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Though Ehrenreich still sees hope and a strong drive to succeed within this community, she fears a future uprising as people "are bound to tire of getting so little in return and to demand to be paid what they're worth. There'll be a lot of anger when that day comes, and strikes and disruption."

the work they perform is back-breaking, the pay is low, and job security is nonexistent. As one of the author's coworkers says about corporations, "They don't cut you no slack. You give and you give, and they take."

Ehrenreich earned just over $1,000 per month. After paying for basic needs, however, she was left with $22. In addition to being low-paying, the two jobs required workers to be on their feet all day, with breaks only for restroom use, no facilities for lunch, and no health or retirement benefits.

   Pizza has its pitfalls also, ranging from 9 to 40 grams of fat per slice depending on the toppings you choose. While sausage pizza is a source of protein, calcium, and complex carbohydrates, just two slices give you more fat than you should have all day.

They’re angry at the Culinary Union for not coming to the rescue by organizing them.

They complained of poor work conditions and having to work through their breaks and lunch hours to complete their quotas of cleaned rooms.

Culinary Secretary-Treasurer D. Taylor said the union has maintained a long-standing policy of avoiding organizing drives at casinos whose fates are uncertain, and that is the case with Imperial Palace. “It would be somewhat disingenuous to pick up a place and then see it close,” Taylor said. “The workers are there and then there’s not much you can do. Several thousand workers we represent would have no place to go.”

Although the Dust Bowl included many Great Plains states, the migrants were generically known as "Okies," referring to the approximately 20 percent who were from Oklahoma. The migrants represented in Voices from the Dust Bowl came primarily from Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. Most were of Anglo-American descent with family and cultural roots in the poor rural South.

Voices from the Dust Bowl illustrates certain universals of human experience: the trauma of dislocation from one's roots and homeplace; the tenacity of a community's shared culture; and the solidarity within and friction among folk groups. Such intergroup tension is further illustrated in this presentation by contemporary urban journalists' portrayals of rural life, California farmers' attitudes toward both Mexican and "Okie" workers, and discriminatory attitudes toward migrant workers in general.

A US federal agency has filed lawsuits over the unequal treatment of more than 500 migrant workers from India brought into the country to work at shipyards in Mississipi and Texas, and over 200 Thai farm labourers brought in to work in Hawaii and Washington state.

"They were nickeled and dimed to the point where they really didn't have any pay," said Anna Park, regional attorney for the EEOC Los Angeles office.

The EEOC says that some of the workers were forced to live in crowded conditions, and their quarters were infested with rats and insects.

Human Rights Watch found that while many American companies use weak US laws to stop workers from organizing, the retail giant stands out for the sheer magnitude and aggressiveness of its anti-union apparatus.

Wal-Mart workers have virtually no chance to organize because they’re up against unfair US labor laws and a giant company that will do just about anything to keep unions out,” said Carol Pier, senior researcher on labor rights and trade for Human Rights Watch. “That one-two punch devastates workers’ right to form and join unions.”

Wal-Mart’s relentless anti-union drumbeat creates a climate of fear at its US stores. Many workers are convinced that they will suffer dire consequences if they form a union, in part because they do not hear pro-union views. Many are also afraid that if they defy their powerful employer by organizing, they could face retaliation, even firing.

As I'm checking out, the elderly man in front of me says to the young woman running the register: "It's so sad to see your favorite store like this." She just shrugs.

A media capital Jonquière is not. And yet Wal-Mart's abandonment of this north Quebec outpost in the spring of 2005 made news from Tokyo to São Paulo as an object lesson in the lengths to which America's largest company will go to throttle the threat of unionization. Wal-Mart closed its store here a few months after it was certified by the Quebec government as the only unionized Wal-Mart in North America.

Discretion was essential, for they knew that there were workers who either truly liked their jobs without benefit of a union or were so fearful of losing them that they would oppose unionization.

'That was the biggest - and nastiest - surprise,' she says. 'Discovering how big an atmosphere of suspicion there was, how much surveillance we were under. First, there were the drug and personality tests, then the endless rules. At Wal-Mart, we were not even allowed to say "damn".' She touches the discreet gold hoops in her ears. 'These would have been way too big for Wal-Mart. All that was a shock and it got to me

As she soon discovered, turnover in the low-wage world is so fast that companies simply use people up - literally working them until their backs give up the ghost or their knees buckle beneath them - and then spit them out. The poor are unlikely to have health insurance or pensions, so there is no prospect of retirement.

I thought he was going to say he was paying out so much in labour it was killing him. In fact, he admitted that everything I'd said was true. He was embarrassed and apologised. So I said: "Why don't you raise the wages?" But he shrugged that off.' Their lattes drunk, the only concession she won from him was that he would clean the employee rest room