Assembly Acts to Crack Down on Sweatshops

The Assembly on Monday approved a bill aimed at cracking down on the latest proliferation of garment industry sweatshops in Orange and Los Angeles counties by making designer-name garment houses responsible for child labor and overtime abuses committed by their independent suppliers.

The bill, sponsored by Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-West Los Angeles), was introduced in March after a series of articles in The Times revealed that many independent contractors still run sweatshops paying as little as $1.45 an hour to children and immigrants, including Southeast Asians relocating to such Orange County communities as Garden Grove, Santa Ana and Westminster.

Assemblyman Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove), who represents those areas, joined his Republican colleagues in voting against the bill on Monday, but a Democratic majority gave Hayden’s measure the 44-30 margin needed to pass the lower house and be sent to the Senate for consideration.

Under provisions of the bill, name-brand clothing manufacturers would be held “jointly liable” for labor and safety violations committed by their subcontractors, many of whom pay immigrant children and women by the piece of clothing sewn in their homes or in crowded, fire-prone shops. Depending on the complexity of the job and the speed of the stitcher, the piece rate often translates into less than the California minimum wage of $4.25 an hour.

In the past, these independent jobbers have avoided paying fines by simply folding their operations when caught and cited by state labor officials, leaving many of the exploited workers stranded even without their minimum wages. But Hayden’s bill would change that by placing the burden of the fines and back pay on the manufacturers, who hired the independent jobbers in the first place.

Hayden and supporters of the bill--the California Labor Federation and the International Ladies’ Garments Workers’ Union--say the change is necessary because of widespread labor abuses.

“This is an industry where there’s a lot of documented lawlessness--child-labor violations, unsafe working conditions, fire hazards, people not getting paid what they deserve,” Hayden said. “And it’s the very structure of the industry that’s out of control.

“This (the bill) is to make the manufacturer liable for the rampant lawlessness instead of what they now do, which is reap the benefit but take none of the burden,” he said.

Hayden added that his bill was intended to close a “gaping hole” in the garment-manufacturing registration law of 1980, which was enacted after reports of widespread labor abuses in the industry.

The bill received support from Assemblywoman Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Los Angeles), whose district encompasses the downtown Los Angeles garment district. “On any given day, you can go to any one of these buildings and see the most deplorable working conditions imaginable,” she said, adding that some shops have structural problems, blocked exits and piles of flammable materials.

But Pringle, who said he was equally opposed to the labor abuses, maintained that the Hayden bill would place an inappropriate burden on the manufacturers, who cannot be assumed to know about the alleged infractions of their subcontractors.

“This is not where the person who makes the contract specifically knows that the independent contractor is breaking the laws,” he argued.

“If somebody is doing something wrong, they should be punished for it and not everybody up and down the line,” Pringle added.

Other Orange County legislators voting against Hayden’s bill were Doris Allen (R-Cypress); Dennis Brown (R-Los Alamitos); Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach); Robert C. Frazee (R-Carlsbad); Nolan Frizzelle (R-Huntington Beach); Ross Johnson (R-La Habra) and John R. Lewis (R-Orange).

NEXT STEP

Hayden’s bill now goes to the Senate, where it will be examined by a committee and then the full upper house. If the bill is amended, it will be sent back to the Assembly for agreement before being forwarded to Gov. George Deukmejian, who can either veto it or sign the measure into law. ‘We’re going to have to work to get the governor’s attention on this, to show it is good for responsible businesses and the sort of thing that is overdue,’ Hayden has said.