In “Sewing Women”, chapters 1-4 focused on the differences in the hiring practices of Chinese and Korean factories, while 5-9 focused on the layout of the factories. For example, the Chinese were paid according to how many garments they made and were able to finish. The workers often worked with their families and people who spoke Chinese. However, in the Korean factories, it was more of an assembly line in which one garment was worked on by a few people. The Korean factories also hired more Mexican people and Ecuadorian and this often prevented people from socializing with one another. Korean factory owners also discrimated against those workers of African decent, as well as Puerto Rican because of a notion that they were lazy as opposed to Mexicans.

 
The working conditions in both factories was less than satisfying, but for some reason it seemed that the conditions in the Chinese factories were somewhat better than those in the Korean factories. The Korean factories seem more stressful and strenuous than the more lenient work done in the Chinese factories. However, even though conditions were better, this prevented some of the women from asking for higher pay. The fact that each worker worked on a single garment at a time also allowed for much error and made it obvious where the error stemmed from.

In these chapters of Sewing Women, the differences between the Chinese and the Korean sectors of the garment industry are further examined. This was interesting to me because I did not know a Korean sector existed at all. When I hear about garment factories, I assume the ones mentioned are the ones located in Chinatown that employed Chinese workers. The existence of the Korean sector uptown from the Chinese sector is significant. Working uptown can be seen as a step upwards with regards to social mobility. However, it was surprising to me that most of the workers there were undocumented immigrants. It was also surprising that Korean owners found Chinese workers to be unreliable in the assembly line system they had set up. In this way, the two sectors were isolated because they rarely overlapped.

The existence of the two sectors also revealed a much more dynamic garment industry. In the Chinese sector there was a give-and-take system between the owners and the workers. In this way both parties benefited. However the system of sponsoring a new worker also created a liability and prevented the workers from earning higher wages. This was relevant to the disadvantages of coethnic networks mentioned in “Moving On”. As a result of personal connections, workers never acquired the skills to find a job outside of the garment industry or outside of Chinatown. Therefore, in the industry, there is a constant duality of benefits and risks. Workers get health insurance coverage and can be referred to job positions by fellow coethnics, but are exploited by owners, who try to give low wages and minimize expenses spent on training and recruitment, and are restricted to work in the garment industry alone.

      One question that I had while reading was about the owners of the garment factories. Most of the text was about the experience of the worker and what the owners expected of them. However, what was the situation of the factory owners? Did the retailers above them pressure them as well? In this way, the way the owners treated the garment workers becomes subjective because they probably had their own family to support and provide for too.

-Wendy Li

These chapters revealed the truth behind the hiring process in Chinese and Korean garment factories. The discrimination that went into the process, as many have mentioned, was cruel and undeserving for many workers. How is it possible to know a person’s work ethic if one judges them solely by race? And not even by race in some cases, but strictly by skin color. Although it worked in the Chinese people’s favor in specific situations, for all others, such as the Puerto Ricans, blacks, and darker Ecuadorians, they had no such luck.

The stereotypes and hiring decisions associated with different occupations still exist, even though discriminatory hiring is illegal. For example, the assumption that all restaurants are owned by Greeks, or that all convenient stores are run by Indians, or that all Filipino women grow up to be nurses. I think it would be fascinating to research how these stereotypes came to be. The Chinese run garment factories hired only Chinese workers, and they enjoyed the familial setting, and so the tradition continued. What happened to these ethnic groups in the past that led to the creation of their respective stereotypes?

1. I love the idea of how rumors spread by workers can devastate a garment shop. I feel this gives some power to the workers to fight for their rights if the factory is not run well. If the owners feel like they can do whatever they want and get away with it, the workers can tell each other and spread the rumor of how no one should go work in that shop since the owners are not paying properly or paying late or something, and soon enough that business will lose a lot of money. People will leave and no new people will come. Take that, evil business!
It is nice to hear that the workers don’t have to be stuck working in an awful place with nothing in their power to change their situation or to get back at that owner somehow.

