Low Wage Life Proposal - Donnie Green

For my “Low Wage Life” Hypertext I would like to research sweat shop labor. Specifically immigrants working in clothing factory sweatshops – preferably in the US (because that’s most relevant but I may talk about Asia as well just because of how prominent of an issue it is there) making amounts of money that are barely sufficient to cover the expenses of food and rent. On top of that, many of these immigrant workers are sending part of their pay check back to their families in their native countries, leaving themselves with even less money to survive on. These sweatshop laborers are faced with horrendous working conditions and are often doing strenuous manual labor over very long lengths of time with hardly any breaks. This type of work can lead to serious mental problems including stress and depression, physical injuries, and bodily pains. They work 60 hour work weeks in sweatshops for only $1000 a month, sending $200 of that back to their family, and in addition, needing to work a second job just so that they can pay for the most basic necessities while having barely any wiggle room. The conditions of these sweatshops are so terrible that Barbara Ehrenreich compares the poor treatment of Wal-Mart employees being locked into stores, forced to work late into the night for unpaid overtime, and falsifying time records to “sweatshop conditions of the kind we might expect to find in the Third World factories…”(229). There is a sad reality that immigrants that are looking for work simply don’t have any skills or education that would get them any other jobs so they are forced to work in sweatshops doing very demanding labor for wages far below the minimum wage, the less experienced earning as little as $3 an hour (79 Shipler).