BY HARRY RING
LOS ANGELES- Charging involuntary servitude, sixty-
four of the workers from Thailand held in near-slavery
conditions have filed a damage suit against the
operators of the El Monte garment sweatshop who held
them.
The legal action was discussed by Chanchanit Martorell at a September 9 Militant Labor Forum panel discussion on the case. She is executive director of the Thai Community Development Center, one of the main groups organizing the defense of the Thai workers.
Martorell said the center acts on behalf of mainly low-income Thai immigrants. A large number of these, she added, are garment workers, so the center is quite familiar with the harsh sweatshop conditions.
She said the working conditions and illegally low wages of the El Monte workers are widespread throughout the industry. "The only difference," she added, "is that these workers couldn't leave at night."
Otto, a student from Thailand, offered graphic figures explaining the large Thai immigration to this country.
In 1973, he said, the minimum wage in Thailand was 64 cents a day. By 1993, it had increased to $5.80 a day. "But that's not the real wage," he emphasized. "Take off 50 percent for inflation." And, he noted, many employers ignore the minimum wage law.
In 1970, he continued, 70 percent of the labor force was in agriculture. By 1990, this had dropped to 50 percent. With large numbers flocking to the city and unable to find jobs, many are forced to emigrate.
"We must show the workers here what the real situation is," he said. "These workers don't come because they want to compete with them." The root problem, he declared, "is the system, the capitalist system."
Gale Shangold of the Socialist Workers Party who is a union garment worker, saluted the fighting spirit of the El Monte workers in resisting their situation and the heroic act of the worker who escaped through an air- conditioning duct and over barbed wire to blow the whistle.
While the conditions suffered by the El Monte workers were extreme, she said, "there are elements of it in out every-day life." She pointed to the employers' push to drive down wages, speed up production, and lengthen the working day.
She declared that the restrictive U.S. immigration laws, made possible what happened to the Thai workers and urged a fight to "open the borders."
Noting that the Thai workers still face the threat of deportation when government action against their employers is ended, Shangold demanded there be no deportations.