and ain't i a woman?: 'Where's the freedom?'
OAKLAND, US - I'm a seamstress in a factory with 12 other people. We sew children's clothes - shirts and dresses. I've worked in the garment industry [in the United States] for 12 years, and at the factory where I am now for over a year.
In our factory we have to work 10 hours a day, six to seven days a week. The contractor doesn't pay us any benefits - no health insurance or vacations. While we get a half-hour for lunch, there are no other paid breaks in our shift.
We get paid by the piece, and count up the pieces to see what we make. If we work faster we get paid more. But if the work is difficult, and the manufacturer gives the contractor a low price, then what we get drops so low that maybe we'll get $40 a day.
The government says the minimum wage is $5.75, but I don't think that being paid by the piece we can reach $5.75 an hour a lot of the time.
When we hurt from the work, we often just feel it's because of our age. People don't know that over the years their working posture can cause lots of pain. We just take it for granted. We just wait for the pain to go away.
Organising
That's why we organise the women workers and have them speak out about their problems at each of the garment shops. If we stop being silent about these things we can demand justice. We can get paid hourly and bring better working conditions to the workers.
But many women workers are scared. Because they work only in the Chinese community, they're afraid their names will become known to the community and the bosses will not hire them. That's why we try to organise together.
Our idea is to tell these workers how to fight for their rights, and explain what rights they have. We let them know about the minimum wage and that there should be breaks after four hours of work.
We organise classes to teach women that we can be hurt from work. And we've opened up a worker's clinic to provide medical treatment and diagnosis. We do this work with the help of Asian Immigrant Women Advocates, here in Chinatown.
We can't actually speak to the manufacturers whose clothes we're sewing, because they don't come down to the shops to listen to the workers. Still, we have had campaigns where we got the manufacturer to pay back wages to the workers, after the contractor closed without paying them. We got a hotline for workers to complain directly to the manufacturers. That solved some problems.
But it's not easy for women in our situation. There's really no other place for us to go. Most of us don't have the training or the skills to work in other industries. We mostly speak just one language, usually Cantonese, and often just the Toishanese dialect.
When I first came to the United States, I needed a lot of time to work to stabilise myself. So, after seven years, that's why I'm only now having my first baby.
We don't have any health insurance. We can't afford it.
Freedom
Before I came here, my experience in China was that life was very strict. I heard that in America you have a lot of freedom, and I wanted to breathe the air of that freedom.
But when I came here I realised the reality was very different from what I had been dreaming, because my idea of freedom was very abstract. I thought that freedom was being able to choose the place where you work. If you don't like one place, you can go work in another. In China, you cannot do this. When you get assigned to a post, then you have to work at that post.
Since I've come to the US, I feel like I cannot get into the mainstream. There's a gap, like I don't know the background of American history and the laws. And I don't speak English. So I can only live within Chinatown or the Chinese community, and I feel scared. I cannot find a good job, so I have to work the low-income work.
I learned to compare life here and in China in a different way. Many people say life here is very free. But for us, it's a lot of pressure. You have to pay rent. Living costs so much money, you have all kinds of insurance - car insurance, health insurance, life insurance - that you can't afford. With all that kind of pressure, sometimes I feel I cannot breathe.
Everywhere you go you just find low pay. All the shops pay by the piece, and they have very strict rules. You cannot go to the bathroom unless it's lunchtime. Some places put up a sign that says, "Don't talk while you work". You're not allowed to listen to the radio.
Wherever you go, in all the garment factories, the conditions and the payment are almost the same. The boss says, "I cannot raise the price for you and if you complain any more, then just take a break tomorrow, don't come to work". So even though I can go from one job to another, where's the freedom?
BY LISA LIU
[Lisa Liu is a garment worker in Oakland, California. This is abridged from her story, as told to independent United States journalist David Bacon.]