commercialappeal.com
Staffing Agencies used by Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn and Technicolor Home Entertainment Services to employ illegal aliens in Memphis, Tennessee:
Manpower Staffing Agency
ASAP Staffing Services
Select Staffing of Santa Barbara, California
MEMPHIS, Tennessee -- Williams-Sonoma, a high-end retailer of everything from candlesticks to mahogany dining tables, produced $3.7 billion in sales last year. Christina Arce, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, says she helped generate some of that revenue.
For years, Arce says, her life revolved around her job at one of Memphis' huge warehouses -- sewing monograms onto backpacks, sheets, pillowcases and other goods for Williams-Sonoma.
Most workers in the monogram department, Arce asserts, were Hispanic immigrants sent by a staffing agency -- just like she was.
"Fortunately for them," Arce said, "we're the workforce that's bringing Williams forward."
Battalions of immigrants from Mexico and central America are an unseen force at the bottom rungs of the Memphis area's most important industry, distribution. They're participating in a sector that's booming as increased international trade has led big corporations to set up mega-warehouses here to distribute goods nationwide.
Posted by tyne at October 21, 2007