The Hamlet Fire: A Tragic Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives - Couverture rigide

Simon, Bryant

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1620972387 ISBN 13 : 9781620972380

Editeur : The New Press, 2017

Synopsis

A 'gifted writer' (Chicago Tribune) uses a long forgotten factory fire in small-town North Carolina to show how cut-rate food and labor have become the new American norm. For decades the small, quiet town of Hamlet, North Carolina thrived thanks to the railroad. But by the 1980s, it had become post-industrial backwater, a magnet for businesses looking for cheap labor with little or almost no official oversight. One of these businesses was Imperial Foods, which paid its workers a dollar or so above the minimum wage to stand in pools of freezing water for hours on end, scraping fat off frozen chicken breasts, and fined them if they went to the bathroom too many times during a shift. Then on the morning of September 3, 1991 - the day after Labor Day - this factory that had never been inspected caught fire. Twenty-five workers - mostly single mothers, many of whom were black - perished behind locked doors. Eighty years after the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, industrial disasters were supposed

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Bryant Simon is a professor of history at Temple University. He is the author of Boardwalk of Dreams: Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America, and Everything but the Coffee: Learning About America from Starbucks. His work and commentary have been featured in the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the New Republic, and numerous other outlets. He lives in Philadelphia.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: The New Press
• Date d'édition: 2017
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1620972387
• ISBN 13: 9781620972380
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 1
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible