Module 1: Overview of Asian American Workers

Has Asian American and Pacific Islander labor activism transformed working conditions for all workers?

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On Labor Day September 1, 1946, over twenty-five thousand sugar plantation workers in Hawaiʻi refused to go to work. For three months, the mostly Japanese and Filipino workers, alongside Native Hawaiians, went on strike and shut down production in thirty-three out of thirty-four plantations. They demanded higher wages, forty-hour work weeks, and better housing. Historically, plantation owners hired workers from different countries to prevent the workers from strategizing together, purposely setting up systems to encourage competition among different ethnic groups. In the end, the plantation owners gave in to the workers’ demands, and workers won better wages and housing despite the overwhelming odds stacked against these newly immigrant workers.

In this module, we learn who Asian American workers are and their historical patterns of migration, often moving to escape violence in their home countries and to seek economic opportunity in their host country. The module also explores how Asian American workers have collectively organized against racism, discrimination, and poor working conditions in order to transform their lives and better their communities.

A group of male laborers, wearing protective clothing and hats in a field, cut sugarcane and place them in wooden carts pulled by mules.

Image 40.01.01 — Laborers in Hawaiʻi used mules to carry sugar cane, circa 1900.

What role do unions and workers’ centers play in the lives of Asian American workers?

What are the working conditions of Asian American workers in the United States historically?

What social and economic justice do Asian American workers seek?

Twenty-first Century Asian American Workers

There is no single narrative for Asian American workers, as they represent both the lowest- and highest-paid members of the US workforce. Before major changes in US immigration policy in 1965, the majority of Asian immigrants were low-wage workers. After the 1965 Immigration Act, a broad array of immigrants began to arrive. In addition, the inclusion of refugees from Southeast Asia beginning in the 1970s and 1980s brought additional workers and professionals to the United States. Today, Asian Americans work in some of the most dangerous jobs, as well as some of the most prestigious white collar professions. For these workers, the scale of identities as workers in the US shows multiple storylines, and the work of unions organizing and demanding fair pay and protections is a small portion of this large arc of workers.

Seventy-five percent of Asian American workers in the US are immigrants. One segment of this immigrant workforce has limited job skills and little education, while a contrasting segment is highly educated with professional skills. Many professional-class immigrants from Asian nations migrate to start their own businesses or to work in the high tech, scientific, and service sectors. Their incomes and education levels are significantly higher than the low-wage workers who also migrate from Asian countries.

Even with this divergent workforce, there is a difference in the working class in terms of ethnic background. A large percentage of Southeast Asians work in blue collar jobs in sectors such as construction, agriculture, textiles, service, and other manual labor industries. South and East Asians, however, post-1965 immigrants are more likely to be concentrated in white collar sectors, such as computer science, health, engineering, and other fields that require formal education. They also tend to work in sales, operations, and management. Despite these generalizations, there is socioeconomic diversity within different Asian American communities, and members can be found in a wide range of low-wage and high-wage occupations.

Early Asian American Migration

The Pacific Rim, or the landmasses and countries that border the Pacific Ocean, connects numerous countries, woven together by ocean currents, ships, and trade. From the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, Western countries grew their empires by competing to control the Pacific Rim by colonizing Asia and coercing Asian countries to open up for trade. For example, the US became an empire through its colonization and aggressions abroad. In the aftermath of numerous wars and military interventions, millions of displaced Asians, well as Pacific Islanders, moved to the mainland of the United States.

Starting with Britain’s Opium Wars in China (1839–1842, 1856–1860), the US’s forcing open of Japanese ports in 1853, the occupation and annexation of Hawaiʻi (1893–1898), the Spanish-American War (1898), the Philippine-American War (1898–1902), the Chinese Communist Revolution (1949), the Fifteen Year War (1931–1945), the Korean War (1950–1953), and the Vietnam/Southeast Asia War (1955–1975), the US became involved in these countries for strategic military, economic, and geo-political purposes.

Rows of U.S. Marines, dressed in white uniforms, stand at parade rest with rifles near ‘Iolani Palace. Color guard stand in front.

Image 40.01.02 — US Marines were present at the annexation of Hawaiʻi ceremonies on August 12, 1898. The annexation had strategic military and economic purposes.

