Labor Struggles and Youth Solidarity in 1990s Chinatown
When the United States Congress passed 1965’s Immigration and Nationality Act, it signaled a sea change in how immigration to the United States would now function. For East Asians with hopes of immigrating to the US, particularly Chinese and Japanese communities, the 20th century had been defined by racist, legal systems of exclusion. 1965’s legislation changed a key piece of this by abolishing the “quota” system, which used race and country of national origin as key pieces of information in limiting legal visas. It also struck down long-standing restrictions on Chinese immigrants' ability to own property and businesses and allowed for the possibility of entire families immigrating together, rather than a single breadwinner. For more on AANHPI immigration in the twentieth century, we recommend you explore fellow LHP Youth Researcher Ravi's exhibit, found here, and LHP Youth Researcher Arun's exhibit, found here.
As a result of the loosened restrictions, the demographics —and scale — of New York City’s Chinatown immediately shifted. The Lower East Side’s garment industry was once heavily staffed by working-class Jewish and Italian women. But by 1980, 25,000 Chinese women were employed in the garment factories lining Canal Street. The shops paid poorly and were rife with workplace hazards, but they had no language or minimum education requirements. Working in a Chinatown garment factory also meant joining a community. Many Chinese women working in the garment industry joined unionized — or soon-to-be-unionized — shops under the ILGWU banner. While this was the first experience with labor organizing for many, union organizers and community activists built real power under difficult conditions. Their efforts culminated in the successful Chinatown garment workers’ strike of 1982, in which 20,000 strikers — almost all women — marched through Chinatown with union buttons and picket signs, demanding ratified union contracts and their rights as workers.
The garment industry was distinctly gendered. Management and bosses were largely male, while women almost entirely staffed the shop floor. But working-class Chinese men who were not bosses or businessmen were also trying to find their way in New York City. As a new wave of immigrants arrived in Chinatown from the late 1960s onward, new arrivals and new money circulating in the neighborhood led to the creation of more community spaces for families and businesses, including Chinatown’s large-scale banquet halls. The sprawling dining rooms that could hold hundreds at a time required a small army of staff to function, too. And the men who were hired to work there, typically as waiters or kitchen staff, had neither a staff union nor the luxury of choice of employment.
Restaurants are not a particularly unionized industry, even today. But in 1979, the Chinese Staff and Workers’ Association (CSWA) was created. Originally designed as a voluntary organization akin to an old-school mutual aid society, bound together by ethnicity or country of origin, it was initially a space for men working in a grueling industry to share their grievances and to bond. Over time, though, it grew into a potent and well-organized force.
Exploitation in the restaurant industry can include everything from wage theft to gruelingly long hours and unsafe working conditions. It was — and still is — rampant, particularly when workers are undocumented or have other reasons to fear an authority’s intervention. In the 1970s and 1980s in Chinatown, local political corruption, the influence of local gangs, and a lack of state oversight over restaurants combined to form an environment where abuses of power within restaurants went unchecked. The labor law protections that workers had fought tooth and nail for at the beginning of the twentieth century were virtually unenforced in Chinatown. Jimmy Ong, one of the founders of CSWA, noted in a 2007 interview with amNY that at this time, the average restaurant worker was paid around $300/monthly for a 70-hour work week.
In February of 1980, the newly-formed CSWA faced its biggest test yet. Silver Palace, one of Chinatown’s largest banquet halls, was accused of stealing tips from its employees. Anyone who raised the issue to management was then summarily fired. For workers already making less than the minimum wage, having management skim their hard-earned tip money off the top was the last straw. Members of CSWA, many who worked at Silver Palace or other neighborhood restaurants, picketed outside daily. Eventually, their campaign of public pressure worked. The fired employees were rehired, and Silver Palace workers formed an independent restaurant workers’ union. Their work hours were standardized, and they even received a rare benefit: healthcare.
In the following years, the CSWA and Silver Palace would clash again over similar tip theft violations, but CSWA also made a name for themselves as a militant advocate for neighborhood causes. Not only focused on labor, they stepped in on other issues, too: gentrification and the creation of luxury housing in a working-class neighborhood, women’s working conditions in the garment sweatshops, and violence and public safety. By the 1990s, they were well established as a service organization run by workers, for workers.
In 1995, fresh off another battle with Silver Palace, CSWA picketed against Jing Fong, Chinatown’s largest banquet hall/restaurant at the time. Jing Fong management had violated labor laws by stealing workers’ tips — the same practice that had landed Silver Palace in hot water — and had fired a waiter for reporting it. Some Jing Fong workers opposed CSWA’s protests, worrying that declining profits and negative attention on the restaurant would lead to them losing their own jobs. But the protests only grew larger — and more theatrical. It also upset many older Chinatown residents and restaurant owners when CSWA picketers paraded a fake coffin in front of Jing Fong, and even more when they staged mock funerals for the business. Whether out of a sense of propriety or discomfort with a symbol of death being invoked in this context, many felt that it was not right for an intra-community struggle to be aired out so publicly in the streets. Others, led by CSWA organizers and Chinese American students, embraced a diversity of tactics as the best chance they had of winning this fight.
