In residential neighborhoods across Buenos Aires, top clothing companies have turned small warehouses or gutted buildings into clandestine sweatshops. Locked in, workers are forced to live and work in cramped quarters with little ventilation and, often, limited access to water and gas. The Uni?n de Trabajadores Costureros
(Union of Seamstress Workers?UTC), an assembly of undocumented textile workers, has reported more than 8,000 cases of labor abuses inside the city?s nearly 400 clandestine shops in the past year. Around 100,000 undocumented immigrants work in these unsafe plants with an average wage?if they are paid at all?of $100 per month.
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Piece Description
In residential neighborhoods across Buenos Aires, top clothing companies have turned small warehouses or gutted buildings into clandestine sweatshops. Locked in, workers are forced to live and work in cramped quarters with little ventilation and, often, limited access to water and gas. The Uni?n de Trabajadores Costureros (Union of Seamstress Workers?UTC), an assembly of undocumented textile workers, has reported more than 8,000 cases of labor abuses inside the city?s nearly 400 clandestine shops in the past year. Around 100,000 undocumented immigrants work in these unsafe plants with an average wage?if they are paid at all?of $100 per month.
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this is not acceptableI hope things change! |
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Free Speech Radio News broadcast
Transcript
Bolivian workers in Argentina are pressing the government to take action against slave-like working conditions inside clandestine textile shops, after a fire in a factory killed 6 people in Buenos Aires last week ?including 4 children; 2 of them 3-years-old. The government has initiated inspections of seamstress shops employing Bolivians and Paraguayans, and inspectors have shut down at least 12 of these plants. Marie Trigona has more from Buenos Aires.
?We have had to remain silent and accept abuse. I?m tired of taking the blows. We are starting to fight compa?eros, thank you for being here.? These are the words of Ana Salazar at an assembly of textile workers on a Sunday evening. The blaze that killed four children- including 4 children; 2 of them 3-years and two women has brought light to abusive working conditions inside a network of clandestine textile plants in Buenos Aires. Wi...
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scott ortiz
Posted on November 07, 2009 at 11:33 PM | Permalink
this is not acceptable
I hope things change!