The new face of american labor

books:


	• Suburban Sweatshops: The Fight for Immigrant Rights Jennifer Gordon Belknap Press, 2007 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
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Breaking new Ground

While I understand another reviewer's complaint about the book not being national in scope, and not telling us a lot about the daily lives of immigrants. But the discussion of legal and organizing strategy is far from arcane or dry. This is really a story about the ongoing process of democratization in our country--which the book makes clear is far from complete (something it would be useful for President Bush and other global democratizers to remember). The book provides a very insightful and thorough examination of how workers in the so called informal and underground economies learn about, use, and deepen their rights in the United States. It also makes a compelling material and moral case for why they deserve those rights. Heartwarming personal stories are nice, but this book expanded my own understanding of the politics of globalization at the micro level. It would make a great case study for college teachers to use with undergrads because it combines an immediate issue with theoretical and philopsophic substance.

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A must read!

Suburban Sweatshops is a captivating, honest and well-written examination of the workplace abuses, struggles and hard realities facing so many working men and women in the United States--and the efforts of community organizers and advocates to create a space where workers can unite to improve their conditions and change the balances of power. Gordon details the valuable lessons learned through her unique and pioneering experience founding the Workplace Project, and examines the challenges and obstacles facing the growing workers' rights and immigrant rights movement. As an organizer working in the trenches of immigrant and workers' rights in Texas, I can say that Gordon's book is as real as it gets! The book hits all of the key themes and points, and will no doubt be seen as a groundbreaking insight into many of the challenges and issues that will face our society for many years to come. This is a must read!

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A Call to Action

This book is many things - a history of immigration, a story of politics, and a study of law, public policy and activism. Above all, it is a call to action - an inspirational, educational guide to effecting social change. Suburban Sweatshops illustrates the enormous impact of one person's efforts to aid a disadvantaged and largely unnoticed segment of American society - immigrant workers - not by fighting for them, but by organizing and empowering them to fight for themselves. As Gordon recounts the events preceding the Workplace Project, and leading to its inception, she acknowledges the horror of the relatively few well-publicized atrocities against immigrant workers. Yet such incidents of "super-exploitation," Gordon submits, are only the most graphic illustrations of an infinitely more obscure problem - a web of appalling injustices so frequent as to seem an almost inevitable aspect of immigrant workers' lives. Gordon reveals these injustices in a variety of ways, supplementing examples of particular immigrants' living and working conditions with statistics that emphasize the pervasiveness of such situations. Most compelling, however, are Gordon's gripping portrayals of immigrants' personal stories. In her direct and elegant style, Gordon introduces the reader to a series of individuals whose experiences, though poignant, are studies in strength, courage and ambition. Many of these anecdotes are the result of Gordon's personal involvement in, and exposure to, the lives of her subjects. Her sympathy and respect for the people whose lives she documents are evident, as are her high expectations of them. Gordon describes the development of the Workplace Project in equally balanced terms. Her pride in the enormous success of the project is apparent, and well-deserved. Throughout the book, however, she offers a candid assessment of its challenges and limitations. This book is truly essential reading for students and professionals in the fields of law, sociology, government and history. It will serve as an indispensable reference to anyone seeking to enact social and political change. It will serve as an inspiration to anyone who reads it.

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The new face of american labor

Jennifer Gordon's Suburban Sweatshop is a compelling portrait of the changing face of labor and workers in America. With graceful humility Ms. Gordon tells the stories of Americans' newest immigrants and their struggles against abuse, threats, and the denial of basic employment rights. Set in the suburb of Long Island, New York, Suburban Sweatshop is the continuation of the struggles that all immigrants have historically faced in finding dignity in the work that no one wants. Suburban Sweatshop is also a moving story of how a small organization, the Workplace Project, organized landscapers, domestic workers, factory and restaurant workers in an effort to challenge the pervasive abuse that they faced. Ms. Gordon's contribution is timely, inspirational and reaffirms a basic American goal; the opportunity to work and contribute.

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reviews: page 1, 2

Jorge Bonilla is hospitalized with pneumonia from sleeping at the restaurant where he works, unable to afford rent on wages of thirty cents an hour. Domestic worker Yanira Juarez discovers she has labored for six months with no wages at all; her employer lied about establishing a savings account for her. We live in an era of the sweatshop reborn.

In 1992 Jennifer Gordon founded the Workplace Project to help immigrant workers in the underground suburban economy of Long Island, New York. In a story of gritty determination and surprising hope, she weaves together Latino immigrant life and legal activism to tell the unexpected tale of how the most vulnerable workers in society came together to demand fair wages, safe working conditions, and respect from employers. Immigrant workers--many undocumented--won a series of remarkable victories, including a raise of thirty percent for day laborers and a domestic workers' bill of rights. In the process, they transformed themselves into effective political participants.

Gordon neither ignores the obstacles faced by such grassroots organizations nor underestimates their very real potential for fundamental change. This revelatory work challenges widely held beliefs about the powerlessness of immigrant workers, what a union should be, and what constitutes effective lawyering. It opens up exciting new possibilities for labor organizing, community building, participatory democracy, legal strategies, and social justice.

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