Public Employee Press

Media Beat
Video Review
Latina immigrants battle L.A. sweatshops

The DVD “Made in L.A.” is the story of three Latina immigrants working in Los Angeles garment sweatshops. Fed up with poverty wages, being cheated out of pay, forced overtime and even taking work home, they joined the L.A. Garment Workers’ Center.

They devised a novel strategy for confronting Forever 21, an upscale clothing retailer whose low prices forced them to pay low wages. This video is about not just the campaign but also the women themselves.

Who can ignore Lupe Hernandez, a 5-foot-tall dynamo who left Mexico City at 17 and is transformed by her struggles? Or Maura Colorado, who works here to support her three children in El Salvador. Or María Pineda, who battles exploitation on the job and suffers domestic abuse at home as she tries to give her children a better future.

The film follows Maria, Lupe and Maura as they boycott Forever 21 and file a lawsuit. The workers held protests in L.A., nationwide and around the world. As they visited the Statue of Liberty and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, they saw their own story in the work and struggles of the immigrant garment workers of the early 1900s. Lupe cried when she realized how little had changed in the lives of immigrants.

As the legal case and the workers’ negotiations began to succeed, the garment plants started to move overseas for lower wages. Lupe, Maria and Maura had to move on to other jobs.

But the battles had made the women stronger. Lupe got a job as an organizer at the Los Angeles Garment Workers’ Center. And Maria left her abusive husband.

“Made in L.A.” was featured on many PBS stations. You can order it at www. madeinla.com or borrow a copy at the Education Fund Library in Room 211, which also has more videos and books on this and many other subjects.

—Ken Nash,
DC 37 Education Fund Librarian