When Yuqin Huang immigrated to America 12 years ago her American dream was as beautiful as anybody else’s. She wanted to work hard, make money and gain a bright future for her children.

But all she wants is simply a smile on her loved ones’ faces. Happiness has left this family for a long time.

Like many non-English speaking Chinese immigrants, Huang got a job at a garment factory in Chinatown and worked 14 hours per day. Until the day she collapsed while working on September 11, 2001. Huang suffered from severe pain all over her body and hasn’t been able to go back to work. Despite many applications, check-ups, hearings and appeals, Huang, 53, did not get a single penny of compensation. “The insurance claimed I suffer from age, not a work-related injury,” said Huang, with tears in her eyes.

Since the day she collapsed Huang has been financially supported by her son, in hopes that she would get compensation soon. But now the son has been laid off. Her husband is bedridden with a cancer in its last stages.

Huang joined in the hunger strike in front of Governor Pataki’s Manhattan office with 13 other injured workers. “We have been pushed to the corner by the unfair compensation policy of New York City,” said Huang. “I would rather die fighting for my rights than starve at home.”

Each worker attending the week-long strike, which started on May 6, has a story as sad as Huang’s. Although they became injured in different ways, they are all abandoned by the New York State injured worker’s compensation policy.

In New York, the maximum award to an injured worker is $400 per week, 50% of the state’s average salary. And the minimum award is only $40 per week, which is the lowest in the country. Workers also complain that the Worker’s Compensation Board notoriously delays action on claims. Many workers cannot get compensation five years after they were injured. “Pataki’s unfair policy has put low-income workers on edge,” said Wing Lam, the executive director of The Chinese Staff &Workers’ Association, one of the organizers of the strike. “It is Pataki who forced the workers to express themselves through a hunger strike.”

The hunger strike is not the first time the injured workers gathered together to say no to the compensation system. They have been in Albany to protest countless times. In October 2001, they even filed a lawsuit against the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board through the National Administrative Office of Mexico, under the auspices of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The agreement, signed by the United States, Mexico and Canada, requires all three countries to “effectively enforce its labor law” and to ensure that labor law proceedings “are not necessarily complicated, and do not entail...unwarranted delay.”

With all other efforts exhausted, 14 injured workers lay in front of the Governor’s office for 7 days, and only drank glucose water to survive.

In the letter they submitted to the Governor, the workers asked him to overhaul the Workers Compensation Board system so that decisions are made in three months, that the minimum benefit be raised and that workers be given the right to decline overtime work.

The Governor has no response to the workers’ action. This result is no different from their previous protests. The organizers still consider the hunger strike a success. “More and more individuals and organizations supported the workers during the seven days,” said JoAnn Lum, the representative of National Mobilization Against Sweatshops. “We also got many endorsements from politicians which could bring our protesting to a new stage.” According to the organizers, by the last day, 73 religious and community organizations endorsed the action. Among elected officials, endorsements came from three congressmen, five state senators, two state assembly members and three city council members.

For the workers who attended the strike, the future is still dim. In the evening of the last day of the strike, Ruimin Chen, a Chinese immigrant worker who was injured three years ago, said he was happy he did it. But when being asked about his American dream, Chen looked up at the Manhattan skyscrapers and the light creeping out of the sky and remained silent.

This article was written as part of the Ethnic Press Fellowship of the Independent Press Association-New York.