2. I found it interesting that Korean owners consider skin color to be “the only indicator of African ancestry” and also “the best indicator in making hiring decisions”. It was really surprising to hear that “the best indicator” has nothing to do with a worker’s skill. Also if they say skin color is the “only indicator” of being of a certain ancestry, why would it make a difference which skin color a worker has? Because if it really is the only difference, then their usefulness as a worker should be the same as that of people of other ancestries. I’ll also mention that it’s just racist no matter how you put it.
The owners also don’t want black workers in their shops because “they would be watching everything you do, making sure everything is fair.” So does this mean the owners have no concern with things being fair? I know some things were described that would be considered unfair, like privileging a worker who brought in a friend to the factory, but that probably means that these things really are unfair and should be taken care of. This whole idea of not wanting someone watching who knows whats fair and whats not is a bit disturbing. It has this mean spirit of taking advantage of people of your own ethnicity. An owner also said that he wants to pay workers in cash because it helps those people keep more money by not paying taxes, but what is most likely happening is that the owner himself doesn’t have to pay so much taxes by paying workers cash since all these workers are off the books. I always heard it rumored that these businesses are ruthless, and now as I’m reading all these little details add up into a picture of really unpleasant money-making.

3. I really liked what one of the owners said: “Do you know what the main problem in the U.S. is? It is the Americans who are unwilling to do work like they [Mexicans and Ecuadorians] do at minimum wage. I don’t know many Americans who will work like that.They never come here looking for jobs, and they just complain that they have no jobs. Give some more respect to people like [Mexicans and Ecuadorians].” I always felt like it was cruel irony that people who work the hardest get the least respect. The people that work the hardest are the ones that have to live in worry of deportation and trouble with the government. They are often discriminated against and are paid very little for the work they do. Its a strange trend with a lot of jobs where people who work the most are the ones that get paid the least.

I find that the Chinese factories are reflective of the Chinese culture and values. In Asian culture, community is a vital aspect. It is shown in the instances where multiple Chinese workers help others get a job through networking. In fact, this is how most of the women who worked in the factories got the job. There was another woman who said that she wouldn’t have wanted to work at a factory where she knew no one, because she knew that no one would help her, since no one knew her. This is still evident in today’s society. I was able to get the job I had previously because my friend was working there. She helped me get the job by talking to her boss, and this is similar to what happened back then with the garment workers. It’s interesting to see the differences between how the Chinese had gotten their jobs compared with how the Hispanics got their jobs. There is the sense of individualism in the Korean factories, because everyone is so into their own work. They would help out their friends only minimally, in fear of losing their own jobs. This is the opposite of the sense of community in the Chinese factories. A Hispanic woman who was interviewed said that even though she talked with the other workers, she didn’t have friends. Rather, she didn’t want to make friends because she was afraid that she would lose her job. There is always a distance amongst the workers compared with the Chinese workers.

Spiraling out of that, the concept that because of this intertwining relationships, it is harder for Chinese workers to demand better pay or complain about something. Image is another important aspect of the Asian culture. The typical stereotype “shaming the family” coupled along with Asian parents has to come from somewhere, even if it is exaggerated. For example, the Chinese woman in her fifties said “My sister-in-law helped me find this job…If I want to make more, I have to try harder. She has worked here for a long time, and the owner has always kept a job for her, even in slow times. If I don’t like something, I would rather not complain. I don’t want to complain to my sister-in-law…Good or not so good, I have to take it…I would rather leave and have someone else help me find another job. She can tell the boss that I had to take care of my children.” The woman would rather have to leave the factory instead of complaining about what she dislikes, in fear of what her complaining might do to her sister-in-law. The consequences might be that her sister-in-law would get fired. Even quitting the factory where her sister-in-law got her the job might be viewed negatively because there is still a certain risk in getting a job there for someone else. Having gotten jobs due to social networking can be a double-edged sword. Hispanics on the other hand, don’t have to worry about such a thing. They don’t have anything them binding them down to a job, unlike the Chinese workers. They, instead, can move from factories to factories if the pay isn’t good.

This section of Sewing Women revealed much about the hiring habits, work conditions, and general structure of the workday at both Korean and Chinese garment factories. It was evident that many differences existed, and it seemed that while both Korean and Chinese employers had likeable habits, they were far from likeable, overall. The Chinese hired only Chinese workers because the supply of Chinese who wanted to work exceeded the demand. Workers at Chinese factories often worked with family members and as more of their relatives immigrated to the U.S., they taught them how to sew and use the presses and they end up working in these factories as well. The Chinese got paid based on how much work they did and one worker would work on a whole garment. This allowed for a worker to leave during the workday to pick up her child from school, or run a quick errand.

