IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, a fifty-eight-year-old Oaxacan immigrant shows her knees—scarred and swollen from years of picking strawberries. In Vermont, a twenty-four-year-old dairy worker from Chiapas rolls his pants up, revealing knees bruised and painful from long nights of milking and mucking out stalls. Thai berry workers in Scandinavia and women grape pickers in South Africa rub the ache from their limbs every night. In Boston and London, Manila and the Maldives, hotel housekeepers struggle to stand after scrubbing twenty bathrooms on their knees. Their scarred limbs are a bane and a bond.
In Bangladesh, Cambodia, Myanmar, India, Vietnam, and Ethiopia, garment workers have taken to the streets. They are sick from breathing toxic fumes and tired of factory owners who flee to other countries owing workers months of back pay. Hundreds of thousands have joined these protests.
Many of the Cambodian protesters bear a diagonal white scar on their foreheads. Some were beaten by angry foremen who thought they were working too slowly; others had their skulls smashed by rocks—punishment for organizing. Undeterred, these workers—mostly women—rally before imposing government buildings, face off against steely guards, unflinchingly demand their rights. The jagged indentations on their foreheads are combat ribbons, marks of struggle, badges of quiet courage.1
On a hot August day at a conference in Brazil, three young men in their twenties roll their sleeves up. Their arms are scored by burns that have blistered, then healed, leaving darkened scars, symmetrical stripes. They are fast-food workers—from Tampa, Tokyo, and Manila. And each has been branded by the labor they do for McDonald’s. Expected to turn around orders in ninety seconds, they do a dance all day over boiling oil and searing grills. The men have come to Brazil to speak with politicians and with workers from other countries, to share stories, strategize, compare scars. As they speak, each feels a sense of purpose and shared struggle. A new global labor movement is awakening.