One of the best organizers the United Farm Workers produced, Arturo S. Rodriguez succeeded Cesar Chavez as union president in 1993 and continues the UFW's legacy of fighting nonviolently on behalf of the most abused working people in America.

A native of San Antonio, Texas, he earned a B.A. degree in sociology at St. Mary's University in 1971 and a masters degree in social work in 1973 from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Rodriguez first learned about Cesar Chavez in 1966 from his parish priest and became active with the UFW's grape boycott as a college student in 1969.

After two years organizing the boycott in Detroit, Michigan, where he met and later married Cesar Chavez's daughter, Linda, Rodriguez was reassigned to California and began a 30-year career organizing farm workers throughout California and in a number of other states.

In 1994, Rodriguez kicked off a new union organizing and contract negotiations campaign that has seen the UFW win many representation elections and new union contracts. He led the UFW in bargaining with the nation's agricultural industry to produce the historic AgJobs immigration reform bill allowing undocumented farm workers to earn the legal right to peramently stay in this country by continuing to work in agriculture.

Rodriguez lives at the UFW's national headqaurters at La Paz in Keene, Calif. He has three children, Olivia, Julia and Arthur IV, plus two grandchildren, Isabella and Sofia.