Hayden Launches Campaign to Crack Down on Sweatshops

A tearful Santa Ana garment worker Friday joined union organizers, religious leaders and Assemblyman Tom Hayden in launching a campaign to crack down on sweatshops.

“I am here because I want justice,” said Juana Valladares, whose 7- and 10-year-old children helped her sew clothes at home for pay that averaged $1.45 an hour. Valladares, who said she still earns less than the minimum $4.25 hourly wage, said she hopes that the legislation aimed at curbing labor abuses passes “so other people don’t suffer the kind of suffering I went through.”

At a news conference in the California Mart, the unofficial headquarters of the $6-billion-a-year Los Angeles apparel industry, advocates said garment workers--some of whom are children--continue to toil long hours in unsafe conditions for less than the minimum wage. In many cases, they said, the workers do not earn enough to buy the clothes they produce.

“We are here to challenge the rich and powerful garment industry to take responsibility for the conditions in the sweatshops you see right down the road,” said Steve Nutter, regional director of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.

However, Joe Rodriguez, executive director of the Garment Contractors Assn. of Southern California, complained that the apparel industry “is being treated like a whipping boy for politicians.”

Hayden, a Santa Monica Democrat who is chairman of the Assembly Committee on Labor and Education, filed two bills Friday aimed at ending labor and safety violations in the garment industry. He said the plight of the impoverished workers amid the opulence of fashion-conscious Los Angeles is “not just a tale of two cities but really a tale of two centuries.”

“L.A. is on the cutting edge of high technology and modern communications, yet the heart of L.A. is filled with people who work in 19th-Century conditions that would be unbelievable to the average American.”

Hayden’s first bill, filed in Sacramento, would make manufacturers jointly liable for any labor abuses perpetrated by the hundreds of smaller businesses that sew their clothing.

Among other things, it would protect workers against “stitch and ditch” sewing contractors who underpay their workers or go out of business without paying at all.

Valladares was the victim of such an operation. In a raid last summer, federal labor inspectors found that the Santa Ana sweatshop that had employed her grossly underpaid its workers and had given piece work to Valladares and others to sew at home, a violation of state and federal laws.

The sweatshop’s owner ultimately signed a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Labor, agreeing to repay Valladares and her children $22,700 in minimum wages and overtime pay for nine months of work. The shop has closed its doors, however, and the family has received only a small fraction of the money.

Had the Hayden bill been law at the time, Valladares would have been able to collect the money from the large Los Angeles junior sportswear manufacturer whose clothing she had sewn.

The joint liability bill is expected to encounter stiff opposition from manufacturers, who say they cannot police the labor practices of the independent businesses who sew for them. Manufacturers have also argued that the state should enforce existing labor laws before passing new ones.

Rodriguez, contacted after the press conference, rated the bill’s chances of becoming law as “slim to none.”

He said that although the bill is aimed at manufacturers, the contractors are also likely to oppose it because they would see it as more interference in an industry that is already is over-regulated.

However, the Rev. John Simmons, chairman of the Citizens Committee to Help Apparel Workers, said the vast majority of law-abiding manufacturers should support the bill if they want to end abuses that have given the industry a black eye.

The Citizens Committee, which is composed of three Los Angeles city officials, labor activists and a number of religious leaders, will try to build support for the bill by contacting religious groups around the state, Simmons said. He said the group will plug the bill with a simple moral appeal: “You don’t have the right to live off another person who can’t do anything about it while you live high off the hog.”

Also voicing support for the effort Friday was Fran Bernstein, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, which has represented garment workers in claims against their employers.

Rolene Otero, who has spearheaded a crackdown on sweatshops in Orange County for the U.S. Department of Labor’s wage and hour division in Santa Ana, said the bill would “go a long way toward relieving some of the miserable violations in the industry.” She declined to comment on whether the federal government should adopt similar legislation.

(Women For:, a bipartisan women’s political action group that has 500 members in Orange County, has invited Otero to speak on the problems of garment workers March 8 at the Tustin Library. The group will decide then whether to take a stand on the Hayden bill, said Lee Winocur, a member of group’s board of directors.)

Hayden said his second bill was prompted by the Dec. 7 fire in Los Angeles that left 58 garment workers injured. The fire was at a shop that had been cited for numerous safety violations the year before. Sixteen workers had to be plucked from the rooftop by helicopter. The fire is believed to have started in a sixth-floor storage room stuffed with material used to produce artificial mink fur.

Hayden said 37 other Los Angeles buildings where garments are made have not corrected safety violations, and he warned that the city could see a fire like the Shirtwaist Triangle blaze that killed 146 garment workers in New York in 1911.

His bill would require contractors to learn about fire safety as part of the state licensing process; require fire and labor inspectors to inform one another of their suspicions of workplace violations, and set deadlines for correcting unsafe conditions.