Close to 255,000 work in
sweatshops. Despite high levels of labor productivity and closeness to the fashion center, the American garment industry is moving away to regions of the world where unions and legislative protections of workers rights and health are at a minimum.
One of these is the gendered, class, and ethnic nature of
sweatshop work.
Narrator B: Other reformers investigate problems faced by the girls and women working in
sweatshops. One such girl is Roselie Randazzo, an Italian immigrant who lives in New York City.
Undocumented immigration is a condition of existence for the new American
sweatshop. But, as Ross points out, large numbers of immigrants need not mean
sweatshops, as the Puerto Rican wave of immigration to New York City in the 1950s demonstrated.
The increased cost required to compensate workers decently would hardly matter when consumers realized that they had an alternative to buying clothing made in
sweatshops.
Like the young king, many Americans also adopt this practice when they realize that real-life
sweatshops have practices horrible enough to be relegated to the realm of nightmares.
However, Levi's present lack of accountability for creating 14 years of
sweatshop conditions in Saipan opposes its public claims of benevolence and conscientiousness even though it no longer buys from Saipan.
Typically, in a desperate effort to save their jobs, they refuse to talk about what is going on in
sweatshop factories or kitchens.
territory of Saipan is a frequent target of
sweatshop complaints, but clothing produced there still can proudly sport a "Made in the U.S.A." label.
And chances are these and many other things we use every day were made in
sweatshops.
In her work,
Sweatshop Warriors: Immigrant Women Workers Take on the Global Factory, Miriam Ching Yoon Louie addresses the
sweatshop industry as it presently exists in the United States, particularly in the garment industry.
Sweatshop Warriors helps the reader understand what it's like for immigrants who come to America with little knowledge of English and no information about labor law.