- The garment industry in the United States has long exploited women workers, including Chinese immigrant women who entered the trade in the 1920s. Their lack of English and other marketable job skills, combined with the pressures of low family income and the lack of childcare services, left many Chinese women no choice but to work long hours for piece-rate wages in Chinatown sweatshops, taking their children to work with them. A number of times they have organized to protest intolerable working conditions. In 1974, 128 Chinese garment workers at the Great Chinese American (Jung Sai) Company went on strike against Esprit de Corp to protest unsanitary working conditions and interference with unionization activities. Esprit responded by closing the plant. The workers, with the help of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, persisted in fighting Esprit in the courts until they finally won a favorable settlement almost 10 years later in 1983.
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