Jessica Govea Thorbourne, a labor educator with Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations in New York City and a founding organizer of Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers (UFW) Union, died Jan. 23, 2005, of breast cancer at age 58. A resident of West Orange, N.J., at the time of her death, she had played a central role in making the UFW one of the nation's most formidable labor organizations and a source of pride to several generations of Mexican-Americans. 

In 1996 Govea Thorbourne was featured in part two of the PBS series entitled "Chicano! The Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement." Her labor work was highlighted in a two-hour PBS documentary, "The Fight in the Fields," which aired in April 1997. She also was written about in the book We Were There, Too!: Young People in U.S. History by Phillip Hoose, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2001. 

Govea Thorbourne was born Jan. 4, 1947, the daughter of a Mexican-American farmworker mother and a Mexican-born railroad worker father. She grew up in southern California and went to work at age four in the cotton fields of Kern County. By age 9 she was helping her father, Juan Govea, produce and distribute flyers for meetings of the Community Service Organization, an effort led by UFW founder Chavez and his mentor, Fred Ross Sr. As president of Junior CSO in her teens, she led a successful petition drive to build a park after a neighborhood child was killed by a motorist.

In 1966 at age 19 she began full-time work with the UFW organizing committee and worked closely with Chavez and other UFW union leaders over a 16-year period. In 1968, she helped engineer two of the union's most effective boycotts of California table grapes, in Toronto, the third largest market at the time, and Montreal, the fifth largest. The boycotts led to the union's signing its first contract with a California grape grower in 1970. Govea Thorbourne rose to become national director of organizing for the UFW and, in 1977, was elected to the union's nine-member national executive board. 

She also headed up several of the union's voter registration and get-out-the-vote operations. In 1974, she worked to help elect Jerry Brown governor of California and gained supporters in Los Angeles for Robert Kennedy's pre-primary presidential bid. Other campaigns she participated in include those of former U.S. Sen. Allan Cranston and former California state senator Art Torres, the first Hispanic to chair the California Democratic Party. 

In recent years, Govea Thorbourne became a labor educator, helping to tutor and train the next generation of union organizers. For the past five years she directed the Labor In-House Programs for Cornell ILR School's Division of Extension and Public Service in New York City. Before that, she was a faculty member in the Labor Studies and Employment Relations Department at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.

In 1990, she helped develop and direct a successful New York City-based pilot project to train city council candidates and campaign managers from underrepresented communities. She also worked closely with Central American workers in the U.S. refugee community. In the early 1990s she worked with the national leadership of the coffee processing workers union in El Salvador to develop and implement a plan to rebuild the union after the war in that country.

A lover of books, sewing and cooking, Govea Thorbourne was a passionate public speaker and a naturally gifted singer, known within union circles for her rousing renditions of "No Nos Moveran," "De Colores," and "Cucurrucucu Paloma." Her work and her 12-year battle with breast cancer were recognized in 1994 when her image was included in the mural "Maestrapeace" on two exterior walls of the Women's Building in San Francisco's mission district. 

Govea Thorbourne wrote the following about labor organizing: "You have to draw a picture so that people understand your story and your struggle, and you have to give them something they can do about the problem you are presenting…. I learned that people will help if they are asked."

She is survived by husband, Kenneth Thorbourne Jr.; mother, Margaret Govea; and siblings, Catalina, John, Michael and Margaret Govea.