Are unions considered to be political or cultural?

I'm writing my midterm for my Asian American history cl and my main source of information is driven out. in a nutshell part of my prompt (relating to the question I'm asking anyway) question asks what cultural and political systems did the Chinese encounter when they came to America. the book has a lot of examples of unions but I'm not sure if they're political or cultural. please help me out and try to explain your reasoning.