In Korean factories, however, one was paid by the hour, and one garment was worked on by many workers, each doing his part. This was an assembly line of sorts. Unfortunately, such a structure didn’t allow for workers to have much freedom to leave at different points during the day as the Chinese did. Additionally, because there weren’t nearly as many Koreans available for work in factories as there were Chinese, Korean employers hired workers of other ethnicities. The Mexicans and Ecuadorians they hired worked just as hard as the other workers and, as the Korean factory owner quoted at the beginning of Chapter 5 states, these workers should be given a chance. Nonetheless, Korean employers were still discriminatory in their hiring habits, refusing to give jobs to Puerto Ricans and African Americans because they considered them to be lazy.

Overall, the conditions in both Chinese and Korean factories were unsatisfactory. Although the Chinese factory owners treated their workers better than did the Koreans and the work environment was more relaxed, the meager salaries that garment factory workers were paid should have been higher. Out of respect for those who brought them into these factories and basically enabled them to get these jobs, the Chinese didn’t complain and didn’t ask for higher wages. Why couldn’t the Chinese have asked calmly and nicely for slightly higher wages? How would that have been a betrayal of their loyalty?

In the second half of her book, Prof Chin goes further into describing the differences between Korean and Chinese shops. These chapters focus more on the ethnical choices the owners of these shops make when hiring the workers and how the hiring process works.

As an overall impression, I got a stronger and stronger feeling that Chinese sweatshops are “socially warmer”, in the sense that it could even feel like family to work there. In fact, as I noticed at the MOCA, the Chinese culture values the community and the social aspect of their lives a lot, so the structures of the shops reflect this philosophy. Many of the testimonies in the book cite Chinese workers and owners saying that they do favors to each other and “help each other”, for example bringing in a family member and training them in natural exchange of smaller pieces of garment, which equal more work done and more money.

On the other hand, Korean shops are way colder in that sense, they actually do feel like a workplace. Because it is more structured and controlled, there is not much room for favors and family feelings: exact clocking in and out times must be met because the Koreans know they need to meet the standards of the various government agencies coming in to check on them. The fact that they also hire Hispanics from different ethnical backgrounds rather than Koreans, further detaches the workers from a feeling of togetherness. Some of these Hispanics interviewed admit that they are emotionally detached from their job and they take it as simply a way to go in, make money and then leave.

A similarity between the two types of shops, however, is that they are both very closed systems, especially in the way new workers are found. While the Chinese shops favor family and friends referrals from the workers, the Koreans are very picky in who they hire, and things like “the corner’ become places where Hispanics find out about these jobs in the market.

I also thought it was very interesting how there was an underlining factor of racism and stereotypes towards the African Americans and Puerto Ricans, seen as lazy and not capable of serious commitment. After all, all these groups are immigrant groups, could a few generations of difference or even just a little more naturalization benefits really set such a huge gap between ethnic groups?

Sara Camnasio

The nuances of “whom to hire” from both the perspective of the Chinese and the Korean factory owners are thought provoking. For instance, I thought the theories behind immigrant incorporation and their manifestation in the respective hiring preferences was especially interesting. Consider the idea of “opportunity hoarding;” it states, “ethnic groups with access to an economic niche may…be hoarding opportunities” within that niche (92). This might apply to the Chinese garment factories in that Chinese owners typically hired ethnic Chinese as workers, thus consolidating the industry ethnically and closing off those potential jobs to workers of other races and nationalities. It is suggested that because the Chinese ethnic group had enough members willing to work in this industry, this method of hiring was upheld. By contrast Korean garment factory owners hired Ecuadorian and Mexican workers because Korean employees were too few and too expensive to hire. Korean owners preferred immigrants to Americans and skilled workers who did not speak English. Sadly, this is “mostly because Americans and immigrants who know English are more capable of standing up for their rights.” This is not to say that exploitation did not happen in Chinese factories. For instance: “Owners know that Chinese immigrants and undocumented Mexicans and Ecuadorians have limited options and limited ability to complain to authorities. Employers can take advantage of these workers. In general, the employers offer the minimum or just above the minimum wage and only the benefits that the state and federal law require.” (93) This just shows that the garment industry ran in tandem to other factory work throughout history, workers were paid very little and were taken advantage of (at least to some extent) for profit. The fact that most owners, both Chinese and Korean were fluent in English and had a somewhat greater level of education only serves to uphold the traditional hierarchy where the ignorant and the disadvantaged are kept on the bottom rung.