In the context of migration to the US, Asian Americans arrived as refugees wanting safety, as immigrants seeking better opportunities, and as political exiles desiring relief from political and religious persecution in light of Western imperialism. Most recently, some of the blue-collar workers from these regions were recruited as cheap labor into the US, where they face not only the difficulty of assimilating to all that is new in their host countries, they also experience violence and anti-Asian hate, including exclusionary immigration policies and other discriminatory laws.

Before 1900, Chinese and Japanese journeyed to the US for the “dirty, dangerous, and difficult” work that white Americans would not do in several diverse industries:

First, these workers built the US infrastructure including not only the Transcontinental Railroad but also canals, levees, tunnels, and bridges.
Second, the workers made up a great portion of agricultural workers on farms. At the turn of the twentieth century, they worked as contract laborers, and their remittances supported families and communities back home.
Third, these early Asian American workers cultivated natural resource industries including mining, timber, and fertilizers.
Fourth, their labor developed maritime industries including whaling, fishing shellfish, and the hunting of sea otters.
Finally, during wartime, many served in the military during the Civil War and the World Wars. Some other workers were domestic servants, known as “houseboys.” Racism excluded Asians from many occupations; therefore, some opened their own businesses, such as restaurants, laundries, and small service shops.

Painting of four tall ships and nine whaling boats showing the men in boats rowing and spearing a pod of sperm whales in choppy sea.

Image 40.01.03 — An 1833 painting of whale hunting off the coast of Hawaiʻi. Such labor was often done by Asians and Native Hawaiians.

During this same time, there was a lot of movement throughout the Pacific Rim amongst the Asian populations as a result of colonization and Christian mission work. On the one hand, Christian missionaries facilitated the movement of the first Korean migrants to Hawaiʻi in order to work on sugar plantations. However, Japan’s formal colonization of Korea in 1910 discouraged Koreans from leaving, since Japan planned to exploit Korean labor in their own expanding empire.

Also in the early 1900s, Punjabi Sikhs began to immigrate from South Asia to the US via Vancouver, British Columbia. In 1907 in Bellingham, Washington, at the US-Canadian border, several hundred Punjabi timber workers were forced out by a mob of five hundred whites led by members of the Asiatic Exclusion League. Punjabis moved further south, engaging in agricultural work and eventually owning their own farms and intermarrying with Mexican American women in locations like the Imperial Valley, California.

Four Punjabi men, dressed in turbans, long sleeve shirts and overalls, tend a large field of crops using long handled farm tools.

Image 40.01.04 — Punjabi farm laborers from South Asia work the land in the San Joaquin Valley California, in 1909.

Organizing and Collective Action

Organizing occurs when a group of people identify the root of a shared problem and work to solve the issue. They develop leadership from within this group and build collective power, particularly energized by those most impacted by the problem. For Asian American workers, organizing often happened through religious gathering spaces, such as churches, temples, gurdwaras, and mosques. Historically, workers have organized wherever they were, including plantations, farms, railroads, canneries, and factories. Groups formed mutual aid associations that addressed issues associated with root problems. These associations usually provided social services, ranging from housing and employment to funeral arrangements, as well as support for remittances and other financial matters.

To force employers to treat workers more humanely, workers used their collective power by refusing to work or striking. The story that begins this module about Native Hawaiian and Asian sugar plantation workers going on strike against cruel treatment and wage theft started happening as early as 1841 and occurred periodically through 1946. In the late 1860s, three thousand Chinese laborers throughout the West Coast went on strike against the Central Pacific Railroad, for better working benefits and fair wages especially given the racist policy that forced them to work longer hours than white workers, and yet were paid half as much.

Reflection Question

To what extent does collective action have more impact than individual action?

Unions

Unions are organizations formed by workers to strengthen their collective power in the workplace. Unions help workers bargain around issues such as wages, benefits, safety, and protection. Bigger unions can help start and support smaller unions, providing workers with resources, advice, and know-how such as legal support or funds during a strike. While unions can be a vital source of worker power, not all workers could join a union in the US. Historically, even the union space was a discriminatory one: white-led unions excluded non-white workers. As a result, Asian American workers began their own unions that practiced interracial and interethnic solidarity, working together across ethnic and racial differences toward the common goal of fair wages and protected work.

Filipino American Larry Itliong, next to Mexican American Cesar Chavez, stands outside National Farm Workers Association headquarters. Chavez gestures with his hand.

