Long-time IWC member Rebecca Flores remembers picking cotton as a child during hot Texas summers in Atascosa County, just south of San Antonio.
“That was my education in being a worker and not getting paid anything,” she said.
The little girl who grew up in a family of migrant farm workers went on to lead the state chapter of the union that fought for higher wages and improved working conditions for agricultural workers.
Now 79 and retired, her name is engraved in the concrete of downtown San Antonio, surrounded by stories of other local labor leaders in the city’s new Labor Plaza.
The plaza is in the River Walk Public Art Garden on Market Street across from the Henry B. González Convention Center. It was originally home to a sculpture of labor leader Samuel Gompers, the first president of the American Federation of Labor—what is now the AFL–CIO, the largest coalition of unions in the country.
Gompers died in December 1924 in San Antonio after falling ill in Mexico City, according to the AFL-CIO. In fact, the AFL-CIO had a hand in the new Labor Plaza, coordinating with the city’s Department of Arts and Culture. When the Gompers statute saw structural damage and was uninstalled, the union sought a new way for the public space in San Antonio to recognize organized labor and civil rights, an effort that took about four years.
The new plaza aims to show a general audience how San Antonio leaders contributed to the nation’s labor movement. Read more here.
