Re elect Virgil Duyungan, page 1 [pamphlet], Bicentennial Oral History Program, Filipino Oral History Project, Washington State Archives, Digital Archives

In 1933, Cannery Workers’ and Farm Laborers’ Union Local 18257 was organized as the first Filipino-led union in the United States. The union elected Virgil Duyungan as their first president, a founding member who had been instrumental in organizing the union.

Local 18257 was organized so that Filipinos could defend themselves against exploitation in the cannery and agricultural industries. Under the charismatic President Duyungan, the union’s unifying demand was to end the contract labor system, which allowed contracting companies to coerce newly arriving Filipinos into unfair contracts with no room for renegotiation. As immigrant laborers, many Filipino workers were subject to dangerous living and working conditions, poor compensation, and forced to pay fees to their employer to secure their positions.

Over time, the owners of contract labor companies became more hostile against the union’s growing presence. Collective bargaining and growing membership numbers had forced the companies to negotiate better pay and working hours, and by 1936 the union’s strength was showing no sign of stopping.

Virgil Duyungan and Local 18257 Secretary Aurelio Simon were assassinated in a Seattle Chinatown restaurant on December 1st, 1936. As union leadership, they were targeted by the owner of a contracting company who perceived them as a threat to his business. Far from demoralizing, Duyungan and Simon’s deaths lit a new fire under the union’s cause with 2,000 members joining Local 18257 by the end of 1936.

Virgil Duyungan’s widow, Margaret Duyungan Mislang, shared her story with the Washington Bicentennial Oral History Program in 1975, making mention of her late husband’s contributions to the labor movement and Local 18257. The Filipino King County Oral History Project, of which her oral history is a part of, is in the process of being uploaded to the Digital Archives and will be added on an as-completed basis!

Thank you to our partners at Reveal Digital, a nonprofit initiative of JSTOR/ITHAKA, who have funded the preservation quality digitization of these oral histories. The digitized materials will be available through both Reveal Digital’s online collection, Behind the Scenes of the Civil Rights Movements, hosted on JSTOR, and on the Washington State Digital Archives’ Bicentennial Oral History Program, Filipino Oral History Project, 1975–1976.

References:

Fresco, Crystal. “Cannery Workers' and Farm Laborers' Union 1933-39." Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project. University of Washington. 1999. https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/cwflu.shtml

Mislang, Margaret Duyungan. “Interview with Margaret Duyungan Mislang.” By Carolina Koslosky. 1975. Bicentennial Oral History Program, Filipino Oral History Project, Washington State Archives, Digital Archives, https://digitalarchives.wa.gov/Record/View/A81A1D0A08D78D3774BF70E4F4563FCA