Sarah Gonzalez

There has been an effort in California where Maria and half of all U.S.

garment workers are to raise the pay.

But the thing about making clothes is it has historically gone somewhere else where you can pay workers less.

That's after the break.

So we know that Maria gets paid by the piece.

But here's how they add it up.

Every day when Maria walks into work, she gets bundles of clothes that need trimming sorted by size.

And Maria keeps track of the cut, the style, and the number of pieces in a notebook, and then figures out her total pay at the end of the week.

And the mister or missus will do the same accounting on their end.

And sometimes their math might be five, six dollars short, and Maria will be like, no, no, no, check your math again.

If you do your math right, you'll see that it's true.

Maria does feel like she has to fight for every dollar she gets.

Working a regular, average day where the garments she's working on is not so easy and not so hard, Maria might do like 500 pieces at 15 cents a piece.

So $75 a day.

¿Y te pagan en cash?

Sí, claro, en cash.

Working full time, she could make $375 a week, $1,500 a month.

If Maria was making the minimum wage in California, though, she'd make $2,640 a month.

When you convert piece rate pay to hourly wages, it can add up to much less than the minimum wage.

According to a Department of Labor survey of garment workers in Southern California, some workers made as little as $1.58 an hour.