David Sickler and Jose De Paz appeal to fellow union leaders to continue funding the California Immigrant Workers Association.
Launched in 1989, the California Immigrant Workers Association (CIWA) supported a number of break-through union campaigns with immigrant workers. David Sickler, regional director for the AFL-CIO, conceived of CIWA as a way to funnel support for the many organizing drives that developed in the wake of the Immigration Reform and Control Act. CIWA staff provided legal and organizing aid to immigrant workers and connected them with unions, and advised unions on organizing best practices. However, in the spring of 1994 national leaders of the AFL-CIO decided to stop funding the program. In this memo, Sickler and CIWA staffer Jose De Paz appeal to southern California union leaders to help fund CIWA. The demise of CIWA came just months before immigrant rights groups and unions scrambled to fight the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 in the November 1994 election. View the document.
From the UNITE HERE Local 11 Records, Box 17 Folder 6, UCLA Library Department of Special Collections.
Baker, Bob. “Unions Try Bilingual Recruiting: A Handful of Aggressive Local Organizers Are Making Unprecedented Efforts to Replenish Their Ranks with Immigrant Workers, Especially Latinos. So Far, the Strategy Is Paying Off.” Los Angeles Times (1923-1995); Los Angeles, Calif., March 25, 1991. https://search.proquest.com/hnplatimes/docview/1638431258/abstract/23F841F81AA34934PQ/360.
In the summer of 1992, immigrant construction workers across southern California launched a militant strike that surprised both their employers and the Anglo leaders of trade unions. Aided by the California Immigrant Workers Association (CIWA), the drywallers' strike succeeded in improving working conditions in residential construction across the region. This account is from CIWA organizer Jose De Paz. CIWA operated from 1989-1994 as an associate membership organization of the AFL-CIO.
Three main ingredients account for the success of the drywallers strike. First, the determination of the strikers. They were not doing “strike duty”. They embraced their cause 24 hours a day and everything else became secondary to the strike. Additionally, the strikers were aware that they were being oppressed not only as workers but also as Mexicans, which made their bond twice as strong. This came particularly handy when entire families were evicted from their homes for non-payment of rent and had to move in with one or more families in a single dwelling.
Second, organized labor’s considerable contribution to the independent drywall strike fund. In addition to individuals and community organizations, more than 21 AFL-CIO affiliated unions and six Central Labor Councils in California made significant donations to the fund.
Third, CIWA’s unique participation. Besides coordinating legal and immigration defense, CIWA served as a communication bridge between the strikers and police agencies. CIWA also functioned as the strikers’ spokesperson with the media (particularly the Spanish-language media) and as the coordinator of support from Latino community and labor organizations. CIWA’s unique com bination of skills and its dual credentials in the labor and Latino communities enabled it to convert the drywallers’ struggle from a localized labor dispute into a Latino workers movement.
The founding convention of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA) held in Washington D.C. in May of 1992. The organization’s first president, Kent Wong, had proposed the idea of establishing a national organization of AAPI trade unionists years earlier to AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland with working as a staff attorney for the SEIU in Los Angeles. With the support of Kirkland, Wong travelled across the country to convene meetings with veteran AAPI labor activists, existing AAPI labor committees and other leaders from key unions with sizable Asian American memberships and plan for a national convention. Some 500 labor leaders attended the first convention of APALA, passing resolutions in support of immigrant rights, including an end to employer sanctions, and to create an Organizing Institute to recruit and train the next generation of AAPI organizers, a commitment to develop young worker activists that endures today. As Kent Wong described, the convention brought together AAPI activists with long histories in social justice movements:
“They were involved in the antiwar movement during the Vietnam War era, they were involved in the solidarity movements in support of Central American liberation struggles, they were in alliance with civil rights movements, and they had strong ties to Black, Latino/a, and Native American organizing. So in many ways, the group that came together was a culmination of decades of organizing within the broader AAPI movement. I think there was a tremendous strength in these initial founders who had been drawn to the labor movement based on a commitment to organizing the working class to fight for worker justice by challenging corporate abuse and the very oppressive conditions facing workers, especially communities of color and immigrants.”
Kent Wong in Asian American Workers Rising: APALA’s Struggle to Transform the Labor Movement . ed. Kent Wong, Matthew Finucane, Tracy Lai, Kim Geron, Emmelle Israel, and Julie Monroe. UCLA Center
SEIU local 399 hosted Guatemalan labor leader Rodolfo Robles during a visit to Los Angeles.
From the 1970s to the 1990s, the Central American nations of El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala experienced civil war, government-sponsored death squads, and genocide. Many who fled the violence settled in Los Angeles were they joined other immigrant workers in low-wage service sector jobs, and became part of the unionization drives of the 1990s. Immigrants workers then mobilized their unions in support of the peace process by welcoming visiting delegations and lobbying federal officials. This flyer documents the visit of Guatemalan union leader Rodolfo Robles to SEIU Local 399 in the early 1990s. His union, representing Coca Cola workers, played a leading role in the opposition to military dictatorship by urban workers. Learn more about Justice for Janitors.
Immigrant rights advocates protested the close relationship between the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), 1990.
A flyer announcing a protest rally and march organized by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) in the fall of 1990. Formed in the wake of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, CHIRLA drew together organizations and activists from many communities to demand inclusion for immigrants. Reflecting growing progressive coalition in Los Angeles, co-sponsors of this rally included labor unions, religious, civil liberties, and immigrant rights organizations Los Angeles. From the Tom Bradley Papers, Box 1170, folder 9, UCLA Special Collections. Download the Document.
