Delegates vote on first day of Fresno convention
Three women, veteran organizers or former farm workers, elected to the UFW’s executive board
Delegates at the United Farm Workers’ two-day 17th Constitutional Convention in Fresno on Saturday elected three women, former farm workers or veteran organizers, to the union’s nine-member National Executive Board. Six current board members, including UFW President Arturo S. Rodriguez, were re-elected to four-year terms.
Convention delegates filled three vacancies on the executive board, the union’s governing body between biennial conventions, by electing Rebecca Flores, Texas director of the UFW; attorney Mary Mecartney, a 30-year veteran of the union staff; and Evelia Menjivar, the UFW’s director in Florida.
In addition to Rodriguez, delegates re-elected Secretary-Treasurer Tanis Ybarra and Vice Presidents Irv Hershenbaum, Efren Barajas, Guadalupe Martinez and Gustavo Aguirre. The following is background on the three new board members.
— Rebecca Flores has worked with the UFW since 1975, primarily in South Texas. Born into a farm worker family in Atascosa County, Tx., she worked in the fields from an early age. Flores earned a B.A. degree in sociology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and a master’s degree in community organizing from the University of Michigan.
She has organized farm workers, provided services, led boycotts and union political campaigns, and lobbied the Texas Legislature, winning enactment of important legislation on workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, field sanitation, minimum wage, pesticide right-to-know and abolition of the short-handled hoe. In 2002, she achieved first-of-its-kind union contracts covering Catholic parish workers in the Diocese of Brownsville.
In the mid- and late-1990s, Flores directed organizing at a large Florida mushroom plant, leading to the UFW contract with Quincy Farms. She also developed strategy and coordinated organizing of California strawberry workers.
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— Mary L. Mecartney was born in Belmont, Wis. to parents who were staunch UFW supporters. After earning a B.A. degree in history from Bluffton College, she went to work full time with the UFW in 1974. Her duties over the years have ranged from organizing boycotts in the Midwest, East and West coasts and helping Cesar Chavez negotiate union contracts to developing and implementing systems for negotiations, training UFW staff on the technical aspects of contract bargaining and conducting research to support union organizing and bargaining drives.
In 1993, Mecartney became the sixth UFW staff person to become a lawyer through apprenticeship rather than attending law school when she passed the state bar exam. She has handled labor law, civil litigation and law office management, developed union summer internship programs for law students and drafted a workers’ rights manual for UFW organizers and other staff. Mecartney became a director of the Monterey County Water Resources Agency in 2002.
— Evelia Menjivar administers the UFW contract and services for union members at the Quincy Farms mushroom company in Florida. She is a native of Santa Isabel, Puerto Rico. Her mother worked in the fields picking tomatoes. The oldest of six sisters and five brothers, Menjivar received a degree in business administration from Kenyon Campbell Business School in New Bedford, Mass. She worked in Maryland visiting migrant worker camps and teaching farm workers about pesticides. In Washington state, Menjivar labored as a line sorter in a corn packinghouse.
She started with the UFW at Sunnyside, Wash. in 1999, providing services to union members under contract at the Chateau Ste. Michelle winery. In 2000, Menjivar became contract administration/service director at the union¹s office in Quincy, Fla. near Tallahassee, servicing UFW members at Quincy Farms, the biggest mushroom producer in the U.S. Southeast. Among the services she oversees are helping farm workers with immigration issues, taxes and translations.
Menjivar also is active on the union’s behalf in political and legislative affairs. She is a member of the Thomasville Road Baptist Church and the NAACP, and serves on the boards of the North Florida Education Corp. and the Gadsden County Democratic Election Committee.
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