“Moving On” focuses on the aftereffects of 9.11 on the garment workers in NYC.
One thing I found baffling was that although the factory workers already made a meager pay, they were paid even less after they had lost their jobs. This meant that the lifestyles that were already less than satisfying sharply decreased. I can’t imagine being put into such a situation, but I can however relate because when my parents got laid off from work when they first came here, our way of life declined significantly.

 
I also found it interesting that although the sharpest decline of factory work occurred after 9.11, factory work had been declining way before 9.11. Labor had been outsourced to other places and sweatshops contributed to a steady decline. However, I was just as shocked to realize that although the industry had been declining, “apparel is one of the two largest manufacturing industries in the city”. I was not surprised however, to see that even though Chinatown is such a small area, it is so densely populated and after 9.11 business had gone down drastically because most Chinese worked in that specific area in the factories established there.

1. As someone who was not in NYC when 9/11 disaster happened, a lot of this information is new things to think about for me. I only knew that the disaster damaged the health of some people and businesses of others due to the 9/11 help ads in the subway. This article made me think about the way these businesses work. I was wondering how come they are losing so much money. It is obvious that the businesses won’t make a profit shortly after the disaster since people won’t be going there to buy things due to lack of train service and other problems, but wouldn’t the stores just close for that time? The only losses I could think of would be losing food if it’s a food business and having to pay rent, but I would think that people have some kind of savings to not go completely bankrupt. I would imagine no one ordered more food to sell shortly after the disaster, so they wouldn’t be losing money there. I am not familiar enough with businesses to realize what exactly was such a source of devastating losses if the business remained closed for maybe a month or so after the disaster. The real issue I see here is the workers who were not able to get to their jobs at factories after the disaster and therefore were not able to get money.

2. I was surprised to hear that lay-offs, though short, are really common in the garment industry and that most women have been laid off in the past and collected unemployment benefits. Unless the garments made are very specific, it is surprising to me that this happens.

3. How come it was more difficult for women to get relief funds? Also, how is it possible that the city did not notice that some areas were hit by the disaster, such as the area south of Canal street? The people who live in NYC must have seen that that area is obviously affected by the disaster and yet the government failed to act on it. I am glad at least that women and children were able to retain their health benefits.

What I found interesting about this article was that even before 9/11 hit, the garment factories, especially in Manhattan, were suffering. This seems peculiar since the garment industry is one of the two largest manufacturing industries in the city. However, because of the expensive rent, competition for space and many assumptions regarding the legality of these “sweatshops”, the garment industry had been going downhill in Manhattan a long time before 9/11. Regarding, the legality of the sweatshops, many people still assume that all sweatshops are undocumented immigrants which gives the factories a bad name. In fact, many are unionized factories that employ thousands of legalized women and pay minimum wage. I have to admit that I did think that most of the factories were these horrible sweatshops that hoarded illegal immigrants and paid hardly anything. I would be really interested in seeing one of these unionized factories.

After 9/11 hit, Chinatown was drastically affected. I knew that most businesses were affected by 9/11, however I really never considered how much not only the factories but Chinatown as a whole was affected. Because of the closing of many of these factories, so many Chinese lost their jobs. Not only that, I never expected how much of a ripple effect there was. Not only were the factory workers hit, but it went so far as even people who came to Chinatown from around the city to buy particular items were discouraged because the shops no longer could carry the items they needed.

Emma Park-Hazel

As if the decline of the garment industry in New York City wasn’t already rapid enough pre-9/11, the attack happened and the garment factories suffered severely. Being located in Manhattan, in Chinatown, literally no more than a mile away from the World Trade Center was always an advantage, and the factories thrived. Those who ordered garments from NYC factories could check on their orders easily because the trip to Chinatown was short and quick, especially when compared to trips to factories in Asia. However, the factories’ location turned out to be their greatest disadvantage come 9/11. Roads were closed south of Canal Street for over a week, trains didn’t run to Canal Street for over a month, increased traffic due to increased security persisted for months, or even years. Garment factory workers couldn’t get to work and phone service in sections of Chinatown was only restored by the end of 2001. In the meantime, outsourcing occurred at rapid rates, and competition for real estate from Internet-based companies drove rent through the roof. Some businesses simply left Manhattan, while others had no choice but close.

Such happenings left garment factory workers jobless, and in some cases, eventually, homeless. Employers willing to hire these former factory workers were nowhere to be found. With little or no knowledge of English, former Chinese factory workers did not meet the requirements for most other jobs. Many of these Chinese women didn’t know anyone who worked in other industries and, hence, couldn’t ask an acquaintance to help with the finding of a new job. Those who had many a time complained about their garment factory jobs came to really regret having done so. All these newly unemployed Chinese immigrants really wanted their jobs back, but few had their wish granted simply because these jobs were unavailable. Garment factories became more competitive as a result of 9/11 and workers are expected to work longer hours. Flexible hours in Chinese factories became a thing of the past. As one female worker said, “I do what the boss wants….Others who can’t keep up with what the boss wants are told to leave.”

