2016届高考英语高分冲刺特训听力素材3（word版）12_高考复习指南

2016届高考英语高分冲刺特训听力素材3（word版）12

　　"The bosses and the soldout unions are always pressuring the women who work here, threatening them, saying that they're going to close down the business, but that if they continue to organize, one day something is going to happen to their family. And then they start firing people. They offer them money to turn in the ones who are organizing, to tell them who the leaders are."

　　Manuela Purras is a seamstress who was fired in May for organizing the thirty-five women at the factory where she had worked for thirteen years. Today she's operating a small business on the edge of the empty paved lot where the union has its offices in temporary quarters provided by the municipal government. Here, alongside a busy thoroughfare, Manuela spends her days cooking tacos and selling them to passers-by to make a living until she can go back to work. The union is fighting to get Manuela and her co-workers reinstated in their jobs. Manuela Purras:

　　"We've joined the union mostly because we want to see improvements in our working conditions. I think that it will help us. Well, economically it is helping us, and legally too, because at least until now it's not one of those soldout unions."

　　The garment workers still have an uphill battle to fight, to secure a decent living for themselves and their children. In the year since the earthquake, they've made important strides in assuring that they get a fair shake. University students, lawyers and feminists have joined the seamstresses in their fight to set new terms at the work place. The creation of new organizations, like cooperatives and unions, and the forging of new alliances between educated elites and popular groups may be the most lasting legacy wrought from the devastation left by the earthquake. For National Public Radio, this is Lucie Conger in Mexico City.