40 years later, labor leaders remember NYC Chinatown?s garment worker strike
Companies, agencies, institutions, etc
NBCFollow
the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education
NBC Asian America
the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’
Union (ILDWU
the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance
APALA
the APALA Seattle
ILGWU
the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union
NBC UNIVERSAL
People
Katie Quan
ILDWU.May Chen
Eunice
Groups
Chinese
Asian
Asian American
Pacific Islander
Physical locations
Columbus Park
the San Francisco Bay Area
Places
No matching tags
Locations
New York City’s Chinatown
U.S.
Events
No matching tags
Summary
“But the 1982 strike demonstrated quite clearly that when labor issues are at stake, Chinese workers (both men and women) will act in their class interests, as they actually do in the factories when they fight for higher piece rates or have other disputes.”The 1982 mobilization of Chinese workers was also a wake-up call for union leaders to work more closely with Asian American workers, Quan said. She was later recruited to work with the ILDWU.May Chen, another organizer of the strike, became a founding member of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), formed in 1992, which is the first and only national organization of Asian American and Pacific Islander workers.“The work of the garment workers strike really inspires all of the workers who are a part of the union today,” said Eunice How, president of the APALA Seattle chapter and a community organizer at UNITE HERE, a union that was formed through the merger of ILGWU and the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union.
As said here by Brahmjot Kaur