Many are surprised to learn that sweatshops exist today in America, a nation that is perhaps the wealthiest in the world (see [1]) and takes pride on its strides towards social justice, racial and gender equality, and basic human rights. In fact, sweatshops in America are not a thing of the past.  In explaining this reemergence, all of my sources pointed to global capitalism, which critics dub the “race to the bottom” [6].  Global capitalism goes hand in hand with the hierarchy within the apparel system, which descends from retailers to manufactures to subcontractors to the workers themselves.  This hierarchy allows the upper echelons to make grand profits at the expense of the laborers, and simultaneously detach themselves from responsibility for the horrendous abuses and labor rights violations that occur routinely in the sweatshops that produce their clothes.  Ross [7] believes that while the intense pressure on speed and the paltry wages that garment workers endure are undoubtedly related to the profit driven mentality of their managers, employers also abuse their workers in an attempt to maintain complete control.
            The ability of managers to dominate their employees brings up another important factor, the availability of a vulnerable workforce: female immigrant laborers, undocumented as well as those with legal status [4, 5, 7, 8].  These women are especially the focus in Miriam Louie’s work [4, 5], which compiles the voices of the workers themselves, and of Shipler’s [8], who exposes the lives of America’s “invisible” workers.  Bonacich and Appelbaum [1] highlight the racial divisions within the garment industry as being exemplary of America’s larger social order.  Louie [4, 5] also notes racial differences, sectioning her work in terms of ethnicity, but her work has a more positive tone, focusing on uniting these groups. 
            Several sources expand on the position of garment workers in their communities.  Bonachich and Appelbaum [1] focus on the Los Angeles garment workers, who are among the poorest low-wage workers in a city that also has a very wealthy class; Louie [4, 5] highlights the class gap in San Francisco, and the type of discrimination and “silencing” that low-wage workers experience as a result.  Another common theme was that upward mobility was very limited.
            Every source addresses some of the varied responses to improving garment factory conditions, emphasizing different anti-sweatshop strategies. Louie [4, 5] focuses on ethnic, labor-based community groups, who she feels are the most responsive towards the actual needs of the workers; Shipler [7] points to organizations like Sweatshop Watch, and ultimately more governmental regulation, to help control the effects of globalization; while Fung, O’Rourke, and Sabel [2] maintain that to eradicate sweatshops we need a global monitoring system, set labor codes, and transparency to hold manufactures accountable for the work conditions at their subcontractors’ plants.
            I will incorporate the perspectives from all the literature, while focusing my research mainly on garment sweatshops in the San Francisco Bay Area.  The Bay Area is known for its involvement in the women’s and civil rights movements of the sixties and seventies.  But these struggles are far from over.  I hope that the Bay Area will continue to prove itself a progressive community, leading the way to end the vast, growing class disparity, as well as the racism and anti-immigrant attitudes that I found strikingly apparent in my research.  I will focus my attention on the garment workers: their lives, stories, and efforts to put an end to cruel and degrading practices within sweatshops.