Image 40.01.05 — Larry Itliong (right) and Cesar Chavez (left) in front of NFWA headquarters in July 28, 1967.

In the late 1800s, Chinese railroad workers sought better wages and safer working conditions. Rather than aid, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and other white-led unions lobbied to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which restricted immigration. In response to this first migration exclusion government policy, non-white workers formed their own unions, knowing there was strength in numbers.

An example of this is the Japanese-Mexican Labor Association (JMLA) that formed in Oxnard, California, 1903. Over 1,200 Japanese and Mexican sugar beet thinners organized together against wage cuts, subcontracting, and policies forcing workers to shop at company stores. Despite violent opposition, these workers won their demands. The AFL offered Mexican laborers support if they expelled their Japanese counterparts, but in an act of interracial solidarity, the Mexican workers refused. Interracial solidarity was demonstrated again by the United Farm Workers (UFW), a merger between Filipino and Mexican American workers, which led to the five-year Delano Grape Strike beginning in 1965. Their organizing bridged the civil rights and labor movements and showed the power of consumer boycotts to support workers’ struggles.

A farmworker worker unloads beet by pulling a rope to raise a net under them. Another farmworker bends down to pull a basket out.

Image 40.01.06 — Workers unload beets from wagons at a factory in Oxnard, California. The Japanese-Mexican Labor Association (JMLA), formed in 1903, united both Japanese and Mexican sugar beet thinners to organize together for better work protections.

Organizing in the 1960s and 1970s

The Immigration Act of 1965 ended the decades-long policy of exclusionary and discriminatory immigration policies directed against Asian immigrants. This policy change enabled a new generation of immigrants to enter the US. The new waves of immigrants would soon start to engage in efforts for labor rights and justice at their workplaces. As immigrant workers arrived in the US, they discovered poor working conditions in many low-wage jobs in garment, restaurant, hotel, and domestic work, as well as in the private sector. These new immigrant workers organized with American-born workers and in other workplaces. They worked almost exclusively with other immigrant workers.

Asian American workers in the private sector during the 1970s increased their organizing efforts to win better working conditions. In numerous businesses employing Asian Americans, workers organized and, in some cases, held job actions and strikes. A notable example was the seven-month Jung Sai garment workers’ strike in 1974 in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Also in 1974, the Confucius Plaza conflict in New York’s Chinatown erupted when an employer refused to hire Chinese construction workers on a large affordable housing project in the community.

Additionally, in the Pacific Northwest, Alaska cannery workers labored for decades in the low-wage and dangerous canning industry. In November 1973, the Alaska Cannery Workers’ Association (ACWA), founded by Gene Viernes and Silme Domingo, brought a class action lawsuit against several fish companies for discrimination in jobs, housing, and mess halls.

In 1982, twenty thousand low-paid New York City garment workers, mostly Chinese women, demonstrated to demand better pay and working conditions. Their efforts resulted in winning their demands, demonstrating the power of collective action. Also in 1982, the murder of Vincent Chin in Detroit, Michigan, by two unemployed white auto workers, who falsely targeted Chin for the loss of jobs in the auto industry, ignited a nationwide movement led by Asian American communities, including labor activists, to protest against anti-Asian racial violence.

Video 40.01.07 — This clip from the scene of the 1982 New York City Chinatown garment worker strike captures the vibrant energy of women workers eagerly taking the streets to fight for their rights and benefits, including health insurance and fair wages.

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In the public sector, unionization of public employees began in earnest in the late 1960s and 1970s, as laws changed to enable government workers to unionize. Both immigrant and US-born Asian American workers actively joined in these efforts. They involved workers in public education, those in municipal and county positions, as well as state and federal workers. The growth of regional organizing efforts among these workers in the 1980s led to the formation of the national Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA) in 1992. APALA now has chapters across the US and is affiliated with the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).

When Unions are Not Enough

Although unions benefit many workers, workers’ needs sometimes go beyond union support, while others are unable to join a union. Many workers are undocumented immigrants, and some have been trafficked, coerced, or kidnapped in order to work in exploitative conditions.

In 1995, seventy-two Thai workers were freed from a compound in El Monte, California, where they were working in captivity. The Thai Community Development Center in Los Angeles joined with government agencies to liberate the workers. This case exposed the exploitation and trafficking of Thai women garment workers into what are sometimes called “sweatshops.” During the 1990s anti-sweatshop campaigns against Forever 21, Jessica McClintock, and Guess Jeans exposed the exploitation of Asian immigrant workers in the garment manufacturing chain.

