Cohen, Jerry

Jerome Cohen, labor lawyer and social activist, was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1941. He received a B.A. from Amherst College in 1963, and earned a law degree at Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley, a few years later. Cohen worked as a first-year attorney at the California Rural Legal Assistance Office (CRLA) in 1967 when he attracted César Chávez's attention and was called to join the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (U.F.W.O.C.). Acting as Chávez's personal attorney and General Counsel of the U.F.W., he played a critical role in the union's organizing drive in California and other agricultural states. One of his first contributions to the U.F.W. was the creation of a new union, the United Peanut Shelling Workers of America, as part of a strategy to avoid NLRA regulations that prohibited secondary boycotts. His ability to use the law as an offensive weapon to advance organizing goals and build power to the union prompted him to direct the U.F.W. legal department for the next fourteen years, during which he helped migrant laborers win basic rights through litigation, strikes, boycotts, and other non-violent tactics.

Cohen's work resulted in many important constitutional decisions that continue to protect farm workers to the present day. He stepped down as General Counsel of the U.F.W. in 1979, but acted as attorney and negotiator for the union until 1981. He has since then engaged in private practice.

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