Author: Caroline Luce

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May Day Los Angeles, 2003

Black and white image taken at a May Day march. Two garment workers are carrying a large banner from the Garment Workers Center, the only word fully visible is "Trabajador." other people in the image are carrying picket signs, one that says "immigrant bashing" that is crossed over. and another is shaped like a dove and reads "no war"

The Multi-Ethnic Immigrant Workers Organizing Network (MIWON) formed in the year 2000 to support immigrant and undocumented immigrant labor rights across Los Angeles. The coalition brought together the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California (Institute for Popular Education of Southern California, IDEPSCA), Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA), the Pilipino Worker Center (PWC), and later the Garment Worker Center (GWC), among other organizations. Throughout its ten years, these groups committed themselves “to the struggle for dignity, justice, and the human rights of immigrant workers and all peoples,” through sharing strategies and information, fostering interethnic and interracial solidarity, and promoting political consciousness and civic engagement among low-wage workers in Los Angeles.

MIWON campaigned for the passage of the “Immigrant Workers Bill of Human Rights” at the Los Angeles City Council in 2001, and to expand undocumented immigrants’ access to drivers’ licenses and government-issued identification. But perhaps their most enduring tactic was their annual commemoration of May Day (International Workers Day), marches that promoted solidarity among multiethnic and immigrant workers in Los Angeles and beyond. 

Pictured here: a scene from MIWON’s May Day march in 2003, where protestors connected “immigrant bashing” in Los Angeles and the United States government’s invasion of Iraq weeks earlier. 

View more images from the 2003 May Day march here.

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Day of Conscience Against Sweatshops

An older woman in a UNITE! t-shirt holds a big sign that reads: "This is a bill for your DIRTY LAUNDRY from: Workers and Community Cleaning up the Garment Industry -- to: Made in the Shade hardstyle International, 110 E. 9th St., L.A. - Wage and hour Violations - by: Department of Labor." In her hand is a soda can sealed with duck tape, likely a home made noise maker.

A garment worker carries a “Bill For Your Dirty Laundry” at a “Day of Conscience to End Sweatshops” rally and march in Los Angeles’ garment district on October 4, 1997. Organized by UNITE and its allies as part of their campaign against Guess? Jeans, the event was part of a national day of action that aimed to pressure the Presidential Task Force on Apparel Manufacturing to enforce a strong accord that would protect garment workers’ rights in Los Angeles and around the world. 

Photograph by Linda A. Lotz, CLUE records (LSC.2441), UCLA Library Special Collections Collection Information: https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8g167r7/

View more of Lotz’ photos from the CLUE collection here.

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Boycott Forever 21

Image from a demonstration on the Santa Monica 3rd street promenade. Two protestors hold a larger banner reading "Boycott" with Christmas holiday symbols. Behind them looms a large, handmade puppet being held up by other protestors. On the right side of the march, a woman directing the protestors wears an orange safety vest.

In 2001, the coalition of organizations that had come together to support the Thai Workers in El Monte pooled their funds to establish the Garment Worker Center (GWC), as a legal clinic to support workers in filing wage claims under the new procedures established by AB633. They hired three young Asian American women to run the GWC, including Kimi Lee as director, a lawyer who had previously worked on wage theft cases at the ACLU. But soon after they opened, the GWC’s small organizing staff began to notice that many of the workers seeking their support were coming from the same shops. And some additional research revealed that those shops were producing garments for the same company: fast fashion retailer Forever 21.  

The GWC launched its multi-pronged campaign against Forever 21 in 2001. With support from the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, they filed a lawsuit on behalf of thirty-three workers alleging wage theft and dangerous working conditions. They organized picket lines at Forever 21’s subcontractors across the city and at its various retail stores, and even demonstrations outside the homes of the company’s owners. And they organized a nationwide boycott campaign calling on their fellow workers and allies to join through loud and colorful public demonstrations like this one. Pictured here: María Pineda, one of the thirty-three workers who filed the lawsuit, and GWC Director Kimi Lee (in the orange vest). 

