Labor Day: A time to remember the militancy of the AANHPI workers throughout US history

Chinese workers helped build the United States' first transcontinental railroad.

As stereotypes go, Asian Americans are sought after as workers because employers believe their don-t-rock-the-boat attitude make them good -- and inexpensive -- employees.

History tells us otherwise.

The common stereotype of the quiet, subservient, yet hard-working Asian American worker is the image created and perpetuated by big-business-controlled media who benefit from having an acquiescent work force.

 But, throughout US history, Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islander workers have been active and leaders in the American labor movement, the image Big Business would like us to forget because employers see an organized workforce as nothing. but trouble.

It can be argued that the first Asian American labor protest began during the era of the spice and gold-laden Manila galleons sailing the Pacific Ocean from 1565 to 1815. The Spanish vessels used Filipino sailors to man their ships, either as conscripts or slaves. 

The Filipino seamen voted with their feet. At the first opportunity after the long journey across the Pacific, hundreds of sailors jumped ship and blended into the local population near  Mexico's Pacific seaport of Acapulco. Historical records estimate a total of 40 000–120 000 Filipinos jumped ship when the galleons reached colonial Mexico, but that is likely an undercount because Filipinos found it easy to blend in with the local "indios" to live their lives free from official notice.

Still other Filipino sailors jumped ship in New Orleans in the early 1800s when that city was ruled by Spain. The sailors  fled their Spanish captains and escaped to the Louisiana swamps to found Manila Village and Saint Malo, the first Asian American settlements in the US.

Chinese railroad workers strike

The first record of an organized labor movement occurred on June 25, 1867,  when thousands of Chinese men working on the western  portion of the transcontinental railroad staged a strike to demand equal pay to white laborers, shorter workdays, and better conditions.

This project, the railroad, going through the mountains was the largest engineering project in the country at the time,” Hilton Obenzinger, associate director of the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project at Stanford University, told NBC News.

“And this work stoppage was the largest labor action in the country at that time,” he added.

The historic eight-day strike, which began on June 25, ended after Central Pacific director Charles Crocker choked off food, supplies, and transportation to thousands of Chinese laborers who lived in camps where they worked.

Hawaii's sugar cane workers

Alvina Yeh of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, a national labor organization, pointed to Filipino and Japanese sugar plantation workers striking in Hawaii, as well as labor actions by Chinese garment workers in San Francisco and New York City, all of them happening in the 19th and 20th centuries.

From May 9 to Aug. 4, 1909, some 7,000 Japanese workers were involved in a strike against sugar plantations on Oahu. At its peak, the strike involved almost 14,000 workers.

They struck for wages and conditions equal to those of the Portuguese, Puerto Rican and other sugar workers who were receiving $1 a day and more while the Japanese, doing the same work, were being paid $18 for 26 days.

A strike by Filipino sugarcane workers on Kauai on Sept. 9, 1924 ended in violence. Sixteen Filipino sugarcane workers on strike were killed by police in what became known as the Hanapepe Massacre.

It was not until 1946 when Filipino and Japanese sugarcane workers united in the first inter-ethnic labor movement, were the agricultural workers successfully in winning better wages and working conditions for the islands' sugarcane laborers.

Cannery workers

In the 1920s, Seattle was home port for the “Alaskeros,” the Filipino immigrants who—with low pay and poor working conditions—labored seasonally in the fishing canneries of Alaska in winter and West Coast farms in summer. In 1933 they formed the Cannery Workers’ and Farm Laborers’ Union Local 18257, the first Filipino-led union in the United States. 

Unionization was not easy and involved decades of internal and external struggle, but the organizing process improved the industry, the labor movement, and the status of Filipino Americans and other Asian Americans in the industry.

From the Filipino students who were some of the first employees to expose the level of discrimination against Filipino and other Asian workers in the cannery industry to the later leaders of the CWFLU who fought for the basic rights of Filipinos who were the targets of racially-charged violence, the CWFLU served as an essential social and political organization for working-class Filipinos prior to World War 1.

California farm workers and the UFW

In the 1930s 4,000 Filipino farm workers in California joined the Filipino Labor Union based in Salinas, California and staged a strike for higher wages.

In 1930, a mob in Watsonville, California, dragged dozens of Filipino men from their homes and beat them. Farmworker Fermin Tobera was shot and killed. 

Deaths also resulted from the bombings of Filipino labor camps, often with the complicity of local law enforcement.

In 1938, Filipinos organized the Filipino Agricultural Laborers Association but organizers believed that all workers should be included so they soon changed the name to Federated Agricultural Laborers Association (FALA). The FALA continued to hold various successful strikes in the California fields.

Striking Filipino farmworkers led to the formation of the United Farm Workers.

Filipino farmworkers saw the success of the initial organizing efforts. Throughout the 1930s, 40s and 50s they organized successful strikes and work stoppages, formed unions and began winning significant improvements to wages and work.

One of the unions that was formed was the Filipino Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) based in Stockton, California. In September 8, 1965, the AWOC decided to launched the Grape Strike against Delano grape growers, demanding pay equal to the federal minimum wage.

After initial talks between leaders of AWOC and the National Farmworkers Association led by Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta and others, the Mexican workers joined the strike 12 days later. Together, the two unions of Filipinos and Mexicans formed the United Farm Workers. The successful strike won better working conditions and higher wages for the laborers.

Garment workers

 in the summer of 1982: Nearly 20,000 garment workers — mostly Asian American women — marched together in solidarity for better benefits. Clad in matching union caps, they carried signs in both English and Chinese, reading, “In union, there is strength,” and “Support the union contract.”

They were striking for better working conditions and to protect their benefits, which included, higher wages, health care, sick pay and a pension.

 In the end, most employers, which included big brand names in fashion, signed with the union, demonstrating the power of collective action.

Filipino American nurses

Thousands of nurses from the Philippines have filled in the workforce gaps in the healthcare industry. Filipino and Filipino American became nurses are leaders in  National Nurses United, the largest union of registered nurses in the US. 

During the current pandemic, Filipino nurses have been on the frontline treating the patients of COVID-19. A report from the NNU, led by its president, Filipino American Bonnie Castillo, found that one-fourth of the deaths due to COVID were nurse of Filipino descent.

The Philippines is the largest source of foreign-trained nurses for US hospitals and other healthcare facilities.

Even before the pandemic, nurses' unions have been staging strikes at numerous hospitals across the US, asking for increased staffing and adequate personal safety equipment with some success. Since the pandemic began in 2020, these demands have been gathered more support from the public and other health professionals.

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Therefore: when the quiet, subservient stereotype of Asian Americans crops up in classrooms and workplaces, which often reinforces beliefs that Asian Americans don't make good leaders or upper management, don't buy into that image. There are plenty of examples of why that image is totally false.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AANHPI perspective, follow me at Threads.net/eduardodiok, @DioknoEd on Twitter or at the blog Views From the Edge.