Workers band together in unions to fight for their collective needs at work: better wages, fair hours, health insurance, workplace safety, and other concerns. Unions help workers achieve fair treatment in the unequal power relationship with their boss. As the Chinatown garment industry grew in the 1960s and 1970s, Chinese garment workers in New York joined a union that protected garment workers, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU).

As a self-described “union of immigrants,” the ILGWU knew the importance of outreach to the garment workers in New York City’s Chinatown. The ILGWU organized the Chinatown factories through incentives to Chinese employers, such as brokering connections between employers and unionized manufacturing brands, and outreach to workers. Worker outreach included offering English language classes, writing newsletters in Chinese, giving news stories to the local Chinese press, and providing education about benefits such as health insurance.

There were 1,500 Chinese members in the local ILGWU chapters by 1968, and this increased to 6,000 in 1974. By 1982, there were about 20,000 members, and the New York Chinatown workers made up one-third of the workers in Manhattan’s outerwear industry. The union experiences transformed the workers, and in turn, the Chinese immigrants who joined the ILGWU made an impact on the union, and advocated for the union to represent their needs and concerns through the industry’s rapid changes. This module focuses on the ILGWU and how Chinese immigrant workers joined the union and shaped its history and direction.