My Linh describes her time spent as an outworker in the Australian garment industry as feeling as though “I’ve been jailed”. “That time was very hard, very hard to look after children, to look after my family and no time to do anything [but work]. Just stay home, stay home, no holiday, no nothing,” she says.
My Linh was paid 40c-50c per garment, around $4-$5 an hour. She never got holidays or sick pay for the years she worked at home. She was also never paid any superannuation – and now, in her early 60s, she is feeling the pinch of those years of lost super.
My Linh first found work in the industry in the 80s, in a Melbourne factory, printing fabric for T-shirts. She had arrived in Australia in 1982, as a 20-year-old refugee from South Vietnam, the only one of her family to make the journey. She worked at the factory for five years, but after she got married and had a baby to look after, a friend told her about a job that would mean she could sew clothes at home – “not the whole garment, just some of it” – if she had her own machine.
Speaking to Guardian Australia in English, her second language, My Linh says the idea of being an outworker excited her at first. It meant she could be present for her young family while also making some money. But the enthusiasm soon wore off.
“They pay very cheap,” she says. “They say to me, if I don’t finish, maybe they don’t pay. So I had to work very hard.
Anytime I had time, I work. Even I can’t sleep – I .