza, Sacramento

Plaza de César Chávez, San Jose

César Chávez Park, Berkeley

César Chávez Park, San Diego

Cesar Chavez Park, Oakland

César E. Chavez Park, Modesto

César E. Chávez Park, Colton

Cesar E. Chavez Park, Long Beach

Cesar Chavez Park, Delano

Cesar Chavez Park, Soledad

César Chávez Community Center, San Diego

César Chávez Center, Riverside

Libraries

César E. Chávez Branch Library, Oakland

Cesar Chavez Central Library, Stockton

Maywood César Chávez Library, Maywood

Cesár Chávez Public Library, Salinas

Cesar E. Chavez Library, Perris

Monuments, statues

César E. Chávez National Monument, Keene

Cesar E. Chavez Memorial Monument at Fresno State University, Fresno

Cesar E. Chavez Memorial, Riverside

Roads, streets

Cesar E. Chavez Avenue, Los Angeles

Cesar Chavez Boulevard, Fresno

Calle César Chávez, Santa Barbara

Cesar Chavez Drive, Oxnard

Cesar E Chavez Parkway, San Diego

Cesar Chavez Street, Brawley

Cesar Chavez Street, San Francisco

Cesar Chavez Street, Mecca

Cesar Chavez Street, Coachella

Cesar Chavez Street, Soledad

Cesar Chavez Drive, Brentwood

Cesar Chavez Drive, Baldwin Park

Cesar E Chavez Drive, Santa Maria