Your Waiter Works in a Sweatshop

Our mental images of 'sweatshops' generally involve poor women huddled over sewing machines in far off poor countries. But they are here in the US too.

During our research for Help Wanted (http://www.verite.org/system/files/images/Help_Wanted_2010.pdf) we encountered farm workers who were enslaved in Colorado by an organically certified supplier to Whole Foods. The grower hired these workers blindly through a labor broker, and then employed them alongside his direct employees (who ironically enough thought he was a good boss).

In Granby, Connecticut one of the country's top 20 plant nurseries -- Imperial Nurseries -- employed modern-day slaves in 2007, hired through a labor broker called Pro Tree Forestry Services. And now in NYC the owner of a popular series of restaurants (including Ollie's Noodle Shop, a mainstay of my grad school years) has closed the doors of several businesses rather than pay the wages his employees are due. (http://www.queenscourier.com/articles/2010/07/23/news/top_stories/doc4c4...) He owed his workers millions of dollars, having paid them as little as $1.50 an hour despite a NY State minimum wage of over $7.

Whether workers are able to recover these funds depends less on the outcome of Mr. Wang's bankruptcy filing, and more on whether they can stay afloat before being paid. Migrants operate on the thinnest of margins, facing crushing debt loads from the cost of crossing borders.

Sweatshops exist anywhere migrants work, from manufacturing to agriculture to construction to service businesses.