The stories of the garment industry, the union, and the immigrant workers weave together in an extraordinary moment in New York’s Chinatown in 1982. Immigrant women organized and attended two enormous rallies and a strike that summer, leading to a victory with long-lasting impacts on the community. “We are one” was a rallying cry during the strike. A common Chinese saying that was used to translate it was 萬眾一心, which literally means “thousands of people, one heart.”

The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) had just negotiated an industry-wide contract renewal with hundreds of employers. The agreement covered nearly 150,000 garment workers along the entire East Coast. All the employers agreed to the contract except for a group of contractors belonging to a Chinatown employers’ association. This obstacle ultimately led to the workers in their shops coming together in unprecedented ways. The groundwork had been laid by the union in the preceding decade and the result was extraordinary.

In this module we will learn what sparked the idea of the garment workers’ strike and the preparations that led to the very brief but successful strike in 1982.