This video from Massachusetts in the USA says about itself:
Here’s an inside look at what life was like for the Lowell mill girls. Pictures are from the actual factory in Lowell.
A music video from the USA which used to be on the Internet was called The Lowell Factory Girl (David Rovics). It used to say about itself:
Young women in the textile mills of Massachusetts died at an average age of 26, constantly inhaling cotton dust, working long hours in unventilated rooms lit by oil lamps. Before their struggles for safer working conditions and better pay bore fruit, often a mill worker’s best hope at a decent life was to marry a farmer, if she could find one who hadn’t lost his land and ended up as a factory hand himself.
From British daily The Guardian:
Long-hours working on the rise again in UK
Lucy Ward, social affairs correspondent
Wednesday November 28, 2007
A culture of working long hours is on the rise once more in the UK after a decade of gradual decline, according to figures today. More than one in eight of the British workforce now work more than 48 hours a week, the maximum allowed under the law unless workers agree to waive that limit. The proportion rises to one in six in London. The figures, highlighted by the TUC and extracted from the latest Labour Force Survey, prompted warnings from campaigners that children and family life risk being squeezed further.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
Tomato pickers face 40 percent pay cut
Posted by: “Compañero” companyero@bellsouth.net chocoano05
Sat Dec 1, 2007 7:32 pm (PST)
NY Times, November 29, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
Penny Foolish
By ERIC SCHLOSSER
THE migrant farm workers who harvest tomatoes in South Florida have
one of the nation’s most backbreaking jobs. For 10 to 12 hours a
day, they pick tomatoes by hand, earning a piece-rate of about 45
cents for every 32-pound bucket. During a typical day each migrant
picks, carries and unloads two tons of tomatoes. For their efforts,
this holiday season many of them are about to get a 40 percent pay
cut.
Florida’s tomato growers have long faced pressure to reduce
operating costs; one way to do that is to keep migrant wages as low
as possible. Although some of the pressure has come from increased
competition with Mexican growers, most of it has been forcefully
applied by the largest purchaser of Florida tomatoes: American fast
food chains that want millions of pounds of cheap tomatoes as a
garnish for their hamburgers, tacos and salads.
In 2005, Florida tomato pickers gained their first significant pay
raise since the late 1970s when Taco Bell ended a consumer boycott
by agreeing to pay an extra penny per pound for its tomatoes, with
the extra cent going directly to the farm workers. Last April,
McDonald’s agreed to a similar arrangement, increasing the wages of
its tomato pickers to about 77 cents per bucket. But Burger King,
whose headquarters are in Florida, has adamantly refused to pay the
extra penny – and its refusal has encouraged tomato growers to
cancel the deals already struck with Taco Bell and McDonald’s.
This month the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, representing 90
percent of the state’s growers, announced that it will not allow any
of its members to collect the extra penny for farm workers. Reggie
Brown, the executive vice president of the group, described the
surcharge for poor migrants as “pretty much near un-American.”
Migrant farm laborers have long been among America’s most
impoverished workers. Perhaps 80 percent of the migrants in Florida
are illegal immigrants and thus especially vulnerable to abuse.
During the past decade, the United States Justice Department has
prosecuted half a dozen cases of slavery among farm workers in
Florida. Migrants have been driven into debt, forced to work for
nothing and kept in chained trailers at night. The Coalition of
Immokalee Workers – a farm worker alliance based in Immokalee, Fla.
– has done a heroic job improving the lives of migrants in the
state, investigating slavery cases and negotiating the
penny-per-pound surcharge with fast food chains.
Now the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange has threatened a fine of
$100,000 for any grower who accepts an extra penny per pound for
migrant wages. The organization claims that such a surcharge would
violate “federal and state laws related to antitrust, labor and
racketeering.” It has not explained how that extra penny would break
those laws; nor has it explained why other surcharges routinely
imposed by the growers (for things like higher fuel costs) are
perfectly legal.
The prominent role that Burger King has played in rescinding the pay
raise offers a spectacle of yuletide greed worthy of Charles
Dickens. Burger King has justified its behavior by claiming that it
has no control over the labor practices of its suppliers. “Florida
growers have a right to run their businesses how they see fit,” a
Burger King spokesman told The St. Petersburg Times.
Yet the company has adopted a far more activist approach when the
issue is the well-being of livestock. In March, Burger King
announced strict new rules on how its meatpacking suppliers should
treat chickens and hogs. As for human rights abuses, Burger King has
suggested that if the poor farm workers of southern Florida need
more money, they should apply for jobs at its restaurants.
Three private equity firms – Bain Capital, the Texas Pacific Group
and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners – control most of Burger King’s
stock. Last year, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd C.
Blankfein, earned the largest annual bonus in Wall Street history,
and this year he stands to receive an even larger one. Goldman Sachs
has served its investors well lately, avoiding the subprime mortgage
meltdown and, according to Business Week, doubling the value of its
Burger King investment within three years.
Telling Burger King to pay an extra penny for tomatoes and provide a
decent wage to migrant workers would hardly bankrupt the company.
Indeed, it would cost Burger King only $250,000 a year. At Goldman
Sachs, that sort of money shouldn’t be too hard to find. In 2006,
the bonuses of the top 12 Goldman Sachs executives exceeded $200
million – more than twice as much money as all of the roughly 10,000
tomato pickers in southern Florida earned that year. Now Mr.
Blankfein should find a way to share some of his company’s good
fortune with the workers at the bottom of the food chain.
Eric Schlosser is the author of “Fast Food Nation” and “Reefer
Madness.”
LikeLike
Pingback: US singer David Rovics interviewed | Dear Kitty. Some blog