The New York Times in an investigation into some of the 17,000 nail salons that dot large cities and small towns across the United States finds that there is “rampant exploitation of those who toil in the industry. The New York Times interviewed more than 150 nail salon workers and owners, in four languages, and found that a vast majority of workers are paid below minimum wage; sometimes they are not even paid.”
The nail/manicurist industry has long been the subject of investigation by organizations like Restore New York and Equality Now and human rights groups from Boston to London to Ho Chi Minh city. What they have in common is all of these groups are fighting to root out human trafficking.
To that end WGBH is republishing our 2010 examination of human trafficking in the nail industry. It is a small but not insignificant aspect of the rampant—and some would argue inherent— exploitation within an industry that mainly employs new arrived immigrants, largely Asian and Hispanic women, and to a smaller degree, Eastern Europeans.
