News
News
Exposing a National Disgrace
Growing up among the children of garment industry workers in El Monte, Pauline Phan routinely was handed piecework when she visited the homes of friends and neighbors.
“We’d cut threads off garments or fit newly-sewn Halloween costumes into boxes,” recalls Phan, a biology major in the College. “We didn’t think anything of the work. To us it was just a normal thing to do.”In fact, the daughter of hardworking Vietnamese refugees insists she had no idea that some parents work only an eight-hour day—or that child labor is illegal—until she enrolled at UCLA.
“I have a lot of friends whose parents work from the moment they get up to the moment they go to bed, and their children would help them in any way they could,” she said. “I knew that they had to do what they had to do—but I didn’t realize that anything could be done about the problem.”
“Work, Labor and Social Justice,” one of the College’s year-long Freshman Cluster courses, opened Phan’s eyes. The experience was so inspiring for Phan and eight other UCLA freshmen that they decided to write a book on the subject.
Four years later, Sweatshop Slaves: Asian Americans in the Garment Industry rolled off the presses just as several of the students were preparing for the College’s 2006 Commencement ceremony.
“Having this book finished before graduation makes this time extra special,” said Jacqueline Ng, a biology major and contributor. “I feel like I’ve surpassed my own expectations for myself.”
Sweatshop Slaves is the first book to focus on the Asian American garment workers of Los Angeles. Compiled from press accounts, in-depth interviews, unpublished labor research and labor newsletters, the 104-page book is designed to be a primer both for students of labor studies and for garment workers eager to learn more about their rights. It also serves as a kind of referendum on progress for the local Asian American garment workers, whose plight became the subject of international attention with the alarming discovery in 1995 of 72 Thai immigrants held captive and forced to work 18-hour days in an El Monte sweatshop.
“The students knew nothing about these conditions before the class,” said Kent Wong, director of UCLA’s Center for Labor Research and Education and instructor in the Freshman Cluster on Work, Labor and Social Justice. “The book they wrote is a fulfillment of their interest in getting the word out that sweatshops aren’t something that only happened 100 years ago, but they’re here and now.”
With government enforcement plummeting as the industry mushrooms, Sweatshop Slaves takes a hard look at the effectiveness of legislation passed in the wake of the El Monte raid.
“The greatest challenge facing the California Legislature is no longer enacting laws to improve working conditions, grievance procedures, or manufacturing practices in the garment industry; we have plenty of laws,” writes student author Justin Miyamoto, a biochemistry major. “But without financial support for government organizations to implement them, these laws are useless.”
A more encouraging picture emerges from grassroots protests. Sweatshop Slaves presents the most comprehensive account to date of four successful labor campaigns, including boycotts and other interventions from labor organizers, against clothing retailers and manufacturers.
The book also assembles for the first time profiles of six key labor groups, including a nonprofit organization started by a UCLA graduate.
UCLA alumna Chanchanit “Chancee” Martorell credits her undergraduate work in political science and her graduate work in Asian American Studies with preparing her for the 1994 launch of the Thai Community Development Center. Dedicated to advancing the social and economic well-being of low- and moderate-income Thai immigrants, the center responded immediately to the needs of the El Monte sweatshop laborers, who after being discovered were taken into custody by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
In addition to portraits of labor groups, the book includes profiles of individual “sweatshop warriors,” or activists who have been particularly effective in the battle against abusive labor practices in the garment industry.
The most amazing example is a former pediatrician from China, who came to the San Gabriel Valley. Daunted by the prospects of learning English well enough to find employment in the medical field, Helen Chien eventually found work in garment factories plagued by unfair labor conditions, including abysmal pay, filthy restrooms, abusive employers and harsh chemicals without protection.
“I had no idea how cruel some employers could be,” Chien, now a leading labor organizer, writes.
“It was so wonderful to have these bilingual students because we were able to get access to people who hadn’t been interviewed before,” added Wong, who has been teaching at UCLA for 20 years.
While the book traces the history of sweatshops in the United States, it focuses on the Greater Los Angeles area, which has surpassed the New York area as the center of the North American garment industry. Home to more than 1,000 manufacturers who employ an estimated 90,000 workers, most of them immigrants, the garment and related industries account for as much as 10 percent of the economy of Los Angeles. Nearly one in five local employees today work in the garment industry, making it a leading manufacturing sector in the region.
Order forms for Sweatshop Slaves: Asian Americans in the Garment Industry are available at www.labor.ucla.edu. The book can be purchased for $10 by mailing a check to the UCLA Labor Center, PO Box 951478, Los Angeles CA 90095-1478.