Undercover Reporting

IV-"Homework: The Alien’s Secret Support System" Merle Linda Wolin - Los Angeles Herald-Examiner

No one seemed to know how much garment industry homework is done in Los Angeles.  And I had no idea how work illegally filters down to homes from the contractors or manufacturers.  So at the end of May, I decided to find out on the streets.  I had a few preconcieved notions about homework.  In the Mendoza shop where I worked in early May, I witnessed trusted sewing machine operators carry out unfinished blouses stuffed in large, green plastic garbage bags, presumably to be finished later at home.  For nine days, from 8 AM to 5 PM, I walked the residential streets of the city, from Central Los Angeles to Sunland in the north, to Wilmington, the "Heart of the Harbor," to El Monte on the east.  I chose streets where it seemed working-class and poor people lived; man neighborhoods were largely Spanish-speaking.

Los Angeles Herald-Examiner  1981-01-18