Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA)
The Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA) is an organization formed to advocate for the rights and needs of Asian and Pacific Islander workers in the United States. Established during a convention in Washington, DC, in May 1992, the APALA emerged from decades of Asian American unionization efforts, reflecting a growing recognition of the unique challenges faced by this demographic within the labor movement. The founding event attracted over 500 delegates from various labor sectors, including garment, hospitality, and healthcare, highlighting the diverse workforce it represents.
APALA's mission includes promoting civil rights, economic justice, and workplace protections for Asian and Pacific American laborers. The organization maintains a national presence with more than 22 chapters across the country and collaborates closely with the AFL-CIO to enhance grassroots organizing efforts. It aims to bridge the gap between the national labor movement and local communities while addressing issues such as discrimination, immigration reform, and job training. Over the years, APALA has actively engaged in campaigns to support workers’ rights, increase wages, and endorse political candidates aligned with its mission. Through these efforts, the APALA continues to play a pivotal role in strengthening the labor movement for Asian and Pacific American workers.
Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA)
- SIGNIFICANCE: Formed in the late twentieth century to address the needs of a growing Asian and Pacific Islander working community in the United States.
On May 1, 1992, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA) held its founding convention in Washington, DC. That gathering drew five hundred Asian, American, and Pacific Island unionists and laborers from around the United States, including garment factory workers from New York City, hotel and restaurant workers from Honolulu, longshore laborers from Seattle, nurses from San Francisco, and supermarket workers from Los Angeles. The establishment of the APALA was the culmination of several decades of Asian American unionization activity. In the 21st century, the APALA has more than 22 chapters and pre-chapters.
Unionizing
Since the mid-1970s, Asian American labor activists in California have worked to strengthen unionization attempts by holding organizational meetings in the larger Asian American communities within San Francisco and Los Angeles. Through the efforts of such neighborhood-based organizations as the Alliance of Asian Pacific Labor (AAPL), stronger ties between labor and the community were forged, and Asian union staff members were united more closely with rank-and-file labor leaders. Those too-localized efforts of the Alliance of Asian Pacific Labor, however, failed to organize significant numbers of Asian American workers. In order to begin unionizing on the national level, AAPL administrators, led by Art Takei, solicited organizational aid from the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), a key US labor collective.
Upon the invitation of the AFL-CIO executive board, AAPL vice president Kent Wong attended the 1989 national AFL-CIO convention in Washington, DC, to lobby for the establishment of a national labor organization for Americans of Asian and Pacific Island descent. In addressing Wong’s request, AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland acknowledged the local accomplishments of the AAPL in California and recognized the organizing potential of the growing Asian American workforce. In 1991, Kirkland appointed a national Asian Pacific American labor committee. This group of thirty-seven Asian and American labor activists met for more than a year to create the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance. In planning for the 1992 convention, the Asian Pacific American labor committee released a nationwide invitation for Asian, American, and Pacific Island unionists, labor activists, and workers to gather in Washington, DC, to take on the responsibility for bridging the gap between the national labor movement and the Asian Pacific American community.
APALA Is Born
The response to that invitation exceeded the committee’s expectations. At the May 1, 1992, convention, more than five hundred delegates participated in adopting an Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance constitution and in setting up a governmental structure with a national headquarters in Washington, DC, and local chapters throughout the United States. Organized in this manner, the APALA could receive recognition and control from a national administration guided by the AFL-CIO, while still using its powerful techniques of community organization at the local level.
During the convention, APALA organizers and delegates recognized and honored Asian Pacific American labor pioneers whose achievements they believed had melded national and local unionization efforts successfully. Among them was Philip Vera Cruz, the eighty-seven-year-old former vice president of the United Farm Workers Union. Vera Cruz had worked since the 1930s to create local unions for farmworkers in the southwestern United States, and continuously lobbied for national support of farmworkers’ unionization.
With an eye toward the future, APALA drafted a Commitment to Organizing, Civil Rights, and Economic Justice, which called for the empowerment of all Asian and Pacific American workers through unionization on a national level; it also called for the provision of national support for individual, local unionization efforts. The APALA also promoted the formation of AFL-CIO legislation that would create jobs, ensure national health insurance, reform labor law, and channel financial resources toward education and job training for Asian and Pacific Island immigrants. Toward that end, the group called for a revision of US governmental policies toward immigration. APALA’s commitment document supported immigration legislation that would promote family unification and provide improved immigrant access to health, education, and social services. Finally, the document promoted national government action to prevent workplace discrimination against immigrant laborers; vigorous prosecution for perpetrators of racially motivated crimes was strongly supported. To solidify their commitment, APALA delegates passed several resolutions, which they forwarded to the AFL-CIO leadership. These documents decried the exploitative employment practices and civil rights violations alleged against several United States companies.
Convention delegates also participated in workshops that focused on individual roles in facilitating multicultural harmony and solidarity, enhancing Asian American participation in unions, and advancing a national agenda to support more broadly based civil rights legislation and improved immigration policies and procedures. From these APALA convention workshops, two national campaigns were launched. The first involved working with the AFL-CIO Organizing Institute to recruit a new generation of Asian Pacific American organizers, both at the national and local levels. The second campaign involved building a civil and immigration rights agenda for Asian Pacific American workers, based upon APALA’s commitment document and its convention resolutions.
Through the legislative statement of its goals and in lobbying for their substantive societal implementation, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance was the first Asian American labor organization to achieve both national and local success. Although by the time of the 1992 APALA convention, Asian Americans had been engaged in various forms of unionization activity for more than 150 years, the establishment of APALA within the ranks of the AFL-CIO provided it with more powerful organizational techniques. The Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance was able to solidly unite Asian Pacific workers, simultaneously integrating them into the larger US labor movement. Since its establishment, the APALA has worked with workers across the country to achieve its goals, including picketing for increased wages, supporting strikers, and weighing in on elections by endorsing candidates.
Bibliography
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