Hispanic Americans have made significant contributions to the U.S. labor movement -- in agriculture, meatpacking facilities, factories, commercial cleaning services, and the hospitality industry. Latinos have organized to bring about changes to local, state and national legislation, including in the right to organize, the right to vote, protections against pesticides, and access to water, bathroom, and heat breaks. The right to collectively bargain has allowed them to negotiate better wages and working conditions.

In 1938, Emma Tenayuca led the San Antonio pecan shellers strike. The strike was started by mostly Mexican American workers when they experienced wage cuts. The strike of 12,000 workers, the largest in San Antonio history, was resolved through negotiation.

During the 1960s, the United Farm Workers (UFW) formed through the community organizing efforts of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. They led strikes and boycotts which resulted in negotiated contracts for farm workers. The UFW worked on policies related to immigration, including eliminating the Bracero program, which brought replacement workers from Mexico, and the 1986 Immigration and Control Act, which legalized most undocumented immigrants who entered the country before 1982.

The Library of Congress' Occupational Folklife Project (OFP) began in 2010 as a multi-year project by the American Folklife Center (AFC) to document the culture of contemporary American workers during an era of economic and social transition. To date, fieldworkers across the United States have recorded more than 1800 audio and audiovisual oral history interviews with workers in scores of trades, industries, crafts, and professions. The completed interviews have been incorporated into the American Folklife Center archive at the Library of Congress. The interviews, which average 50-60 minutes in length, feature workers discussing their current jobs and formative work experiences, reflecting on their training, on-the-job challenges and rewards, aspirations, and occupational communities. Many of these interviews include Hispanic Americans, and often the topic of labor organization is documented in these interviews.

In researching historic labor figures and unions, researchers will need to check digitized newspapers, including Chronicling America content covering the period of 1770-1963. Lesser-known figures may be covered in local newspapers, documents, and oral histories that would be available at local colleges, public libraries, state libraries, and historical societies. It may be necessary to do some genealogy research to find additional information. Check the Biography page for additional sources and search strategies.