Written by Connie Chung Joe, CEO of AJSOCAL
Last week, the US Department of Labor (DOL) inducted the El Monte Thai Garment Workers into their Hall of Honor. The workers walked through the DOL halls wearing medals that had just been bestowed to them by the US Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su. The ceremony included a color guard procession and speeches by Senator Duckworth and Su, praising the workers for their heroism, resiliency, and their contribution to American workers.
The El Monte Thai Garment Workers are not your typical national honorees. They’re immigrants, mostly limited English speaking women and seniors, who work blue collar jobs. But they have a unique role in being survivors of the first case of modern-day slavery in America. Their fight led to sweeping legal reforms around human trafficking and sweatshops.
In 1995, 72 Thai workers were discovered during an FBI raid in an apartment in El Monte. They’d been lured to the US with promises of a good job and a green card, only to have their passports confiscated and forced to work behind barbed wire and armed guards. They’d been held captive for up to 7 years, forced to work 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, sewing clothing labels.
I first learned about Su and the El Monte Thai Garment Workers case when I was in college and considering going to law school. I was interested in social justice work with some vague inkling that having a legal degree would provide the voice I needed. I had some romantic, ideological views about the power of the courts to make things right in the world. My heroes were civil rights lawyers like Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg and I fantasized that one day I too could work on a case like Brown v. Board of Education that had the power to dismantle something as pervasive and sinister as racial segregation in schools.
But my challenge was I’d never met or knew of any Asian lawyers. One day, I read a huge front-page story in the Times about the El Monte case. I was captivated by Julie Su. I’d never heard of an Asian American civil rights lawyer and it suddenly made real what I only knew in theory – I too, as an Asian American woman, could become a civil rights lawyer.
When the El Monte story broke in national and international headlines, Su was a 26-year-old attorney at Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California (AJSOCAL), formerly known as the Asian Pacific American Legal Center. She, along with advocates from Thai Community Development Corporation, joined the FBI to assist the Thai workers. Su, the child of Chinese immigrants, had only been working at AJSOCAL for two years since graduating from Harvard Law School. What Su lacked in expertise at the time, she made up in passion and fearlessness to fight for the Thai workers.
First, she tackled the immigration challenge. After freeing the workers from captivity, the government immediately took them into custody and put them in orange jumpsuits because they didn’t have immigration status. Su was outraged and made sure the $1 million bond was paid to free them. Su’s advocacy eventually led to the creation of the T visa for human trafficking victims so that immigration status could not be weaponized to further their exploitation.
Second, Su tackled the garment industry. She knew that the systemic exploitation of garment workers could only be addressed if they went after the retailers and manufacturers at the top of the garment chain. California law was not on the workers’ side, but in a true David and Goliath story, Su and the workers sued the major manufacturers, retailers, and captors anyways and secured a $4 million settlement. This groundbreaking case and subsequent state legislation resulted in sweeping sweatshop reform and labor protections in California.
Now, some 28 years later, I work at that same nonprofit organization where Su litigated one of the most important civil rights cases for our Asian American community. And last week, I witnessed Su inducting her friends – the Thai workers – at the DOL in a powerful ceremony that had everyone in tears.
As Acting Secretary of Labor, Su is currently doing all the work of the Secretary without the title. President Biden first appointed her as the US Deputy Secretary of Labor but when Su’s boss, Secretary Walsh, departed the DOL earlier this year, Biden nominated Su to fill that vacancy. She’s been waiting since February for Congress to confirm her. To not get the promotion or leadership recognition she deserves is a punch to the gut; It’s a widespread problem that Asian American women are not promoted into top-level leadership positions because they’re often seen as good worker bees, but not leadership material. According to the 2022 McKinsey Women in the Workplace Report, the largest study on the state of women in corporate America, Asian Americans account for 9% of Senior Vice Presidents, but only 5% of promotions from Senior Vice President to the C-Suite, with Asian American women specifically accounting for just 1% of these promotions. In another study published by the Association of Asian American Investment Managers, 62% of Asian Pacific Islander women said they were most hindered in their careers at the latter stages as they moved beyond junior-level roles. According to Lean In, Asian American women account for 1 in 15 women in entry-level roles but only 1 in 50 women in the C-suite. A USA TODAY study found that when looking at S&P 100 companies, none of the CEOs were Asian American women. And for other top positions, 1 in every 124 were held by an Asian women, compared to 1 in every 60 White women and 1 in every 45 White men. Every one of these studies cites to stereotypes that Asian American women are viewed as good executors, but not leaders.
Su is my civil rights hero like Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She is a brilliant, passionate, caring attorney who used the courts to create sweeping and lasting change for an exploited subset of our country. She led a landmark legal case for our Asian American community that should be taught in every American textbook about civil rights. She was awarded the MacArthur fellowship, aka, “genius award,” while dedicating the first 17 years of her career to nonprofit work. She went on to become California’s Secretary of Labor, then US Deputy Secretary of Labor, and now she’s in charge of DOL but without the title. It’s time Su received the credit she deserves and was confirmed by Congress as the US Secretary of Labor.
