MOVEMENTS AND MOMENTS
New York Chinatown’s Immigrant Garment Workers: Women in Action, 1970 – 2001
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Did the collective action of New York City Chinatown’s Chinese American garment workers positively change their labor conditions and their lives?
Chapter objectives
- Learn about the historical working conditions that lead to the 1982 Chinatown Garment Workers Strike, and the collective actions garment workers took to change the status and working conditions of women and immigrants.
- Understand how solidarity played a role in uniting immigrant women garment workers towards a common goal.
- Explore the potential of unions, strikes, and community organizing in the fight for better working conditions.
“We are one!” was the rallying cry of some 20,000 Chinese immigrant garment workers during strike mobilizations in New York’s Chinatown in 1982. The slogan reflects how the labor movement can embrace immigrant workers, working mothers, social unionism, ethnic communities, and families. From its founding in 1900, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) and the American garment industry were populated by waves of immigrants, including the large influx of Chinese women workers who came to New York City after 1965. New York’s Chinatown was transformed as thousands of women, mostly working mothers, found jobs in hundreds of sewing factories. This chapter examines the garment industry and its workers, the union that organized the workers and the factories they worked in, and the interplay of forces that led tradition-bound immigrant women to engage in collective actions that had lasting impacts in their community. This case study links directly to issues concerning immigrants, unions, and community organizing today.
Modules in this chapter
New York Chinatown and the Garment Industry
The Immigrant Women
The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU)
The Strike
Legacy
New York Chinatown and the Garment Industry
The Immigrant Women
The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU)
The Strike
Legacy
Chapter Sources
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