Customer Reviews

Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy

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John Bowe does it again! In his former book GIG, he discussed various jobs, ranging from detective to technician to writer. In NOBODIES, he addresses the foreign workers at the bottom of the heap. The workers come from far-away countries such as India, China, the Philippines, etc., hoping for a better life. What they find is often quite different, starting with the illicit recruiters in their home countries, and then arriving on American soil to find that were lied to, and then being subjected to subhuman conditions, and for the females, some forced into prostitution. He discusses the Tom DeLay-Jack Abramoff scandals, and how their greed affected the lowly workers who came to the US with high expectations as did the immigrants in the past. What the workers found in Florida, Oklahoma and Saipan, were employers that paid them less than a minimum wage, had shadowy contracts and took money from them for substandard housing and lousy food, and the list goes on. John also notes that certain employers are living high just down the road from the shops, playing golf and taking expensive vacations, while their workers are suffering and need the basics such as health care and housing. What the American consumer needs to know that when s/he reaches for an orange juice or buys a high-end shirt, that some soul was working in un-American conditions on American soil to provide that product. In addition to the information about modern slave labor, the book is a smooth, thoroughly researched, and well written. As John indicates, there a "a dark side to the new global economy." Excellente, and a must read!

I saw John Bowe on the Daily Show talking about his new book and ordered it the next morning. It got here early the next week, and I read it in 2 days. Devoured it.

The book is a series of 3, for lack of a better word, essays. The first two narrate the circumstances of prosecuted cases of foreign workers held captive and forced to work for little or no pay, in deplorable conditions. Their bosses threatened them with everything from being turned over to the authorities to physical violence against themselves or their families. These essays made me feel both guilty and a little paranoid - who exactly is harvesting my food? Are they fairly compensated? (You can bet the answer to that one is `no.') What businesses do I use that profit from slave labor? In each case, a desire for power combined with willful ignorance or collusion led to incredible suffering for many people.

The third essay deals with another situation entirely - that of Saipan, a US Commonwealth in the south Pacific and the source of a large number of labor complaints and allegations of forced labor. I'm not positive I'd even heard of Saipan before reading this book. The story of interaction between locals, migrant workers, a few power players, and the federal government is described in detail. Garment workers, sex workers, local officials, mainlanders, and others are interviewed and help to paint a complicated, and sad, picture of a paradise gone horribly wrong.

The conclusion ties all three stories into a single premise, but in particular, the story of Saipan is used to illustrate a disturbing vision of the future. There's no reason to believe the rest of us are any more high-minded than the natives of Saipan. If that's the case, the current trend of globalization is leading us pell-mell down the path to the lowest common denominator. When humans value other humans less because they are poor, or foreign, or less educated, or brown, or whatever, we all suffer consequences - lower wages, jobs lost to cheaper competition, environmental degradation, loss of ambition and loss of dignity among them.

John Bowe wraps all this up much more eloquently and sensibly than I can. The book is very readable and at times suspenseful. The subject matter was eye-opening for me, and I find myself thinking about it as I go through my daily life. Whether you support globalization or not, or especially if you never really thought that much about it, this book will provide a valuable insight into the very lowest ranks of the workforce in the US today.

John Bowe's "Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy" shines a cold bright light on labor abuses on American soil, from Florida to Tulsa to a U.S. territory in the Western Pacific Ocean. The author speaks with a moral voice that is never moralistic. Rather he looks at all sides of horrendous situations that might more conveniently, and easily, be seen starkly in black and white. This unique perspective adds immeasurably to the power of the stories he tells, all well-documented. Bowe analyzes the psychological attraction of power and the easy justifications that make abuses of other human beings a common, if not normal, part of the human experience. The book's focus is on farm workers in Florida, East Indian labor abuses in Tulsa, and Saipan and all it stands for. Bowe demonstrates how "globalization" and the actual slavery that results have had the effect of degrading not only foreign workers who are abused in the U.S. but also the character of our society as a whole. Although it reads like a novel and is as funny at times as its all-too-human subjects, "Nobodies" is an uncompromising indictment of labor and immigration abuse and should go a long way to putting the brakes on the proposed "guest worker" program so dear to Bush's heart. It's an invaluable resource for anyone who cares about human dignity.

I guess nothing should suprise anymore, still this investigation of slave labor in America can still shock.

With all the talk of imigration reform, what never seems to be addressed is the nasty secret behind the importation of cheap, docile, foreign labor.

John Bowe brings a new perspective to this continuing saga.

It should be required reading for all our elected representitives.

In "Nobodies" John Bowe has written three thoughtful and fascinating essays, although obviously this book could have been longer. The neo-liberals who have been on-board for no holds free trade have not once taken time to address the possibly worsening plight of workers in the most vulnerable places in the world, and now some of this ugliness has taken hold within or own borders as well.

John Bowe takes the race to the bottom to the actual bottom....to the people who are most deeply abused. Only recently children were found working as slaves for up to 19 hours a day in India making clothing for Gaps for Kids according to a UK report, so we can't any more see slavery as an aberration. Not even within the U.S. and its territories.

