The authors discuss how, with economic globalization, international labor migration is promoted to reduce labor costs, increasingly pervasive multinational corporations outsource manufacturing to low-cost enterprise zones, direct investment of foreign capital in underdeveloped and developing nations fosters economic dependency, cross-border production and marketing lessen the threat from labor unions, and international trade, coupled with international banks, hides the expansion of private and corporate capital. They explore whether globalization is leading an international race to the bottom in terms of wages and working conditions.

Key words: globalization, labor protections for immigrant workers, immigration and transborder issues, export-processing zones, maquiladoras, Mexico, China

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 31, No. 3 (2004): 21-39. Buy PDF

Bank Muñoz examines the plight of workers on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border in a transnational tortilla company. She argues that while both sets of workers confront a despotic labor regime, the context for labor exploitation differs relative to a worker's location on the U.S.-Mexico border. In the United States, Latino immigrant workers, most of whom are men, toil in sterile, highly impersonal factories under high levels of surveillance. By contrast, most of their Mexican counterparts are single mothers who toil under unsafe working conditions in which sexual harassment is common. State policies reinforce the exploitation of workers in both countries. Punitive policies toward immigrants in the U.S., including the militarization of the border and rules denying immigrants access to public assistance, limit Latino immigrant workers' employment opportunities and make it difficult for them to organize. This, in turn, has kept their wages low and reinforced income inequalities between white and Latino workers in the food processing industry. In Mexico, protective labor legislation is weak, leaving workers vulnerable to exploitative and unsafe working conditions. Despite the challenges facing both workers, Bank Muñoz suggests that the perishability of tortillas and their consumption by Latino communities leave tortilla companies highly vulnerable to strikes and boycotts, especially if such actions were strengthened by cross-border labor solidarity.

Key words: food processing industry, surveillance and sexual harassment of workers, immigration, cross-border labor organizing, Mexico

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 31, No. 3 (2004): 40-59. Buy PDF

Jill Esbenshade argues that outsourcing and subcontracting in the global apparel industry have allowed brand name companies to avoid legal liability for garment workers. In the global North, undocumented immigrants are highly exploited under conditions that frequently violate minimum wage and health and safety codes. In the global South, where labor laws are generally weaker, garment workers are also highly exploited and frequently denied their right to organize. When monitoring is understood as the result of the withdrawal of governments from enforcing labor standards as well as the weakening of labor unions, it becomes clear that the United States is experiencing a shift from a social contract between workers, businesses, and government to one that Esbenshade calls the social responsibility contract. The author claims that the development of codes of conduct, along with independent monitoring, provided workers and their allies with new tools for resistance. Illustrating this point, she recounts how anti-sweatshop student activists in the United States and Dominican garment workers effectively used monitoring and codes of conduct to pressure a large Korean-owned factory to make concessions to their workers -- a victory that helped to galvanize the anti-sweatshop movement.

Key words: garment factories, private monitoring programs, anti-sweatshop movement, student activism, Dominican Republic

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 31, No. 3 (2004): 60-76. Buy PDF

This article examines the factors shaping class formation among hotel workers in Los Angeles, mostly Latino immigrants, employed by a Japanese-owned hotel and organized by the International Hotel Employees Restaurant Employees Union in the late 1990s. Using data from field research and interviews with workers, Zamudio argues that the emotional labor required of hotel workers, expected to be subservient and invisible, along with experiences of racism and nativism on and off the job, made alienation more salient than exploitation to their class-consciousness.

Key words: ethnicity, citizenship, labor-market segmentation, coalitions, New Labor Movement, class-consciousness, Los Angeles, Local 11

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 31, No. 3 (2004): 77-104. Buy PDF

The authors discuss professionalism and unionism among nurses and the relation of class and gender to these labor strategies. Given that nursing is an occupation composed predominantly by women, how nurses seek to improve their occupational lives and serve their patients must be understood in relation to patriarchal structures of society in general, and medicine in particular. The article provides a historical overview of nursing that outlines four main ideologies that have characterized this occupation: apprenticeship, professional, managerial, and unionist. Each ideology reflects class divisions within nursing, and each incorporates gender. The authors illustrate current ideological frameworks in nursing through a content analysis of CalNurse and of research on nursing students from a California university. They conclude by discussing how the direction and ideology of labor activism might be reframed to more effectively mobilize nurses, reaffirm their occupational identities, and advance the well-being of those they serve. Emphasis is on how nurses' struggle for occupational justice must include a broader and more inclusive social justice component in the provision of healthcare.

Key words: nursing activism, work, occupations and professions, inequality, stratification

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 31, No. 3 (2004): 105-129. Buy PDF

Author Luis Aguiar discusses the challenges facing janitors, many of whom are immigrant, in British Columbia, where neoliberalism has given rise to political attacks on the rights of workers. The author conducted interviews in the summers of 2000 through 2002 with politicians, cleaners, community activists, and trade unionists. These interviews document widespread abuse, exploitation, and insecurities in the cleaning industry and the difficulties of organizing janitors in metropolitan Vancouver.

Key words: building cleaning workplace, immigrant workers

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 31, No. 3 (2004): 130-146. Buy PDF

The authors focus on the impact of economic globalization on agricultural workers in Chiapas' coffee industry and on the environment. They argue that the rise of capitalist forms of coffee production in Chiapas has exploited workers and degraded the environment. Fair trade helps to circumvent the exploitative trading relationships of the world capitalist market by offering "fair" prices to small-scale producer groups that engage in more ecologically sustainable forms of coffee production. Thus, alternative trade means trade in which there is a concern for "just" prices, income stability, and broader social goals. It can play a practical, redistributive role in transforming economic structures and relations of exchange. The authors point to the important role consumers can play in resisting the oppression of workers under global capitalism.

Key words: "fair" or "alternative" trade, coffee producers' cooperatives, Chiapas, Mexico, political economy, environmental sociology, sustainable development

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 31, No. 3 (2004): 147-163. Buy PDF

The authors look at how the international trend toward restorative justice -- non-retributive forms of justice -- applies to U.S. cities like Oakland, California, in which entire communities have been torn apart by urban renewal and globalization under the rubric of NAFTA, leading to mushrooming unemployment and related social pathologies in the inner cities. Given the wholesale destruction especially of the Black community, it is difficulty to see how restorative justice models apply, even considering the experience of the Maori in New Zealand or efforts in post-apartheid South Africa.

Key words: restorative justice, destruction of community -- urban renewal and globalization, Maori

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 31, No. 3 (2004): 164-165. Buy PDF

The author addresses international migration and migratory workers, with special reference to the experience of workers form Okinawa and the Japanese mainland in Brazil.

Key words: migratory workers, Japanese Brazilians, transnationalism

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 31, No. 3 (2004): 166-167. Buy PDF

The author reviews two works concerning international justice, with special emphasis on human rights and genocide.

Key words: international law, genocide, human rights

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 31, No. 3 (2004): 168. Buy PDF

Tony Platt remembers the progressive role of Dick Hongisto, especially in San Francisco criminal justice matters, and hopes these accomplishments, not the more scandalous aspects of his life and career, will be his legacy.

Key words: obit, Berkeley School of Criminology, San Francisco politics

Copyright © 2004 by Social Justice.