Short answers, pulled from the story.
Piece work is a form of employment where a worker is paid a fixed rate for each unit produced or action completed, regardless of the time taken. Employers set a piece rate designed to ensure workers earn at least the minimum wage; if actual earnings fall short, the employer must cover the difference under laws such as the US Fair Labor Standards Act.
The term piece work first appeared in writing around the year 1549, and the practice traces back to the guild system of the Commercial Revolution. Masters began sending apprentices home with individual pieces to finish, finding it easier to count finished units than to track hours for an hourly wage.
Frederick Winslow Taylor was one of the main champions of piece rate pay in the late 19th century. He introduced the "differential piece rate system," published in papers in 1895, which used measured productivity targets to set rates, rewarding those who met the standard and penalizing those who did not.
Sweatshops arose in mid-19th-century Britain from the sweating system, where garment assembly was distributed among lower-paid workers paid by the piece. Factories concentrating these workers at individual machines became known as sweatshops; today the term refers broadly to poor conditions and low pay, whether workers are paid by piece or by the hour.
No. The Garment Worker Protection Act banned piece work in California's garment industry, effective the 1st of January 2022. The law also made fashion brands liable for resulting fines, and as of 2025 some employers were still evading it through fake time clocks and other means.
UK law requires a control trial to measure the average output of equivalent workers. That average is divided by 1.2 to set the agreed figure, and the piece rate is then fixed so that a worker producing at the average pace earns at least the minimum wage per hour.