Chinese Staff & Workers' Association (CSWA)

P.O. Box 130401
New York, NY 10013
(212) 619-7979 phone
(212) 374-1506 fax
email
http://www.cswa.org website

Area of Inerest:
Organization - Labor advocacy

Primary Ethnic Community Served:
Chinese

Description:
n 1979, a group of Chinese restaurant workers and a couple of workers from other industries came together and founded the Chinese Staff & Workers' Association (CSWA). Unlike unions, which are often single-trade or narrowly defined as an "employees" organization, CSWA started with mostly male, restaurant workers, but rapidly expanded to include garment and construction workers, caregivers, disabled workers, retirees, and youth. Today CSWA has a membership of over 1,300 workers from various trades and ages, injured and non-injured, documented and undocumented and a leadership composed primarily of women. We have two centers, one in Manhattan's Chinatown the other in Brooklyn's Sunset Park Chinatown. CSWA is the first contemporary workers' center bringing together workers across trades to fight for change in the workplace as well as in the community-at-large.

CSWA is not a service organization nor does it follow an advocacy model, since neither model is fundamentally concerned with developing a base. Many of the anti-sweatshop initiatives established by advocacy groups are consumer-driven and often male-led. CSWA believes that these campaigns fail to organize the people who produce the product itself, instead relying solely on campus activists. CSWA flips this on its head by placing workers at the center of organizing campaigns and recognizing workers as agents for change rather than treating them as victims.

Staff:
Wing Lam - Executive Director
Trinh Duong - Chair of the Board
Wah Lee - Staff Organizer
Wei Chen - Staff Organizer

Submitted by:
AIA Staff

New - 03/24/03