It was very saddening to read about how hard it was for former Chinese garment factory workers to find new jobs post-9/11. Would it have been easier for these women to find new jobs today?

How differently would Chinatown have been affected by the World Trade Center attack if the disaster had occurred more recently, in 2011 or 2012?

The devastating effects of September 11 on women were astounding. The women went from earning $300 a week, to a government given $150 a week after their places of work were shut down. I’d also like to know why it was harder for women to find access relief funds than men. The chain reaction that followed with the garment workers and their homes is unfortunate, especially since they resulted in health concerns due to stress and anxiety.

Another point that I found interesting was that teenage and college aged children had to help their parents pay the bills and mortgages. However, the line that says, “In another, a working age child rented a floor of his house to his parents for only $200 a month” kind of made me think, “huh?” because if my parents were put through a huge loss as a result of such a disaster, I would let them take my master bedroom for free. But maybe that’s just a filipino thing because my mom and my siblings lived with my grandparents for eight years free of charge so that we could save up for five children’s college tuition.

This article was interesting in that it detailed the decline of the garment industry to even before the events of September 11. The fall of the World Trade Centers only accelerated the process. The outsourcing of labor, spreading of new firms and the image of illegal sweatshops and immigrants contributed to the industry’s early decline. This raises the question: if September 11 did not happen, how long would the garment industry have continued to decline and to what extent?

In addition to this, it was nice to see the effects of the attack from a different perspective. The media portrayed the effect of September 11 on a national scale, while neighborhoods like Chinatown and the garment industry were affected in ways I did not expect. For example, I did not know the disaster zone was divided to only include the south of Canal Street This article was also intriguing because my mother mirrored the trends of some Chinese workers in the industry, and it was interesting to understand the story behind those trends. Like others, she worked in a garment shop when she first immigrated to the United States and took classes to learn English. Later she made the transition to home health care after moving to Staten Island.

-Wendy Li

The use of the words ‘mobility trap’ to describe Chinatown was interesting. From that perspective, I agree with Peter Kwong. How many immigrants have actually succeeded in getting to the top, from being a garment worker? The ones who are actually moving forward economically would be the factory owners, or anyone of that sort. I agree with Victor Nee and Jimy Sanders that it is the entrepreneurs that are moving up on the social ladder, not the workers. The garment workers probably didn’t view themselves as being trapped because it was comfortable where they were – that is, before September 11. Before September 11th, they could come into work whenever they wanted. There weren’t set schedules and they got paid piece by piece. This was probably the only work they’ve known and wouldn’t think of anything else. If they had been shown what it would be like to work at a job with the knowledge of English, their views on being “trapped” might have been different. This is probably an exaggeration, but it reminded me of the George Orwell’s book, 1984.

I found it interesting how there was a clear impact of the garment workers losing their jobs on the businesses of Chinatown. It shows that everything really is connected; because income wasn’t being made, money wasn’t being spent. There is no more flow of money, and as a result, the businesses of Chinatown would have to eventually shut down because they weren’t getting any revenue from their customers.

There is a huge emphasis on women in the context of the family. Although this is about garment workers, who are usually women, what about the men? Where do they work while the women at in the garment factories? Were they affected the same way, if they worked in Chinatown?

Chinatown’s proximity to the World Trade Center fueled several of the community’s largest industries.  Ironically, this proximity financially crippled the neighborhood in the weeks, months, and years following 9/11.  First there were the immediate problems of street blockages and telephone power outages.  The area around the World Trade Center was essentially quarantined from the rest of the city.  Chinatown was also blocked off both metaphorically and in many ways physically from the city.  This resulted in the immediate closer of several businesses (particularly factories and restaurants) that relied on income from those who lived and worked in the financial district.

Within a few months thousands of workers lost their jobs.  Real Estate owners who had been waiting for leases to expire suddenly became desperate to renew these leases with the garment factories.  Most of the factories could no longer afford the fee.    In the years to come, ex-garment workers were forced to look outside of their neighborhood for work.  Unfortunately, without the necessary language skills in English (even ESL classes did not always help) they were mostly unsuccessful.  Most had never even completed high school, and had neither the resources nor the skills to easily transition into another industry.

On our tour of Chinatown we saw the direct results of this process.  Decades old store fronts were empty and many now had new businesses where family owned stores had once been.

-Victor Rerick