Sweatshop Warriors: Immigrant Women Workers Take On the Global Factory.

• Author: McGrath, Molly

By Miriam Ching Yoon Louie

South End Press. $18

Miriam Ching Yoon Louie's Sweatshop Warriors is a powerful account of contemporary immigrant women workers' struggles in the United States. It's not your typical publication about women workers in the global economy.

Sweatshop Warriors charts a common path many tread in the new world--one that begins in farming villages, goes to sprawling cities in rapidly industrializing countries, and ends in the sweatshops, factories, restaurants, and ethnic enclaves of America. Louie chronicles the lives of contemporary Chinese, Mexican, and Korean immigrants, focusing on women workers who subsequently become "sweatshop warriors"--activists who demand better wages and living conditions for themselves and their co-workers.

For each ethnic group, Louie begins with a historical narrative that describes the economic, social, and political conditions that led women to uproot themselves. Then she offers scathing personal testimonies from the Chinese, Latina, and Korean workers and organizers.

By highlighting the improvements workers have made, Sweatshop Warriors brings the immigrant women workers' courageous struggles to life. "These grassroots immigrant women are the very heartbeat of the labor and anti-sweatshop movements," Louie writes. As two anti-sweatshop activists ourselves, we can attest to the validity of this statement.

What distinguishes Sweatshop Warriors from other books that highlight the lives of low-wage workers is its very personal illustration of the women's "painful yet liberating" transformation from worker to warrior. Louie resents that these women are often "asked to speak only as victims." They are, she rightly insists, the most essential actors in the struggle to improve their own lives.

For example, Lisa, a volunteer for the Chinese Staff and Workers Association (CSWA), was blacklisted in 1997 by the King's County Apparel Association in New York City for demanding overtime pay and shorter hours as an employee of Street Beat Sportswear.

Sixty to seventy people who worked there had to endure 100hour workweeks, sometimes at $2 an hour. Lisa, who incurred permanent back injuries, said, "We told the boss, `We just can't keep working like this. We're getting destroyed. We need a day off.' So we left. We couldn't take it anymore."

After fourteen months of struggle, the former Street Beat employees, in a joint campaign with the CSWA, prevailed. The owner, Jian Wen Liang, was arrested and...