Suburban Sweatshops: The Fight for Immigrant Rights

In this compelling book, Gordon combines the harrowing stories of individuals with a broad perspective on suburban economics to create a vivid analysis of immigrant labor in America. An associate professor at Fordham's law school, Gordon begins by pointing out the recent shift of immigrant labor from the cities to the 'bedroom communities' of the nation. ""Low-wage immigrant work in the suburbs is no kinder than immigrant work in cities,"" she writes. ""In its long hours, illegally low wages, and staggering rates of injury, it is sweatshop labor all the same."" Most of the book's examples come from Gordon's work with the Workplace Project in Long Island, New York, an organization that she formed in 1992 to help immigrants assert their rights on the job and organize collective action. She uses an account of the Project's history as a way into her broader examination of the pros and cons of unions, the problems of organizing workers and the legal aspects of immigrant rights. The technique works quite successfully, giving readers a vivid sense of these workers' conditions in restaurants, construction sites and residential homes while imparting useful lessons on activism. Gordon is understandably proud of the Project's accomplishments-such as getting a bill passed that increased, by 800%, the penalty for employers who did not pay workers in full-but she does not shirk away from the group's problems, like the difficulty of enforcing long-term workplace changes. Her unflinching study raises questions about the future of immigrant rights and the causes behind the ""disturbing renaissance of sweatshop work.""