The June 1867 Strike: Chinese Workers Demand Equal Pay
Near Tahoe City, California
It was June of eighteen sixty-seven. The transcontinental railroad was not yet finished. An estimated three to five thousand Chinese workers on the Central Pacific's Sierra Nevada construction crews set down their tools and stopped working.
What they asked for was straightforward. They wanted thirty-five dollars a month instead of twenty-six. They wanted a ten-hour workday above ground and an eight-hour workday inside the tunnels. They wanted the legal right not to be struck by their foremen. These were the same wages and conditions that white workers on the same railroad were receiving. The workers were not asking for more. They were asking for the same.
The Central Pacific Railroad's response was to cut off their food supply.
The strike lasted one week. The workers returned to their jobs on the original terms. Nothing was granted. The nine-dollar wage gap between Chinese and white workers remained. The workday remained. The foremen retained the right to physical punishment. The Central Pacific's records of the event, held at the Stanford California History Collection, document the resolution but not the human cost of a week with no food at altitude, inside the Sierra Nevada, in the middle of construction.
What is documented is that the strike happened, that it was organized, that thousands of people coordinated to stop work simultaneously, and that they did so knowing what the power imbalance was. The California History Journal describes it as the first large-scale organized labor action in Sierra Nevada history.
There is no plaque at the summit tunnel for the June eighteen sixty-seven strike. There is no plaque for the workers who organized it or the foremen who struck them or the company that cut off their food. What there is, is the tunnel.
