Behind a $13 shirt, a $6-an-hour worker

[Zorro]

Before dawn six days a week, Norma Ulloa left the two-bedroom apartment she shared with four family members and boarded a bus that took her to a stifling factory on the outskirts of downtown Los Angeles.

She spent 11 hours a day there, pinning Forever 21 tags on trendy little shirts and snipping away their loose threads in the one-room workshop. On a good day, the 44-year-old could get through 700 shirts.

That work earned Ulloa about $6 an hour, well below minimum wage in Los Angeles, according to a wage claim she filed with the state.

Ulloa’s claim is one of nearly 300 filed since 2007 by workers demanding back pay for producing Forever 21 clothing, according to a Los Angeles Times review of nearly 2,000 pages of state labor records.

http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-forever-21-factory-workers

[guillaumeb]

1. The invisible hand of the barely regulated free market at work.

Similar to the ads for Uber and the other gig jobs that imply much but deliver little.

Or the WalMart associates, those who work off the clock occasionally and frequently qualify for public assistance even as the Walton family heirs grow even richer.

[Igel]

3. The regs are there.

State and federal. Note that they filed claims in court. That wasn't, "Help, make up something based on compassion to give us a break." It was, "These people are breaking the law."

Enforcement is the problem.

And for many who distrust the enforcers and their ability to protect them, even on-site visits wouldn't be enough. Instead we'd have to treat each employer as a lawbreaker on a consistent basis, and having the enforcers show that much distrust and enmity towards the citizen population it's supposed to be policing is something we've already tried and generally found not so great.

[guillaumeb]

4. Enforcement is indeed the problem.

Meaning of course the political will to enforce existing labor laws. And with a Trump NLRB, enforcement will be even weaker.

[boombostic]

2. Is it fair to assume....

That her boss is very much likely to be a Drumpf supporter?