topic proposal for My Low Wage Life

I still need to develop my own "angle" a little more, but here is the idea:
For my Low Wage Life project, I am going to investigate sweatshops in the United States, focusing mainly on immigrant workers (legal and undocumented), and the ways in which they are exploited within the garment industry. I was inspired to write about this topic after reading “Importing the Third World,” Chapter Three of Shipler’s The Working Poor. Also, I noticed many parallels between the exploitation of sweatshop workers and that of slaughterhouse workers, as described by Schlosser, in Fast Food Nation. In both of these industries, time equals money, and there is enormous pressure on production speed: workers are fired if they cannot keep up with the extremely fast pace of the assembly line. In sweatshops, employers “expect workers to produce enough to reach the minimum wage,” and “fire anyone who consistently falls short. When the state raises the minimum wage, the employer usually raises the required speed of production and leaves the rate per piece unchanged” (Shipler, 79).
This emphasis on speed must have negative physical consequences, and surely injured workers in the garment industry face a similar fate as those in the meat processing industry: “From a purely economic point of view, injured workers are a drag on profits. They are less productive. Getting rid of them makes a good deal of financial sense, especially when new workers are readily available to train” (Schlosser, 175). Furthermore, the physical conditions of both the meat processing and sweatshops are extremely poor and hazardous. I also plan to find out what the rest of the work conditions are like. I image they are much like the productivity based professions described by Ehrenreich, in which there are no breaks (p 30), no lunch hour (p 77), and drinking water on the job is prohibited (p 84).
Those without legal documentation are completely at the mercy of their employers, having no job protections and constantly fearing deportation. I will find out the number of union members among garment seamstresses, but I bet it is very low. According to Schlosser, illegal immigrants are employed “at will,” meaning “they can be fired without warning, for just about any reason.” Equally disheartening is the fact that, as Shipler explains, “It is a sad truth now that a young person with limited skills and education arriving on these shores— or entering the workforce from a background of poverty— will start on the bottom rung only to discover that the higher rungs are beyond his grasp” (Shipler, 91). The inability to move upward from the lowest stratum of jobs was also echoed by Carol Stack in the second lecture, “Coming of Age at Minimum Wage.” Young people who do not have educational opportunities, and instead enter the garment industry, are probably stuck in that position for the rest of their life. I also plan to see what the prospects of their children look like.
I also want to look into the lives of the workers outside the factory— where do they live, how do they eat? How do they survive on such a low income? Do they get any kind of financial help? According to Shipler, illegal immigrants get “virtually no government benefits” (p 93) and don’t receive an Earned Income Tax Credit because most are “paid under the table in cash and think they’re better off avoiding the IRS” (p 14). Ehrenreich states, “Is there help for the hardworking poor? Yes, but it takes a determined and not too terribly poor person to find it” (p 101). With such long hours at less than minimum wage pay, what do they do with their children?
I also want to find out about the psychological impact of working in a factory: do garment workers have the same kind of desire to please their supervisors like the Merry Maids did in Nickel and Dimed (113)? Do the garment workers feel resentment at the fact that they are sewing gowns that will eventually be sold for hundreds (maybe thousands) of dollars to wealthy women, or do they share the position of the Merry Maids cleaning the houses of the rich: “All I can think of is like, wow, I’d like to have this stuff someday. It motivates me and I don’t feel the slightest resentment because, you know, it’s my goal to get where they are” (p 118).
I also plan to look at how global competition drives prices down and results in horrible working standards. As Shipler explains, “Global manufacturing has put the five thousand sewing factories in Los Angeles in cruel competition with those in Honduras, Cambodia, and other Third World countries where living standards and labor costs are exceedingly low” (page 79). Other perspectives that I want to look at are those of the manufacturers, designers, clothing companies like Guess? or Jessica McClintock, and large corporations who sell these products who manage to dodge responsibility for the maltreatment of workers by blaming the contractors who oversee the production of the clothing. Finally, I want to investigate possible solutions to bringing about more fair work conditions, whether it is boycotting certain brands, demanding more government protections, or even stopping the competition with Third World countries