In a July/August article, Atlantic Monthly correspondent James Fallows states that due to the "Nike effect" big corporations no longer like to have their logo attached to factories, so "vendors" within the U.S. and abroad are employed to extract cheap labor, and the corporations walk away with their reputation untarnished. For example, in Bowe's first essay, Tropicana Orange Juice doesn't "know" that several "vendors" have been smuggling Mexican workers across the border after charging them thousands of dollars "finder's fee" and then holding them at gunpoint in secluded areas of the Everglades...scary.

John Pickle in the second essay is one of the most fascinating portraits of a business man who doesn't have a clue of what he's done wrong...just lying to some Indian engineers and bringing them to the U.S. and not allowing them to leave his workshop where they are paid far less than U.S. minimum wage to work in a "training seminar." To the end Mr. Pickle remains oblivious to having done anything but good for "these people." disturbing.

I hope that policy makers will read this book as well as consumers. I don't think most of us want our clothing or our food to be cheaper because slaves made it...labor exploitation even to the point of slavery remains the ugly underbelly of economic development without human rights development around the world. If slavery is okay in India for the GAP for Kids, why shouldn't it be okay for Mr. Pickle in Oklahoma? In fact, the U.N. estimates that up to 20% of India's GNP comes from children ages 5-14....how many of these work for international conglomerates?

Mr. Bowe is right that we need to create global standards for workers, and U.S. corporations who inflate their profits by labor exploitation of children or of slaves in the U.S. or elsewhere in the world deserve to have their brand damaged.

This is a thought-provoking, courageous book and I recommend it to anyone who willing consider what is happening to the most vulnerable workers amidst the consumer and corporate giddiness of so-called free-trade and globalization.

This is a spectacular piece of work with many gifted turns of phrase. The author has done his homework, and melds economic facts and philosophical reflections in a worthy manner. The author opens with a challenge: how should a free people respond to slavery, i.e. should they knowingly buy products and services that are rooted in slavery?

I ordered this book on the strength of the author's appearance on CSPAN BookTV, and this is one of those instances where I think that listening to him talk about the book first is hugely beneficial to appreciating the book. The author, in person (on CSPAN), is funny, intelligent, informative, a really excellent presenter of facts in a coherent manner.

Supreme Court Justice Brandeis is cited in this book: "You can have great concentration of wealth in the hands of a few or you can have democracy. You can't have both." While the author documents slavery, at least 27 million world-wide (not counting the prison-slave population) with 800 million not enslaved but utterly poor going hungry each day, 33 million of them in the USA, his book is a socio-economic ideo-cultural treatise on "whither globalization." His bottom line is clear: if we allow slave labor and sweatshop conditions to undercut each of our homeland industries, we are toast.

The author does something quite special with this book. I am deeply impressed. Since the 1970's I have understood the conflict between multinational corporations and governments, the trade-offs between profits and social value, but it is only recently that my reading has brought forth the sharp battle that will define the 21st Century: the battle between Collective Intelligence (one for all, all for one) and Corruption at all levels of government and business.

The meme "true cost" is the ideological battle line. Also known as the triple bottom line (economic, social, and environmental), it is my view that the ability of my generation to promulgate True Cost information in the next ten years is going to determine what kind of future our children have. The author provides numbers, and I am gripped by the 40 cents paid to the slave laborer for a bucket of tomatos, versus the $12.00 plus paid to the farmer or "organizer/enforcer." The author is eloquent in describing how slave wages have not risen in thirty years, while all else has....

This book is deep, richly textured, a tremendously informative and socially-valuable offering.

Here are a few highlights that stayed with me:

1) US Census statistics are so "delusional and deceptive" that Wall Street investors no longer use them--they commission their own studies.

2) The conditions of slavery and poverty and abuse are so deeply entrenched, and imposed on individual held in isolation from society and the rule of law--when the law is willing to be enforced--that they might as well be on another planet, a slave planet.

3) FBI Special Agents get very high marks for being able to master law enforcement in an illegal immigration environment, but the author speaks of "institutional malfeasance" in how often the FBI transfers people. I have long felt that we need to turn government inside out--we need to mass Latin American specialists across government, military, law enforcement, etc, and we need to start putting people into 10 year tours.

4) It is clear we need a "white hat" side of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), I envision something in which all information they might collect in investigating human rights and other labor violations is firewalled from illigal immigrant status.

5) 911 operators are virtually helpless in responding to foreign langugage calls. I have been saying for years that we need to have an international implementation using Telelanguage.com.

6) The author surprises me with his optimism, his expectation that we can achieve a profound change in attitude across our population, completely boycotting all products and services whose "true cost" include slave labor.

I want to end this laudatory review by pointing readers toward the World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility, the Interra Project, the World Cafe, and the Earth Intelligence Network.

