Meet the Workers Who Are Exploited at $5 an Hour to Make Breakfast Sandwiches A new documentary chronicles the abusive conditions faced by undocumented workers at one NYC deli—and their fight to change them. By Allegra Kirkland / AlterNet April 2, 2015
On any given night in New York City, while most of us are sleeping, an entire workforce is moving through the streets. They’re taking the elevated 7 train out to Elmhurst, Queens on their way home from late shifts, cleaning midtown office buildings and delivering boxes of fresh produce to cavernous restaurant basements. Immigration activists like to use rhetoric about “living in the shadows” to describe the status of the undocumented, but for many without papers, life literally is conducted in shadows, as they work through the night to support themselves and send remittances home. In New York, these undocumented laborers work in construction, childcare, and above all else, in the food service industry. InThe Hand That Feeds, a powerful documentary opening in theaters on April 3, filmmakers Robin Blotnick and Rachel Lears chronicle the plight of workers at one Upper East Side deli. At the 63rd Street location of Hot & Crusty, employees—many of whom are undocumented immigrants from Mexico, Ecuador and elsewhere—toil seven days a week for less than minimum wage, with no overtime pay or sick leave. They receive a constant stream of verbal abuse and threats from their manager, who frequently reminds them that at any moment they could be fired and deported. In one of the opening scenes, a worker shows his payment for a 60-hour workweek: $290 in $20 bills, stuffed into an unmarked white envelope. full: http://www.alternet.org/labor/meet-workers-who-are-exploited-5-hour-make-breakfast-sandwiches _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
