Miguel Contreras, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetMiguel Contreras
American labor leader
Date of Birth: 17-Sep-1952
Place of Birth: Dinuba, California, United States
Date of Death: 06-May-2005
Profession: trade unionist
Nationality: United States
Zodiac Sign: Virgo 
About Miguel Contreras
- Miguel Contreras (September 17, 1952 – May 6, 2005) was an American labor union leader.
- He "was known as a king-maker for both local and state politicians." Contreras was born in Dinuba, a city in California's agricultural Central Valley, to farmworker parents who had immigrated from Mexico during the 1920s under the Bracero Program.After meeting Cesar Chávez at a rally for Robert Kennedy in the late 1960s, he became an activist for the United Farm Workers.
- He promoted the Delano Grape Boycott in Toronto, and organized lettuce workers in Salinas.
- He later led San Francisco hotel workers on a month-long strike.
- He was recruited by the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union, who made him a national organizer in Los Angeles.
- A contest over the leadership of the union's Local 11 led another labor leader, Maria Elena Durazo, to protest his involvement in the dispute.
- Durazo and Contreras later resolved their differences, and were married in 1988.
- The couple had one son, Michael. In 1994 Contreras became political director of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, a Central Labor Council of the American Federation of Labor.
- In 1996, he was elected executive secretary–treasurer of the Fed, a post he held until his death.
- During his tenure as secretary-treasurer, Contreras reached out to immigrant workers and worked to firmly integrate his union into the Los Angeles political landscape. In 2000, Contreras led Los Angeles janitors in a strike against building owners that led to their winning a favorable contract.
- The campaign's success made it a model for the struggles of blue-collar workers nationwide.
- He was also a major figure in the transportation workers' strike of the same year, enlisting Jesse Jackson as a mediator in negotiations between the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the union.
- Significantly, Contreras put the County Fed's support behind that union even though it was not a member of the Fed; many saw his action as a way to build bridges between the large Latino membership in the Fed and the transit workers' largely African-American membership.
- He organized one of the largest immigrant-rights rallies in U.S.
- history, which drew some 20,000 people to the Los Angeles Sports Arena.On May 6, 2005, Contreras suffered and died from complications of a heart attack in a Downtown Los Angeles botánica, a dispensary of traditional herbal medicines, where he had gone to have his fortune told.
- A high school in Los Angeles, the Miguel Contreras Learning Complex, is named in his honor.
- For his recognition, UC Berkeley and UCLA established the Miguel Contreras Labor Program (MCLP) to support labor education.
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