Sweatshops in Your Neighborhood

I saw a great program on C-SPAN2 Book TV this morning: Jennifer Gordon speaking on the topic of sweatshops in the US. She's written the book, Suburban Sweatshops: The Fight for Immigrant Rights. She's an Associate Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law.

She was one of the most articulate people I have heard speak in a long time, very passionate and incredibly knowledgable about the subject matter. She addresses the difficulty people have in being able to relate to the practice of sweatshops in their own neighborhoods by asserting that people still get an image of sweatshops as always being somewhere else, far away. When in fact, she points out, by definition, sweatshops are any employment situation in which workers are underpaid - citing examples of restaurants that pay dishwashers $3/hour. And, by law, that sweatshops are any place of employment in which two conditions of illegal work practices are utilized or two infractions of safe work place exist (I'm going from memory here - but I think this is close).

It was startling for me to hear this, not realizing it really took so little for an employer to be considered a sweatshop. I say so little, but realize that it would only take one infraction in my union workplace for our group to be all over the employer with grievances. Of course, the plight of undocumented workers isn't so well supported. What a luxury rights can be.

Gordon's work also includes founding the Workplace Project in 1992.

The Workplace Project, Long Island, NY

The Workplace Project is a member-based organization that grew out of the struggle of Central and South American immigrants to respond to non-payment and underpayment of wages, high rates of injury on the job, and other labor abuses. Governed by a board elected from the membership, the Project emphasizes organizing and education through its programs.

Over 370 workers have graduated from the Project's nine-week class in immigrant and labor history, labor law, and organizing techniques. Members learn to defend themselves at hearings, launch campaigns for enforcement of existing labor laws, and organize others in their workplace and community. Some graduates recently initiated their own cooperative landscaping business.

The Project won a significant legal victory with the 1997 "Unpaid Wages Prohibition Act," signed by New York Governor Pataki following lobbying efforts coordinated with the Chinese Staff and Workers' Association and the Latino Workers' Center. The law makes repeat or willful nonpayment or underpayment of wages a felony. It also levies the toughest penalty in the nation against employers owing wages, increasing fines against them by 800%. Much of the momentum behind the bill came from the Project's analysis of its 900-person database, which documented the Department of Labor's lack of attention to claims brought by low-wage workers. Only 3% of cases filed by the Project over three years had resulted in even partial payment.

The Workplace Project can be reached at 91 N. Franklin St., Suite 207, Hempstead, NY 11550-3003; 516-565-5377; email: workplace@igc.org.

[From: National Network for Immigrants and Refugee Rights]