Union by Law

Starting in the early 1900s, many thousands of native Filipinos were conscripted as laborers in American West Coast agricultural fields and Alaska salmon canneries. There, they found themselves confined to exploitative low-wage jobs in racially segregated workplaces as well as subjected to vigilante violence and other forms of ethnic persecution. In time, though, Filipino workers formed political organizations and affiliated with labor unions to represent their interests and to advance their struggles for class, race, and gender-based social justice.

Union by Law analyzes the broader social and legal history of Filipino American workers' rights-based struggles, culminating in the devastating landmark Supreme Court ruling, Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio (1989). Organized chronologically, the book begins with the US invasion of the Philippines and the imposition of colonial rule at the dawn of the twentieth century. The narrative then follows the migration of Filipino workers to the United States, where they mobilized for many decades within and against the injustices of American racial capitalist empire that the Wards Cove majority willfully ignored in rejecting their longstanding claims. This racial innocence in turn rationalized judicial reconstruction of official civil rights law in ways that significantly increased the obstacles for all workers seeking remedies for institutionalized racism and sexism. A reclamation of a long legacy of racial capitalist domination over Filipinos and other low-wage or unpaid migrant workers, Union by Law also tells a story of noble aspirational struggles for human rights over several generations and of the many ways that law was mobilized both to enforce and to challenge race, class, and gender hierarchy at work.

"Michael McCann and George Lovell offer a history of Filipino salmon cannery workers in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, focusing on their experiences with law, union organizing, and progressive politics over the course of the 20th century. Coming to this country after the American conquest of the Philippines, many worked at the salmon canneries. The salmon workers were segregated in both the jobs they could have and where they lived. Higher scale jobs were reserved for whites; lower scaled jobs for Filipino workers. Company housing for seasonal workers was also segregated on the same basis. The authors focus on the development of labor unions and fights over the rights of workers to organize effectively during World War II and the Cold War. They argue that economic interests used law to fight the efforts of Filipino workers to organize"--
Michael W. McCann is the Gordon Hirabayashi Professor for the Advancement of Citizenship in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington. He is the author, coauthor, editor, or coeditor of eight books, including, most recently, Injury and Injustice.

George I. Lovell is associate professor of political science at the University of Washington. He is the author of Legislative Deferrals.

Can anti-discrimination litigation be a tool for social change? For many years, a contingent on the academic left contended that the answer is no . . . . A remarkable new book by Michael McCann and George Lovell offers a different view . . . . That is what makes Union by Law such a timely book. McCann and Lovell fully appreciate the limits of legal rights, and of anti-discrimination law in particular . . . . Yet the authors are not prepared to give up on legal rights mobilization. In their view, "law still provides one of the most important institutionalized sites . . . for subaltern group resistance to . . . hegemonic policies, practices, and relationships in both state and society." They note that "legions of leftist activists in and beyond the United States have embraced the liberal principle of egalitarian citizenship to challenge the proprietarian, profit-based principles of capitalism." Legal contests, they conclude, "often generate 'forums of protest' that can keep alive alternative ideas and ideals, inspire and hotwire mobilization for new forms of advocacy, keep pressure on dominant groups to reassess their interests in conceding changes that benefit marginalized people, and thus sometimes alter at least slightly the balance of power among social groups." That may not be much, but it is something to celebrate in the ongoing battle for social change . . . . Rather than simply writing off antidiscrimination law as inherently neoliberal, we should recognize the important though limited role it can play as one of many tools to achieve more radical ends.
-- "Dissent"
"Union by Law is a tour de force, a product of an immense amount of research and knowledge. It carefully and artfully follows the political and legal experience of Filipino Americans from initial US Colonization to union mobilization to Cold War-era violent struggle to the Wards Cove decision at the end of the 1980s. Throughout an illuminating and beautifully written historical narrative, the authors carefully delineate the ways in which law enveloped the lives of these immigrant laborers, both in confining and offering certain momentary opportunities. It is another terrific addition to the canon of these two leading scholars of the field."--Paul Frymer, Princeton University
"Union by Law offers a magisterial and inspiring history of inter-generational and transnational struggle by Filipino migrants conscripted to work in the Alaska salmon canning industry. With rigor and care, the book examines the brutality of racial subordination, its iron-clad linkage with worker exploitation, and the extent both rely on legalized forms of oppression. But from the margins, workers find the courage to reclaim power and rewrite the legal meaning of discrimination in a system of racial capitalism. That the system ultimately stymies the workers' boldest claims only underscores the necessity of their struggle. In this sense, it is a history that speaks with particular force to our current times."--Scott Cummings, UCLA School of Law
"This is a powerful book, covering a long history of labor mobilization in the face of a racialized labor regime and a frequently exclusionary and hostile legal system. It clearly shows the power of the law to support the claims of less powerful groups from time to time as it is mobilized by social justice advocates, as well as the inevitable slippage and failure of the law to accomplish these ends at other times. It expresses both despair and a resurgent hope that the institutions of American law and politics might live up to their ideals."--Sally Engle Merry, New York University