Video 40.01.08 — From 2020, ABC7 reported on the then twenty-fifth anniversary of the shocking discovery of trafficked Thai workers, who were found in El Monte, California.

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Worker centers help defend the rights of those who are non-unionized. These centers provide in-language services, legal assistance, self-help organizing support, and outreach to the community. A few examples include the Chinese Progressive Associations in San Francisco, California, and Boston, Massachusetts, which are organizations of Chinese immigrant workers. The Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates (KIWA) is based in Los Angeles, California, and works to organize Korean and Latina/o immigrant workers in food service, the garment industry, manufacturing, and janitorial services.

More to explore

Document

Profile of a Korean restaurant worker

Profile of Eun Sun Choi, a Korean restaurant worker from the Korean Immigrant Workers Association (KIWA).

Other centers include the Pilipino Workers Center in Los Angeles, California, which organizes Filipino workers earning low wages, and Mekong NYC, which serves Southeast Asian workers in New York City. The Hawaiʻi Workers Center provides support for migrants from other Pacific Islands who come to Hawaiʻi to work, as well as those who may be undocumented.

Today, Asian American workers continue to face challenges both in unionized and non-unionized workplaces. Those in unionized work in the US are able to receive care, support, and protection through their solidarity and card-carrying work, but much of this work is equally racially divided and exclusionary. Contract laborers and temporary workers are connected to their homelands through remittances, extended family, and childcare needs and elderly assistance, but job security is a constant worry.

One highlight of union activism on issues of workers’ rights and protections is the ripple-effect throughout the Asian diaspora of rights, consciousness, and democratic principles. Even for non-unionized work spaces, from highly paid high-tech and finance jobs with job insecurity, down to the gig workers who deliver food, drive ridesharing cars, and run nail salons, Asian American workers face numerous challenges and continue to organize to retain their dignity against workplace discrimination and to demand a livable wage from the work they do.

Women of the National Domestic Workers Alliance gather for outdoor march. A woman speaks into a megaphone and others hold up signs.

Image 40.01.10 — In 2017, The New Yorker published a profile about care workers in New York City, focusing on their activism in marching with the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) in Washington, DC. The NDWA is an example of a worker center that helps defend the rights of non-unionized workers.

Glossary terms in this module

contract laborers Where it’s used

[ kon-trakt lay-bur-urz ]

A group of people who identify the root of a shared problem and work to solve the issue. They develop leadership from within this group and build collective power, particularly energized by those most impacted by the problem.

empire Where it’s used

[ em-pyer ]

A collection of states and countries that is ruled or controlled by a single sovereign state.

exploitation Where it’s used

[ eks-ploi-tay-shuhn ]

Taking advantage of someone for one’s own benefit.

imperialism Where it’s used

[ im-peer-ee-uh-liz-uhm ]

The process in which a country extends its power or control over other peoples or countries, often involving the use of militaries.

organizing Where it’s used

[ oar-guh-nye-zing ]

The process of when a group of people identify the root of a shared problem and work to solve the issue. They develop leadership from within this group and build collective power, particularly energized by those most impacted by the problem.

remittances Where it’s used

[ rih-mit-uhn-siz ]

Money sent home to relatives by workers residing abroad.

solidarity Where it’s used

[ soh-li-dair-ih-tee ]

A political, cultural, and collective stance that recognizes the mutual responsibility and support that is necessary to achieve change. Taps into the power in numbers and considers the collective interests of communities.

trafficked/trafficking Where it’s used

[ traf-ikt/traf-ih-king ]

Illegally transporting or coercing someone into performing labor or services. Common examples include labor trafficking and human trafficking.

unions Where it’s used

[ yoo-nyunz ]

Organizations formed by workers, typically from the same industry or company, representing the workers’ collective needs in the workplace such as pay, benefits, and working conditions.

Disclaimer

We acknowledge that this chapter includes photographs of Cesar Chavez. Their inclusion is strictly for historical documentation — to illustrate the solidarity between Filipino and Mexican farmworkers in their collective struggle for dignity and just working conditions. We do not endorse Chavez’s leadership, nor do we minimize the serious harm he inflicted on women and girls in the movement. History is complex, and we are committed to honoring the full truth of it.