By analyzing the contending processes activated by the Far Eastern Chemical Fiber Union workers in the late 1980s, I find that the informal social networks established in labor processes, rather than formal social movement organization (SMO), were the primary movement agents. However, contrary to what Rothenthal and Schwartz argued to be the case, my study shows little evidence for the supposedly close relation between primary groups and direct democrary. The primary informal networks among the workers were instead intimately linked to traditional patriarchal authority and habitus. In conlusion, I argue that while some formal organizational rationality might be necessary for union movement to be effective in instrumentalist politics, it ought to be the tool employed by informal networks acting as democratic subjects. How these democratic informal networks could be established in the first place is the main question I posed herewith.