Fred Ross Jr. has been hired by IBEW Local 1245 to assist with organizing.
Ross, who came on staff April 30, is a veteran of numerous campaigns for worker rights. He served a six-year stint with Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers in the 1970s. In the 1980s Ross helped establish Neighbor to Neighbor as a national grassroots campaign to oppose U.S. military aid to the Nicaraguan contras, who at the time were committing grave human rights abuses in an effort to overthrow the Nicaraguan government.
Fred Ross Jr.
More recently Ross has served as a campaign director for the Service Employees International Union, including a campaign to organize janitors in San Francisco.
Ross says he learned from Chavez “that for farm workers to win justice they had to build power. Cesar encouraged us to be creative, risk failure, but above all else, make something happen.”
Welcome aboard, Fred!