“Sweatshop labor exists,” said Suzi Feng.
“People don’t know it exists, but it does, and things
should be done about it.”
Thus stands the foundational ideology of “Sweatshop
Slaves: Asian Americans in the Garment Industry,” the latest
self-published book of the UCLA Labor Center, which is slated for
release on Thursday.
To promote its release, Professor Kent Wong, director of the
UCLA Labor Center, and several of his undergraduate students will
host a party open to all students and activists on Thursday at 4
p.m. in the UCLA Faculty Center.
“I didn’t realize how much of a big deal it was
going to be,” said Feng, a fourth-year sociology and
economics student and one of the authors of the book.
For the past three years, Feng and eight other UCLA
undergraduates have collaborated with Wong to compile this
collection of oral histories from workers in the garment industry
and advocates who are concerned about sweatshop labor.
“(Under my guidance) the students worked very hard to
gather a very concise, a very thoughtful, a very important
publication that talks about the sweatshop conditions that face
workers in the garment industry,” Wong said.
The project’s early beginnings can be traced back to the
2002-2003 academic year, when the students involved were enrolled
in the “Work, Labor and Social Justice in the U.S.”
General Education cluster course, which was taught by Wong.
During the spring 2003 quarter, 18 students then enrolled in a
seminar taught by Wong called “Asian American Labor Activists
in Los Angeles.”
“For the first time, I realized that there was so much
beyond what I had always focused on,” said Jacqueline Ng, a
fourth-year biology student. “When I took the seminar with
Professor Wong, we really focused on Asian American workers. I
realized how lucky I was. I never really thought about these
issues, and I never thought about them happening so close to
home.”
The students spent the quarter studying issues concerning
immigration and labor, as well as the work of celebrated advocates
from Los Angeles. They became educated in both theory and praxis of
social change.
When the class was done, however, the students refused to just
let it be over.
“During the summer, I contacted Professor Wong and told
him that I felt very incomplete after the course. It’s great
to learn about it in lecture, but I really wanted to go beyond that
and take some action,” Ng said. “For me, it
wasn’t OK to just sit there and finish the class, and say,
“˜That’s that.'”
For many of the students, one of the turning points of the class
was a short trip to downtown Los Angeles to see the working
conditions of laborers in the garment industry.
Wong led his students to the second floor of a nondescript
building in the heart of the city. The building looked like an
apartment complex from the exterior, but according to the students
who observed it, its fiery insides were painted thick with steam,
sweat and hundreds of Singer sewing machines rattling on bare
tables.
The experience both frightened and inspired Justin Miyamoto, a
fourth-year biological chemistry student.
“In school you study a lot about what happened in the past
or in other countries, but when you study sweatshops, you take a
20-minute drive to downtown and it’s right in your
face,” he said. “It’s like, “˜Whoa!’
It’s stuff you need to do something about.”
The students began conducting interviews with laborers and
activists in the city for the body of their book.
Most of the text was written within a year. Since then the
undergraduate researchers have been editing and revising their work
under Wong’s close guidance.
“He helped shape how the book would be in the end,”
Feng said. “How we should present data, what laborers’
pay should be, and things like that.”
Miyamoto added, “Kent Wong is someone who is really in the
trenches. He’s worked as a union activist and taught many
classes on union activity. He gives us an insider’s view on
the subject.”
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book is the fact that
it is completely student-written. It is a testament to the fact
that professors and graduate students are not the only ones in
academia who can put together a written body of information to be
used for educating, informing, and calling people to action.
“I hope that it will be successful as a teaching tool so
the public can get a better grasp of this industry,” Ng
said.
“It’ll get people into action. They’ll move
from just sitting there and thinking, “˜That’s too
bad,’ to, “˜That’s something that affects me and
my community. What can I do to make this not happen to other
people?'”