Katie Quan
Associate Chair


Katie Quan is Associate Chair of the Labor Center, and has worked as a labor specialist at the Labor Center since 1998. Her areas of specialization are labor strategies in the global economy, policies that promote the rights of immigrant workers, and equity issues for women workers. Formerly chair of the Labor Center, she now heads the Labor Center’s education and training activities. Prior to joining the Labor Center staff, Katie was an international vice-president of UNITE, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees. She rose through the ranks, having been a rank and file seamstress, shop steward, union organizer, and manager of the union’s Pacific Northwest District Council. Katie chaired the founding convention of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, and her organizing experiences have been documented by Ruth Milkman in Women in Unions (Cornell ILR Press, 1993), and by Xiaolan Bao in Holding Up More than Half the Sky (University of Illinois Press 2001). She continues her involvement with garment worker and women’s issues as a Board member of Sweatshop Watch, the Worker Rights Consortium, the Labor Project for Working Families, the International Labor Rights Fund, and the Working for Good Jobs in America Fund.

Areas of Expertise
• Global Labor Strategies
• Immigrant Workers Rights
• Race, Class and Gender

Current Projects
GlobalCorpWiki
This project will provide research on corporations through open source technology to social activists who are seeking to hold corporations accountable. Funded in part by the Ford Foundation, the GlobalCorpWiki will be tested by NGO partners Dejusticia in Latin America and the Asia Monitor Resource Centre in Hong Kong.

Labor Education for a New Labor Relations Model
This project will establish a national consortium of university and union-based labor education programs that will build the capacity of a diverse, new generation of labor leaders. The curriculum will focus on new strategies for worker empowerment such as labor-community coalitions, worker centers, consumer campaigning, and setting standards through public policy. With faculty from the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

Digital Quilt Project
A multi-media museum experience featuring video histories of garment workers in New York and China. The histories will explore the impact of globalization on work and families, and will capture their stories of struggle and resistance to those conditions. Immigrant garment workers in New York have been trained to interview and film, and a team of artists will use this material as well as interviews from China to create the museum presentation. The Digial Quilt will be exhibited at the Museum of Chinese in America and other museums worldwide.

Recent Publications
"Memories of the 1982 ILGWU Strike in New York Chinatown." Amerasia Journal 35:1 (2009): 76-91. (Link to journal)

"Evolving Labor Relations in the Women's Apparel Industry." In Charles J. Whalen, ed., New Directions in the Study of Work and Employment. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. December 2008.

Use of Global Value Chains by Labor Organizers, Competition and Change, vol. 12, no. 1, March 2008, pages 89-104. (link to journal)

“Women Crossing Borders to Organize,” in Cobble, Dorothy Sue, The Sex of Class: Women and the Future of U.S. Labor Movements, Ithaca: Cornell ILR Press, 2007.

Unions Need to Talk, International Union Rights, vol. 11, issue 4, 2004. (link to journal)

“Global Strategies for Workers: How Class Analysis Clarifies Us and Them and What We Need to Do,” in Zweig, Michael, What’s Class Got To Do With It? 2004, Ithaca: Cornell ILR Press.

Strategies for Garment Worker Empowerment in the Global Economy, UC Davis Journal of International Law & Policy, Fall 2003, vol. 10, no. 1. (link to journal)

China and the American Anti-Sweatshop Movement, China Rights Forum: The Journal of Human Rights in China. April 2003, no. 1, 2003. (link to journal)

Advancing an Asian Agenda for Immigration Reform, Asian American Policy Review, Harvard University, vol. 12, 2003. (link to journal)

Homecare Worker Organizing in California: An Analysis of a Successful Strategy, with Linda Delp, Labor Studies Journal, West Virginia University Press, vol. 27, no. 1, Spring 2002.

Union Organizing in California: Challenges and Opportunities, with Carol Zabin and Linda Delp, The State of California Labor 2001, University of California Institute for Labor and Employment, 2001.

“Race, Class and Gender in the U.S. Labor Movement, ” New Labor Forum, New York: Queens College Labor Resource Center, no. 9, Spring/Summer 2001.

State of the Art of Social Dialogue – USA, InFocus Programme on Strengthening Social Dialogue, Working Paper No. 2, Geneva: International Labour Office, March 2000.

A Global Labour Contract: The Case of the Collective Agreement Between the Association of Flight Attendants (AFL-CIO) and United Airlines, Transfer, The European Trade Union Institute, vol. 6, 2000. (link to journal)


Curriculum Vitae