Check out more photos from the GWC’s campaign against Forever 21 here.

Watch the 2007 documentary about the Forever 21 campaign, Made in L.A. at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juvhOO2RdgA

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Guess? Who Pockets the Difference (1996)

In 1995, UNITE! (Union of Needle Trades and Industrial Textile Employees, formed after a merger of the ILGWU and ACTWU) launched a campaign against Guess? Jeans, the largest apparel manufacturer in Los Angeles. Known for its distinctive stone-washed jeans, Guess? operated its own retail stores and made down-market lines sold at department stores, averaging over $500 in annual sales. UNITE estimated that some 5000 workers in Los Angeles cut and sewed garments for Guess? , including around 1000 employed at the Guess?  warehouse. Their campaign relied on creative new tactics, including “hot shop” strikes at two Guess? subcontractors and direct actions at retail stores targeting the Guess? brand. Their media strategy included videos like this one, where Guess?  workers shared their testimonios and rallied support for the union drive. 

UNITE’s campaign against Guess?, while achieving some victories for workers, drained the union of resources and ended with the company relocating most of its production to Mexico. As UNITE organizer Cristina Vásquez described, the campaign was “like fighting an octopus” – when the union made progress in one of its subcontracted shops, Guess? would sever their relationship to the subcontractor and deny any liability for the conditions in the shop. The Guess?  campaign would be the last of UNITE’s major union drives, forcing garment workers and their allies to pursue new methods of establishing joint liability in the industry. 

A Spanish language version of the video is available here.

Both videos from the Steve Nutter Collection, IRLE.

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Santa Monica Living Wage – Journey for Justice

A procession of workers wearing raincoats carrying pickets marching down the Santa Monica boardwalk. Some carry red signs reading "Local 11," Purple and white signs reading "Living Wages for Hotel Workers" and green signs reading "Full Family Health Coverage." A man can be seen working through the window of one of the hotels in the foreground. The pavement appears wet and the sky looks as if it has just rained.
Santa Monica Living Wage – Journey Towards Justice, 2000

In 1999, hospitality workers and their allies formed a new coalition to expand Los Angeles’ living wage ordinance to neighboring Santa Monica. Calling themselves SMART (Santa Monicans Allied for Responsible Tourism), they advanced a proposal to increase the minimum wage for the estimated 3,000 housekeepers, valet drivers, restaurant workers, and security guards who worked in the beachfront hotel district to $10.69 an hour and to require their employers to provide health insurance. As the City of Santa Monica began studying the feasibility of the proposal, opponents of the proposal led by the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce began gathering signatures to place an alternative measure on the ballot in November which, while raising wages for some government contract workers, would have blocked efforts to increase the minimum wage for workers at private businesses, including those beachfront luxury hotels. They began circulating petitions and sent thousands of mailers to area residents alleging that their proposal (which came to be known as Proposition KK) would better protect workers and consumers in Santa Monica. SMART quickly mobilized in opposition to Proposition KK, “The Fake Living Wage,” holding a series of public demonstrations with religious leaders from CLUE (Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice) to make it clear to local voters that despite claims to the contrary, Prop. KK would not provide a true “living wage” to Santa Monica workers. Their efforts were successful—more than 78% of Santa Monica voters rejected Prop. KK — but the fight to win a living wage for workers in Santa Monica continued for years.

Pictured here is one of those demonstrations, the “Journey Towards Justice” march on April 17, 2000, in which thousands of hotel workers and their supporters marched in the rain down the Santa Monica boardwalk to St. Anne’s Church, where Father Mike Gutierrez offered blessings to the workers in their efforts to win living wages for all. 

Additional images of the Santa Monica Living Wage campaign available at the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) records, UCLA Digital Library:

https://digital.library.ucla.edu/catalog/ark:/21198/z16b3b1x

https://digital.library.ucla.edu/catalog/ark:/21198/z1gn4frj

View more photos from the Living Wage Campaign: https://www.flickr.com/photos/uclairle/albums/72177720320809410/