The United Farm Workers co-founder died at home in Bakersfield on 28 October 2026. She helped negotiate the first farmworker health and benefit plans; her family plans to follow up on a commemoration.
Dolores Huerta died at her home in Bakersfield, California, on 28 October 2026, aged 96, her foundation said. A family spokesperson confirmed that the cause was cancer.
Huerta co-founded the United Farm Workers and helped turn farmworkers’ demands into contracts with major growers. The Associated Press wrote on 28 October that she and César Chávez negotiated collective-bargaining agreements that won the first health and benefit plans for farmworkers. Collective bargaining means workers negotiate employment terms together through representatives.
As a teacher, Huerta saw children arrive hungry and without adequate clothing. She said she believed organizing their farmworker parents could do more for them than teaching their children. She and Chávez started the National Farm Workers Association in 1962 to focus on farmworkers.
Filipino farmworkers organized through the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee began the Delano grape strike in September 1965. Huerta and Chávez’s association joined them that month. The organizations merged in 1966 into the body that became the United Farm Workers.
Huerta helped direct grape and lettuce boycotts, in which supporters refused to buy the crops to pressure growers. The grape boycott helped win better wages and working conditions. Her foundation says her negotiations also secured better wages, retirement benefits, job security and safer conditions.
Federal labor law had excluded agricultural workers from its collective-bargaining protections. California’s Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975 protected farmworkers’ right to organize and bargain collectively in the state. Huerta’s foundation says her advocacy helped win its passage.
Huerta later campaigned for women’s rights, encouraged women to run for office, and advocated for immigrants and civil rights. President Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, recognizing decades of advocacy for civil rights and women’s equality.
Huerta’s family said it would follow up with plans to recognize her life. The Dolores Huerta Foundation says it will continue organizing communities and plans to open the Dolores Huerta Peace and Justice Cultural Center in California’s Central Valley in 2027.
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