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I worked the line at a garment workshop for about ten months, finishing seams mostly, some button work when they needed extra hands on that station. I want to write this calmly because I know a lot of posts about factory work go straight to outrage, and honestly the outrage is deserved, but I think the quieter details tell it better than yelling would.
When I started, the daily quota was reasonable. Not easy, piece rate work never is, you're paid per unit so slow days genuinely hurt your pocket, but manageable if you kept steady hands and didn't take too many bathroom breaks, which itself says something about the job, but let's move past that for now.
Three months in, we got a new order from a bigger client, and management doubled the quota overnight. Not gradually, not with any adjustment period, just a new number taped up on the board on a Monday morning like it was always the plan. When people asked about pay adjustment to match the new pace, the answer was some version of "if you can't keep up, others can," said in front of the whole line, which is its own kind of pressure, the public shaming disguised as a neutral statement.
I watched women who'd worked there for years, way better and faster than me, start skipping lunch just to hit numbers. One woman, older than my mother, developed such bad shoulder pain from the pace that she was popping painkillers by 10am just to make it through a shift. When she brought it up to the line supervisor, she got told to "see how it goes," which is what they said about everything, every single complaint, forever, into eternity, see how it goes.
The workshop itself wasn't dangerous in an obvious way, no exposed wiring or anything I could point to and say "this will kill someone," it was more a slow grind, bad lighting giving people headaches, no real ventilation in a room full of fabric dust, restrooms that were locked and required asking a supervisor for the key like we were children, which for adults doing skilled, exhausting work felt genuinely humiliating in a way I didn't expect to bother me as much as it did.
Pay, after the quota doubled, barely moved even though output per person roughly doubled too. Do that math and you understand pretty quickly why I left. I found another opportunity, still garment adjacent actually, at a smaller operation with fixed hourly pay instead of piece rate, and the difference in how I feel walking into work now is honestly night and day.
I don't think everyone there is a bad person, some of the line supervisors were kind individually, brought snacks sometimes, covered for people when they needed it. But the system itself, the quotas, the piece rate model that punishes any slowdown no matter the reason, that part I can't recommend to anyone. If you're considering this kind of work, ask about the quota history before you sign anything, and ask what happens when it changes. Mine changed once with zero notice and that told me everything I needed to know.
When I started, the daily quota was reasonable. Not easy, piece rate work never is, you're paid per unit so slow days genuinely hurt your pocket, but manageable if you kept steady hands and didn't take too many bathroom breaks, which itself says something about the job, but let's move past that for now.
Three months in, we got a new order from a bigger client, and management doubled the quota overnight. Not gradually, not with any adjustment period, just a new number taped up on the board on a Monday morning like it was always the plan. When people asked about pay adjustment to match the new pace, the answer was some version of "if you can't keep up, others can," said in front of the whole line, which is its own kind of pressure, the public shaming disguised as a neutral statement.
I watched women who'd worked there for years, way better and faster than me, start skipping lunch just to hit numbers. One woman, older than my mother, developed such bad shoulder pain from the pace that she was popping painkillers by 10am just to make it through a shift. When she brought it up to the line supervisor, she got told to "see how it goes," which is what they said about everything, every single complaint, forever, into eternity, see how it goes.
The workshop itself wasn't dangerous in an obvious way, no exposed wiring or anything I could point to and say "this will kill someone," it was more a slow grind, bad lighting giving people headaches, no real ventilation in a room full of fabric dust, restrooms that were locked and required asking a supervisor for the key like we were children, which for adults doing skilled, exhausting work felt genuinely humiliating in a way I didn't expect to bother me as much as it did.
Pay, after the quota doubled, barely moved even though output per person roughly doubled too. Do that math and you understand pretty quickly why I left. I found another opportunity, still garment adjacent actually, at a smaller operation with fixed hourly pay instead of piece rate, and the difference in how I feel walking into work now is honestly night and day.
I don't think everyone there is a bad person, some of the line supervisors were kind individually, brought snacks sometimes, covered for people when they needed it. But the system itself, the quotas, the piece rate model that punishes any slowdown no matter the reason, that part I can't recommend to anyone. If you're considering this kind of work, ask about the quota history before you sign anything, and ask what happens when it changes. Mine changed once with zero notice and that told me everything I needed to know.
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