Chinese Daily News: Union Buster

by Amee Chew
October 12, 2005

In October 2000, all 150 workers at the Chinese Daily News in Monterey Park, California, the largest Chinese daily newspaper in the US, decided they wanted union representation with The Newspaper Guild—Communications Workers of America (TNG-CWA).

In response, the Chinese Daily News embarked on a union-busting campaign that eventually cost $1 million in legal fees, and at least $600,000 on the notorious anti-union firm, The Burke Group. A union-busting consultant set up office at the paper; employees who support the union were retaliated against and harassed, while the paper suppressed labor-related stories.

Despite months of intimidation, the workers voted in favor of unionizing in a March 2001 election supervised by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). But the Chinese Daily News decided to appeal the results. After years of waiting for the NLRB to ratify the March 2001 vote, last July the workers were instead ordered to hold a revote. For their efforts, the workers were betrayed by the NLRB.

The NLRB's Republican majority overruled a hearing officer who found no merit to the newspaper's appeals of the initial election.  It retroactively applied a ruling that a supervisor's pro-union conduct can be grounds for setting aside an election -- but failed to consider Chinese Daily News' history of anti-union pressure! Earlier, an administrative law judge had issued at least 13 complaints against the newspaper, but the Chinese Daily News was only ordered to post a notice saying it would stop its illegal, anti-union activities.  The newspaper appealed and never posted the notice.

Under continued union-busting pressure, workers' attempts to organize recently lost the revote at the end of this September. Their loss demonstrates the tremendous roadblocks for unionizing and the unreliability of the legal system as it stands to enforce workers rights.

In 2002, a reporter at the Chinese Daily News, Lynne Wang, described abuses such as being threatened with pay freezes and firing any time. Employees were threatened with firing for even talking about the union at work. The company lowered raises and bonuses of those who publicly supported unionizing. Because many workers earned just minimum wage, they needed to work two jobs to support their families.

Timeline of Chinese Daily News struggle