While prior labor struggles in Chinatown, including the 1982 garment workers’ strike and the 1980 Golden Palace protests, had been led by adult workers, radical youth were at the heart of 1995’s protest against Jing Fong management. Many had been inspired by the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing, where hundreds of demonstrating students had been killed by government-deployed troops in 1989. The news coverage and accounts of Tiananmen had been politically formative for many Chinese-American students, who took what they had absorbed from global social movements and implemented it in their own neighborhoods.
"The students in 1989 fought oppression. And what we're doing here, we're saying, students are gonna fight the oppression in Chinatown."
For youth with parents working in the garment factories or the banquet halls, the labor violations were not just a matter of political principle, but the very foundations of their lives. Virginia Yu, one of the hunger strikers, reflected, "For 18 years, I've watched my parents, ever since they've came to America, they've had to come to this (indistinct) of being treated like second class citizens. And after watching them, I know I had to fight for my own people." The students on hunger strike were instrumental in bringing attention to the fight for the Jing Fong staff's rights. Their strike lasted seven days, and by its conclusion, news cameras and reporters were on the ground to document it. Virginia's sister, Betty, a documentary filmmaker who was also on the ground protesting, later turned her footage from her experience into a short documentary film, Resilience (2001), found in the next section.
Just as with Silver Palace, Jing Fong was eventually found guilty of various labor violations and required by the State Attorney General's Office to pay a $1.1 million settlement to the striking workers. The brave, visible actions of the student hunger strikers and the CSWA protestors almost certainly moved this particular story toward a resolution. But the work for many, including Virginia and Betty Yu, did not stop there. Both went on to continue organizing with and for workers in various capacities, including helping to found the group National Mobilization Against Sweatshops in 1996, the year after the hunger strike. Their efforts to fight for an equitable Chinatown — one where workers could live, eat, work, and gather with dignity — made a difference in 1995, and the legacy of their struggle continues to inspire worker-activists today.
We are fortunate to have Betty Yu’s documentary, "Resilience," as a guiding text to learn this history. Yu's film explores her mother, a garment worker, fighting against sweatshop conditions. It also provides a firsthand account of her and her sister, Virginia Yu, leading and participating in the 1995 hunger strike. The film draws a strong connection between the sisters' grounding in their mother's labor activism and the development of their own political principles as youth activists. Focus especially on 07:56–10:59.
Questions for discussion:
- How did the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre influence these student protesters? Why do you think they invoked that historical moment?
- Virginia Yu said, “But I think without the support of the community… it would be way too dangerous.” What does this tell us about the importance of collective action?
- What personal risks were the student hunger strikers taking? Would you have joined them? Why or why not?
Organized Labor in Chinatown
Bao, Xiaolan. Holding Up More Than Half the Sky: Chinese Women Garment Workers in New York City, 1948-92. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2001.
Dandelion, River. "How Chinese American Women Changed U.S. Labor History." The Margins, a project of the Asian American Writers' Workshop, May 1, 2019.
Katz, Daniel. "A Walk Through the Rich History of Struggle in Manhattan’s Chinatown." Jacobin, August 5, 2022.
Sietsema, Robert. "Over a Century of Food and Change in Chinatown." MOFAD digital publication, date unknown.
Zhang, Shouyue, "“Learned from Black Friends”: The Asian-American Struggle for Housing and Equal Employment in New York City, 1969 – 1974." History Honors Program of University at Albany, State University of New York University at Albany, State University of New York, 2020.
Restaurant Work and the CSWA
Bragg, Chris. "Chinatown labor warriors reflect on battles." amNY, March 29, 2007.
Lee, Josephine. "A Picket Line With History." The Village Voice, January 22, 2002.
Lii, Jane H. "NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: CHINATOWN; 1,500 Dine, and Back Restaurant in Battle With Union." The New York Times, April 2, 1995.
Kwong, Peter. "Answers About the Gentrification of Chinatown." The New York Times, September 16, 2009.
Williams, Monte. "NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: CHINATOWN; State Inquiry Prompts Censure Of Jing Fong." The New York Times, September 24, 1995.
Youth Solidarity and Activism
Gordy, Molly. "Fork Over 1M, Eatery Told." NY Daily News, September 22, 1995.
Lee, Felicia. "COPING; Working Overtime to Vanquish Sweatshops." The New York Times, December 12, 1999.
Quittner, Jeremy. "A Loud End to Strike." Newsday, June 12, 1995.
Betty Yu's Documentary
Resilience, directed by Betty Yu, produced by Betty Yu. New York, NY: Third World Newsreel, 2001, 18 minutes.