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(reprinted from East Wind, Spring/Summer 1987)
Through Strength and Struggle - A Victory for Garment Workers in Boston
By Therese Feng and Shirley Mark Yuen
In a national atmosphere that is increasingly anti-women, anti-minority, and anti-worker in sentiment, Chinese women and other ethnic immigrant garment workers in Boston recently earned a victory that is significant for women and non-English speaking minorities. Setting a precedent for all workers affected by plant closings, they fought for their rights as displaced workers, including the right to decide how retraining programs and benefits will be designed, implemented and evaluated.
P&L Sportswear of East Boston, the largest garment shop in Boston, closed its doors in December 1985, laying off its 300 plus workers, 60 percent being Chinese immigrant women. The shutdown of a plant that once employed 1,000 workers is a reflection of the general decline of the garment industry in the Northeast.
Presently, 75 percent of Chinese immigrant women workers are employed by the garment industry. The seasonal and piecework nature of the work limits the average annual income to only $4,000. Yet, this employment contributes substantially to the household income and oftentimes provides the only source of health insurance for these families. The closing of the P&L Sportswear plant would gravely affect the entire Chinese community.
From the beginning, racial discrimination and class oppression have been the major issues. Under Massachusetts state law, workers displaced by plant closings can obtain benefits, which would retrain them in new job skills. The P&L workers, however, found out about these provisions only when their English-speaking children observed local news coverage of the closing of a local meatpacking plant. In that situation, the plant closing received both major press coverage as well as a strong organizing effort from the union. Three days after the shutdown of the Colonial Company meatpacking plant, a workers' assistance center had been established.
The government, however, had made no attempt to similarly contact or consider the P&L workers even though their plant had shut down three months earlier. It was in March 1986 when the workers approached the Chinese Progressive Association, which quickly organized both students and community activists to form the Garment Workers Support Committee.