Membership hovers around 5,500 farmworkers, less than 2% of the state’s agricultural workforce, compared with 60,000 in the 1970s.

The union is a shadow of what it was decades ago. The question now is whether the UFW can show it has not irretrievably lost its organizing touch and can regain the ability to mobilize public opinion on its behalf as it did under Chavez. But changing a rule is not the same as changing the game. Gavin Newsom to sign into law a bill that they argued would make it easier and less intimidating for workers to vote in union elections - a key step, they believed, in rebuilding the size and influence of a now far less prolific UFW. What the farmworkers wanted last summer was for Gov. “We can achieve what we want,” Mota said.

“We are a legacy of Cesar Chavez,” said Mota, 47, who, when blisters began to form on her feet during the 24-day trek in August, gathered strength by thinking of how the march in the 1960s led to groundbreaking farmworker reforms and propelled the UFW to national prominence.

Ufw cesar chavez