Below I list a few other books that support this one. The first book documented the commoditization of human labor as the beginning of commercialized evil. The rest are increasingly positive about all of us coming together to overcome power and information asymmetries. "Put enough eyes on it, no bug is invisible. That's us: intelligence officers to the poor and the disenfranchised, who in being lifted from slavery, will create infinite revolutionary wealth. We can do this.

The Manufacture Of Evil: Ethics, Evolution, and the Industrial System

The Working Poor: Invisible in America

Nickel and Dimed On (Not) Getting By in America

The Case Against Wal-Mart

Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor

The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central-Eastern Europe

A Power Governments Cannot Suppress

The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All

The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom

Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

The author captures Saipan as it was just a few years back, but much has changed; the garment factories moved to countries with even lower labor costs such as Viet Nam, China and Malaysia. Some of the sewing girls didn't go home for various reasons. Some married locally, some went into karaoke bars to make a living, some are afraid to go home and face the money lenders, and others are hiding out from immigration because they like the easy life style and climate of the Marianas Islands. I don't know much about the other labor exploitations, such as Florida, discussed by the author but he presented the scenarios quite clearly. I'm happy that he wrote this book to bring to the attention of the American people as to what is happening right inside the USA. Good job by John Bowe. These are important issues to discuss.

Having read endless papers and legislation regarding the garment industry in Saipan, I appreciate the equally-valid personal experiences Bowe writes about and his attempt to get to the bottom of such a multi-layered issue.

I've only read the third section (about Saipan) as well as the conclusion so far because it pertained to some research I was doing.

While I can't say much about a book whose greater portion I have yet to read, I will say that in his chapters about Saipan, it isn't terribly obvious which "side" he is on. I find this very refreshing, if not surprising, as it is not typical. Bowe presents the issues (and the situations creating them) facing both workers and employers in Saipan's factories and, while his views on a number of matters are pretty clear, when it comes to the factory workers and bosses he does an impressive job of just telling us what he learned, what he heard, and what he saw, without demonizing either side.

The only thing I didn't like was his tendency to generalize about the various groups of people he talks about (the natives act like this, the foreigners act like that...). However, I can also understand that if he were to delve into the dynamics and details within each sub culture, his book would not only take on an irritating complexity, but it would be hundreds and hundreds of pages as well.

All in all, as far as that third section goes, it's a fantastic book for anyone who is unfamiliar with the situation in Saipan beyond the media attention it has received. I appreciate the insight from someone who took the time to move to Saipan and see firsthand what was going on.

"Nobodies" is a truly shocking book, shocking most for its depiction of the mundane acceptance of slavery by many, even in the contemporary world. It really comes as no surprise that workers are treated poorly. But how poorly? When their work environment is infused with fear, and their health is sacrificed, and their very freedom is taken away, to what degree are we, the American public, complicit in their nightmare?

As the author discusses the notion of slavery, it becomes obvious that we recoil from the word more than the concept itself. No, it's not slavery, because people were paid! It's not slavery because no one was beaten, and the workers joked around with the boss! It's not slavery because they were given time off! Rather, some people have the nerve to assert that these people are being treated well because they were given a place to live and were given the chance to work in America. That, to me, was the most haunting aspect of this book: the sense of entitlement we have that our goods be cheap at any cost, and that other people are sufficiently beneath us that being on American soil alone, even if they are miserably treated, and giving them some cash, even if it's a paltry sum, atones for the mistreatment they suffer.

Bowe paints a detailed picture of three corporate slavery situations, one among migrant laborers for the fruit industry, one among skilled welders, and one among the garment workers (which overlaps with prostitution). In each scenario, he speaks at great length to particular workers, so that we understand who they are and just how human they truly are. We understand their motivation to make money, and their expectation that they will work, not sell their souls, to earn a living. He also details his efforts the reaction of those living nearby to where the workers live and work; to what degree are they comfortable with modern-day slavery? To what degree do they see this as a great opportunity for these people? To what degree do they dehumanize these people and their desire for a family livelihood? Both portraits are worth examining. Ultimately, we are left wondering, to what degree are we like the onlookers, ever insisiting that the enslaved are being liberated by their opportunities here?

I listened to John Bowe also on John Stewart and induced our library to buy his book. I am glad they did. I certainly need to know how my "needs" cause suffering and pain for others. I liked his style because it was precise but thoughtful. He appeared to be deeply involved and affected by what he saw and what he experienced. I especially liked that his objectivity and subjectivity seemed clear to me. He didn't present this issue as if THIS IS THE WAY IT IS and you must believe it. I didn't feel like he forced it down my throat but left it up to me to decide. I liked this line towards the end of the book:

"Our hunger for status overrides our concern for others' dignity. The modern exension of this disregard is the willingness today of First World people to buy things from a global system of production that, we well know, is based on someone, somewhere, getting a raw deal"

I am glad that this author helped to make clear what our consumerism

can mean to others. I would hope that this book would be used by college

professors to help our youth understand some of the realities of our global society.

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