Our Vision: To build a multi-ethnic worker/resident “COMMUNITY UNION” with the power to transform our workplaces and communities in Koreatown and to affect broad change throughout the greater Los Angeles area.
 
KIWA’s mission is to empower Koreatown’s low-wage immigrant workers for dignity and respect in the workplace and community, and to work together with other communities to realize a vision of a just Los Angeles that works for everyone. As one of Los Angeles’ most unequal local economies, the struggles of the Koreatown’s low-wage immigrant workers point to the core problems in our society and systems, as well as offer up potential solutions. Koreatown is an important battleground in the struggle to create a more equitable city.

KIWA is one of the nation’s most established workers centers and one of the few community groups organizing Korean workers in the country. Our model brings together workers from targeted local low-wage industries with community members and students in a broad, multi-ethnic vision for social justice. Our strategies include grassroots organizing and leadership development, strategic industry-based campaigns that target employers directly, advocacy, and multi-ethnic coalition building.

KIWA was created in 1992 out of the ashes of the Los Angeles Civil Unrest, often considered the nation’s first multi-racial riot. In a city torn with racism, poverty, and inequality, KIWA started with the mission to address the worker exploitation rampant in the Koreatown community among both Korean and Latino workers, and committed to struggling in solidarity with other communities for a more just Los Angeles.

The effects of globalization are apparent at the city and neighborhood level in Los Angeles and Koreatown—deregulation and privatization at the national and international levels have resulted in fewer well-paid skilled jobs, a drastic increase in low-paid jobs in the service sector, a general decrease in wages, fewer social services, and a lowered social wage. As we continue to cut social spending and reduce public regulation in the private sector, Los Angeles is the epicenter of the nation’s wealth-and-poverty divide. Over the last 30 years, household income has declined for 60% of Los Angeles families, cost of living increases have outstripped wages, poverty has risen, and income inequality continues to grow as the middle class shrinks. While executive salaries skyrocket, one in four working people in the city does not earn enough to be self-sufficient and 43% of Angelinos are part of the working poor.

It is surprising to many that more than 70% of Koreatown’s 200,000 residents are part of the working poor. In spite of a recent wave of gentrification that has brought expensive new commercial developments and luxury housing to the area, the vast majority of residents are struggling to make ends meet on poverty-wage jobs. Los wages and the rising costs of healthcare and housing make Koreatown virtually unlivable for its own community members.

In Koreatown, service sector industries and businesses like supermarkets, restaurants, carwashes, and garment factories dominate the local economy, providing over 50% of the jobs. For many of these immigrants, their undocumented status further exacerbates their vulnerability to exploitation, discrimination and abuse at the hands of their employers. Koreatown workers and residents are living on the edge, working two to three low wage/no benefit jobs to make ends meet, while living five or more people to a single apartment to be able to pay skyrocketing rents.

KIWA’s first campaign was to win the inclusion of displaced workers in a community relief fund set up by conservative Koreatown business owners after the Uprising. In 1997 we helped win over $2 million for workers from retailers and manufacturers connected with the now infamous El Monte "slave shop" operators. KIWA organized Latino garment workers and was a part of the legal team that eventually won this landmark case that exposed Southern California’s modern-day sweatshops to the general public. In collaboration with other progressive organizations, KIWA fought to win legalization and immigrant rights, maintain the state's affirmative action programs, raise the minimum wage, lower bus rates for the poor, save hundreds of union jobs at two local hotels and win dignity and respect for workers locally and internationally.

KIWA has focused on organizing workers in the restaurant industry and supermarket industries to fight for dignity and respect. Our Restaurant Workers Campaign has dramatically improved labor law compliance among Koreatown restaurants. Our supermarket living wage campaign has pioneered living wage agreements in the industry, improving wages and working conditions for Koreatown’s 1,500 marker workers. We continue to bring workers together to take on injustice in their workplace and in their community.