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In the essay, The New Immigrant Sweatshops, author Jennifer Gordon discusses her findings on the state of labor in this era in relation to the “sweatshops” of many years ago. She talks about how many of the service type jobs that we see many immigrants taking on these days, such as construction or landscaping, relate to the sweatshops that workers unionized against years ago. This includes the same kinds of injustices in payment and treatment that lead to Gordon’s conclusion that sweatshops may very well be present again in the twenty first century. Though there may not be the same solutions for handling the sweatshops that were once used. Many of the sweatshops that were around in the early twentieth century included things like the long declined garment industry, meatpacking, fieldwork or domestic work. Sweatshops in farm work that were brought to attention in media such as Edward R. Murrow’s documentary Harvest of Shame have continued to exist today. So too has domestic work as women immigrants have come to discover the two dollar wages paid for labor. While the garment and meatpacking industries were revealed to the public and unionized they seem to have resurfaced as well all over the US and in meat packing plants in the West. As jobs in the United States have changed those in which sweatshop conditions are seen have varied far past old sweatshops. These conditions of low wages, long hours and high-risk environments are now seen with dishwashers in restaurants, in carwashes, construction, landscaping and many other jobs. There have been recent situations in which Latino immigrants specifically have been recruited to work and held against their will, or made to work up to 16 hours a day for four dollars an hour, much lower tha... ... middle of paper ... ...atment and overtime wages. What makes taking on sweatshops so different now is the fact that enforcing laws is made difficult by underground companies that are always kept small and under the radar. This makes it hard for government inspectors to locate or investigate companies before they move. To make matters worse, government agencies in charge of enforcing these labor laws through inspection are far less funded than they were in the 20th century. The new service labors common in this century in which sweatshop conditions are present are not always big companies, but small, often working through multiple parties and paying in cash. This makes it easier for the companies to stay under the radar and avoid following labor laws. Issues with this as well as a lack of government support are the reasons for the problems that we see now with getting rid of sweatshops.

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