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Wait Ten Years. Only recently has Chinese pride permitted a lowering of the all but impenetrable veil that shrouded their condition from the outside world. California's Labor Commission and the San Francisco Central Labor Council have heard depressing testimony from Chinatown residents about working conditions in the district. Last week, led by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union,* labor opened a campaign of pickets, sanctions and the threat of boycott against eight Chinatown sewing shops and a contracting firm. Although the goal is not immediate unionization, the 25,000-member culinary workers union is waiting in the wings, and a labor spokesman called the drive "the opening gun in a campaign we hope will eventually end substandard wages and conditions in Chinatown shops, stores, factories and bars."
Yet fatalism dies hard in Chinatown.
A Chinatown editor explains their stoicism by saying: "Newcomers have a hard time here for the first ten years, but after that you have a nice car and a nice home and can educate your children, so you don't care." Claiming that higher union wages are not practical in so cutthroat an economic situation, a sweatshop spokesman warned: "You may wipe out an industry with a $6,000,000 or $7,000,000 yearly payroll." Nevertheless, Chinatown residents feel increasingly that the long and patient wait for affluence may be in keeping with Mao-think, but not with life in Gum San.
*Which points out that seamstresses in Manhattan's Chinatown, the nation's second largest Oriental community, are almost completely unionized, make $2.30 an hour plus overtime after a 35-hour week, and wield correspondingly greater political influence.