The New Standard

‘Worker Centers’ Pick Up Where Unions, Govt. Leave Off
by Michelle Chen

An emerging form of unconventional labor organizing is taking root in immigrant communities, providing services, networks and hope where mainstream unions and state protections have fallen short.

Dec 30 - The workers did not understand what the papers said – just that they had to sign them and leave.

Their managers at the Lee Mah electronics factory in San Francisco, California had just told the roughly 200 Chinese immigrants that they were losing their jobs, and ordered them to sign a contract, written in English, before collecting their final wages.

Chen Fei Yi, a former Lee Mah employee, recalled that a few who were able to read English realized the contract said the workers were not being laid off but were resigning – making them ineligible for unemployment compensation guaranteed to laid-off workers under federal law. Chen said they warned their co-workers not to sign and demanded the boss come and explain. The boss never showed up, but the police did, threatening to arrest workers who refused to leave.

Without a union, silenced by a language barrier, and barred from their factory floor, the workers had only themselves. But that was enough to plunge them into a tide of grassroots labor advocacy that is rapidly picking up where the government and traditional organized labor leave off.

The Lee Mah workers soon partnered with a group of recently laid-off Chinese garment-factory workers to launch two parallel workers’ rights campaigns. Large protests against the employers and government labor authorities culminated in the founding of an organizing center for local Chinese immigrant workers.

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