| 1979 |
CSWA is founded by a group of restaurant workers in Chinatown. |
| 1980 |
Silver Palace workers are fired on March 18 because they protest
management's taking of tips. CSWA's first campaign leads to the formation
of the independent 318 Restaurant Workers' Union. |
| 1981 |
Women members of CSWA launch a successful campaign to compel Local
23-25 of the garment workers union to set up a daycare center in Chinatown
for garment workers. |
| 1984 |
In a landmark case, CSWA and others block a luxury-housing development
in Chinatown, arguing that low-income people would be displaced by
the development and that people should be considered part of the environment. |
| 1985 |
CSWA led the Concerned Committee of the Chung Park Project to call
for community space, including a day-care center.
CSWA organizes the first group of Chinese homesteaders on the Lower
East Side, creating 12 low-income co-op units and two community
spaces.
|
| 1989 |
Chinese workers in CPC's training program and African-American construction
workers demonstrated at Housing and Preservation Department offices
to protest the government's exploitation of participants in a federally
funded "training" program. CSWA also begins picketing the
CPC's Chinese New Year fundraising dinner. CPC had underpaid its construction
workers and fired them for organizing. After 6 years of struggle,
the construction workers were awarded a $2.15 million settlement in
1994. |
| 1990 |
CSWA and workers at Wai Chang Fashions organize an unprecedented
rally in Chinatown, kicking off our Campaign Against Nonpayment
of Wages. We are successful in having the boss, Stanley Chang, thrown
in jail and the case inspires numerous workers from other garment
factories to speak out. Workers at Nineties Fashions and 318 Fashion
also set precedents by forcing manufacturers to take responsibility
for the wage-law violations of their subcontractors.
CSWA organized 200 supporters of the Shinwa Restaurant workers
in a sit-down demonstration and picket to protest the management's
exploitative and racially divisive practices, bringing together
Latino, Asian, African American and white workers uniting to confront
an employer who divided workers by race and pitted them against
one another.
|
| 1991 |
During our Campaign for Economic Justice at Foley Square, we lambasted
the discriminatory hiring and contracting policies at 2 multi-million
federal projects built in the Chinatown area. CSWA organized demonstrations
in July and August, during which 3,000 workers and other community
members came out each time to protest. We successfully forced an increase
of Asian workers to be hired at the site. |
| 1992 |
State Senator Franz Leichter and Assemblyman Frank Barbaro introduced
a set of bills, drafted with our help, that would make nonpayment
of wages a felony and garment manufacturers liable for their contractors'
wages law violations.
44 workers are locked out of Silver Palace and began daily picketing
that lasted seven months.
|
| 1993 |
Su Deng, the first and only Chinese woman carpenter in NYC, is
hired as a result of our Campaign for Justice at Foley Square.
|
| 1994 |
The Silver Palace Victory Rally celebrated the reinstatement of
workers under a fair contract, and marks the beginning of the Campaign
to End Slave Labor.
|
| 1995 |
Students and workers launch campaign against scofflaw Jing Fong
Restaurant which includes a week long hunger strike outside Jing
Fong, collecting over 5,000 petition signatures urging the government
to keep violators in check, and a town hall meeting to call for
stronger labor-law enforcement in Chinatown.
CSWA opens a second center, the Brooklyn Workers' Center, in Sunset
Park.
CSWA leads a broad coalition of Asian Americans to block the opening
of an Off-Track Betting (OTB) parlor on Bowery.
|
| 1996 |
CSWA kicks off a new project, the National Mobilization Against
Sweatshops. |
| 1997 |
Days after the New York State Attorney General announces a $1.5million
lawsuit against Jing Fong, CSWA's Manhattan office is fire bombed.
Jing Fong later offers a settlement of $1.14million.
Several Chinese workers are excluded from work at a construction
site of New York University, which leads to the launching of the
Campaign for Economic Justice at NYU by CCWA and others, holding
the landowner responsible for the discriminatory hiring practices
of its contractors.
CSWA organizes a picket and press conference outside the notorious
Hua Great Procetech factory in Sunset Park for the first time to
protest the injury of Xue Yan Huang.
The New Silver Palace Campaign begins after the "new"
management tells union workers they must pay $5,000 to be rehired
at the restaurant.
|
| 1998 |
Workers at Hua Great Procetech are fired after speaking out against
137-hour workweeks at a factory where clothes are made for manufacturer
Street Beat Sportswear. The workers, coming forward to pursue their
reinstatement as well as their owed wages, with the support of CSWA,
set in motion a campaign holding the contractor, the manufacturer
Street Beat, and retailers such as Sears responsible for the sweatshop
conditions under which these workers labored.
|
| 1999 |
Street Beat Sportswear pays $300,000 to the garment workers to settle
part of the overtime case. |
MORE HISTORY COMING SOON...
