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

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 imm

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.

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 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 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!