Abstract

Sweatshops, Firsthand

The article focuses on the book "Sweatshop Warriors: Immigrant Women Workers Take on the Global Factory," by Miriam Ching Yoon Louie. Sweatshop Warriors corrects the ignorance with a beautifully written account of their lives, struggles, lessons learned and lessons for the people. The message is profound: A mass anti-sweatshop movement needs to be built from the bottom up, led by the workers themselves. That effort has a key role to play in the overall anti-corporate globalization movement today. Louie's book is an in-depth study, packed with information, rich in social, political and economic analysis. She sees the sweatshop warriors in the context of recent U.S. history, including the steady decline of unionization, longstanding racism within unions, the effects of de-industrialization and capitalist restructuring.