If someone asked me, “Do you like labor unions?” my answer would be yes.
In China, I was a member of the Chinese trade union. I was an experienced worker with more than twenty years of seniority and union membership, and I had also served on a union committee. The union was the workers’ own organization, the workers’ home. Of course I liked it.
When I first arrived in America, I knew no one and could not speak the language. Finding work felt like walking the road to Shu—difficult indeed. I heard people say that the best thing was to get into a factory with a union, because the work would be stable, the benefits good, and the boss would not dare fire employees casually. When I saw sanitation workers collecting garbage on the street, I envied them. I dreamed that one day I might join their ranks.
Every day I wandered the streets like a fly without a head, filling out job applications everywhere. To tell the truth, those first few months drove me half crazy.
In less than half a year, I was fired four times. The first job was in a shoe factory, the second in an instant-noodle factory, the third in a supermarket, and the fourth in a buffet restaurant. The bosses at all of them were Chinese, stingy and harsh. Hmph! Chinese still eating Chinese. Better to find a Western-owned company.
But at the last place, actually, I was the one who fired the boss. Why? Because I worked six days a week, twelve hours a day, from ten in the morning until ten at night, and earned only two hundred dollars a week. Calculated by the hour, I was not even making the government minimum wage of $3.75.
Fortunately, Chinatown Service Center introduced me to a metal factory. The starting wage was five dollars an hour. The factory made shopping carts for supermarkets. I worked conscientiously for a week, and then the foreman called me in for a talk. He was a Mexican American who spoke fluent English. He told me about the benefits of the union, saying it was the largest union in America, with more than ten million members, and asked me to join.
When I heard this, of course I was delighted. It was exactly what I had dreamed of. But joining required a two-hundred-dollar initiation fee, and after that the dues were two percent of wages, about eighteen dollars a month.
When I heard that, I hesitated. I had not even received my first paycheck and already had to pay so much money? In China, workers never paid an initiation fee, and monthly dues were only five fen.
When I got home, I told my wife this piece of good news mixed with worry. She said, “Pay it. Having a union is a very good thing.” She was happy for me, gathered together two hundred dollars, and encouraged me to work hard and not let the opportunity go.
Together with Old Lu, a Shanghainese man from the mainland, I paid the initiation fee. We worked happily and hard for three months. Then year-end came. The owner’s orders had been completed, and management announced that one production line would be eliminated. Following the rule of “last in, first out,” a group of the most recently hired workers were laid off. Old Lu and I were both on the list.
Wasn’t a unionized factory supposed to mean the boss could not simply fire workers? And hadn’t we paid all that money to join the union?
Old Lu and I were both stunned. We went to the union representative. He merely shrugged and waved his hands. He wore the same work uniform we did. The only difference was that he had been in the plant longer.
Your fate is in someone else’s hands. What can you do?
With our layoff notices in hand, Old Lu and I searched around Ninth Street in Los Angeles until we finally found the union headquarters. The receptionist was quite polite. She brought out forms for us to complete—a membership form, an unemployment registration form—and told us we still had to pay five dollars in dues each month. If we failed to pay for three months, our membership would automatically lapse.
We asked whether the union could help members find work. She said, “You find work yourselves. If the union has something, we’ll let you know.”
At first we still placed some hope in the union. But more than a year later, the original factory—not the union—sent me written notice telling me to report to the personnel office before a certain date. By then I had long since found another job. Looking at the notice, I did not know whether to laugh or cry. If I had waited until then, I would have starved and reported to the King of Hell first.
My new company also had a union. It was an oil-industry engineering and design firm full of technical personnel. A relative introduced me for a job cleaning the offices. I did not care what kind of work it was. As long as I could earn enough each month for rent, utilities, clothes, and food for my family, I did not mind how dirty or tiring the job might be.
After a one-month probation period, I had to join the union. The initiation fee was $150—hey, less than the previous union—but the monthly dues were twenty dollars—ha, more than the previous union.
I showed them my old union card and asked whether I could be excused from paying the initiation fee. They said no. Different Buddha, different temple; if you want to burn incense, you pay separately. There was nothing I could do but hand over more of the hard-earned money I had worked so painfully to make.
Still, I was fortunate. Without realizing it, I stayed five years. But good times do not last forever. The world oil industry entered a recession, and even this leading company had to consolidate, cut staff, and sell assets. Large numbers of engineers were fired, to say nothing of service workers like us when there were fewer people left to serve.
Again, after three months without work I lost my union membership. Again, more than a year later, when the company recovered, it notified me to return. And again, in order to keep food in my stomach, I had already found work at another company.
The owner of the new company hated unions. He told the workers openly: as long as you do not organize a union, whatever wages and benefits other companies provide, I will provide too. But if you want to organize a union, that will be another matter. There was no union in the company, but there was an employee representative council where workers could raise requests.
Unexpectedly, Lady Luck took care of me. I worked hard for the company for ten years, and when I retired the owner gave me a watch as a commemorative gift.
Over the years, I have read that some leaders of American unions earn salaries of several million dollars a year, living in comfort as worker aristocrats fattened by the sweat and blood of the workers themselves. I joined two unions in America and came away with many feelings about the experience.
Now, if someone asks me what I think of unions, I just laugh and say:
“That depends on your luck!”