Does anybody remember sweatshops?

You probably missed it, but labor inspectors visited 37 garment factories a couple of weeks back and closed 30 of them for wage and labor violations. The sweeps were conducted in L.A., Torrance, Riverside and San Bernardino counties and resulted in $969,850 in fines being issued - a paltry sum considering that the infractions included underpayment of overtime, not paying minimum wage, child labor and not carrying workers-compensation insurance. In other words, these are not parking infractions. But Christina Chung, a senior staff attorney for the Los Angeles–based Asian-Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California, told California Apparel News that this kind of sweep rarely results in workers receiving unpaid wages. A spokesman for the Economic and Employment Enforcement Coalition, a state task force that coordinated the sweep, said that workers eventually receive unpaid wages, "but in all fairness, it does take time."

The Apparel News was the only publication I saw that made note of the raids, which got me thinking about Nancy Cleeland's lament in the Huffington Post about the LAT's inability - or perhaps unwillingness - to cover what she calls "economic justice." Cleeland, who just took the paper's buyout, sees "a Milton Friedman-inspired belief in free markets and the idea that poverty is proof of personal failure, not systemic failure."

In Los Angeles, the underground economy is growing faster than the legitimate one, which means more exploited workers, greater economic polarization, and a diminishing quality of life for everyone who lives here. True, it's harder to capture those kinds of stories than to scan divorce files and lawsuits. But over time, solid reporting on the economic life of Los Angeles could bring distinction and credibility to the Times. It also holds tremendous potential for interacting with readers. And, above all, it's important. In a way, the Times created my obsession for economic and class issues by sending me into low-wage Los Angeles as part of a 1998 initiative to increase coverage of Latinos. I was a seasoned journalist with lots of experience in Third World countries. Still, the level of exploitation I saw shocked me. Illegal immigrants, in particular, had no rights. In a range of industries, including manufacturing and retail, they were routinely underpaid and fired after any attempt to assert rights or ask for higher wages. That disregard for workers spread up the chain of regional jobs, just as a crash in subprime home loans eventually lowers the entire real estate market. The same is happening to various degrees across the country.