Firm’s Importing of Workers Probed : Labor: A City of Commerce garment factory got INS approval to bring 16 women from China this spring despite objections from federal labor officials. The state is now investigating the operation.

In a job market teeming with unemployed workers, the Immigration and Naturalization Service permitted a City of Commerce garment factory to import 16 workers from China this spring despite objections from federal labor officials, union leaders and U.S. consular representatives in China.

Winnie Fashions, which imported the women under a temporary guest-worker section of federal immigration law, claimed that it could not find local workers skilled enough to sew Army shirts for a Pentagon contract.

The company’s critics say the firm brought in the women simply because their guest-worker status made them easier to exploit than the Latinas who operate most of the sewing machines in Los Angeles’ garment factories.

On Friday, state investigators armed with warrants searched the factory and the home where the women live, in response to allegations that employees were working 12-hour days six or seven days a week without proper compensation. State labor officials on two occasions this year have fined the company a total of $14,000 for record-keeping violations.

Since their arrival here in May, the 16 women, most in their 20s, have been living in a three-bedroom home, sleeping in bunk beds and walking about half a mile to the factory. The women say they are paid $5 an hour with $66 a month deducted for housing costs.

On Tuesday the INS--which originally allowed the workers to come to the United States over the objection of the Department of Labor--expressed second thoughts.

While refusing to admit that it made a mistake last November when it gave Winnie Fashions permission to bring the workers here for six months, the INS promised to take a harder look at the company’s request for a six-month extension.

“The use of sweatshop practices by manufacturers will not be tolerated,” INS Western Regional Commissioner Ben Davidian said in response to a Tuesday morning press conference by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.

The case has outraged advocates of immigrant workers, who regard it as one of the worst examples to date of how employers can take advantage of U.S. immigration laws and lax government oversight to exploit a docile work force.

State labor officials and garment worker leaders said it was the first time any low-skilled workers other than farm workers were brought in from a foreign country.

INS officials said that based on Winnie Fashion’s application there was no reason to be suspicious. However, the INS had previously rejected bids by Los Angeles firms to import dance-hall hostesses and garment workers. The INS has also had extensive experience with employers who have smuggled workers into the country illegally and then mistreated them.

In 1988, INS officials broke up what they described as a “human brokerage ring” in El Monte in which 86 aliens were allegedly smuggled in from Mexico and “sold” to local employers for $200 to $400 each.

Last April, the owner of a Ventura County flower ranch was charged with civil rights violations after his workers--some of whom said they were smuggled into the country--claimed they were imprisoned behind barbed wire fences and forced to work for sub-minimum wages. The owner denied the charges.

Richard Griffin, an attorney who represents Winnie Fashions, said workers capable of making Army shirts were already employed at $10-per-hour at other firms and not looking for work. The remainder of the local garment work force is too transient or insufficiently trained “to do more complicated skills on a single-needle machine. . . . It’s a very fluid work force,” said Griffin, who also denied allegations of mistreatment.

Nevertheless, Paul Nelson, the Labor Department’s regional certifying officer for alien employment, turned down the China proposal because he considered it drawn up in bad faith.

Nelson said the company intentionally advertised the jobs at a lower wage rate with the state Employment Development Department in order to discourage local applicants.

A Department of Defense spokeswoman familiar with the Pentagon contract said the company’s assertion that it needed sewing machine operators of higher-than-normal skill levels was flatly incorrect.

Alice Callaghan, director of Las Familias del Pueblo, a center for workers in the Los Angeles garment district, said it was absurd to suggest that skilled sewers could not be hired in California at a time when the garment industry is known to be in a slump.

She said about 25 garment workers have asked her where to find work in the last week and a half. “We have families who can’t pay their rent, can’t feed their children, desperate for any kind of work,” she said.

A recent state survey of 147 garment employers in Los Angeles County found that fewer than 12% complained of labor shortages.

Winnie Fashions, whose owners emigrated from Cambodia, Hong Kong and the Philippines, recorded sales of $1.5 million in 1988. The company obtained a Pentagon contract in early 1989 to sew 20,000 Army shirts. The company then petitioned the Labor Department for permission to import workers from Guangdong province in China. The Labor Department said no, but the INS, which has the final say, gave its consent late last year.

In March, the State Department’s consular office in Guangdong wrote a memo to the department’s refugee section in Washington, saying that Winnie Fashion’s proposed wages were far too low and that the employer hoped “to use Chinese labor as an inexpensive substitute for American labor.”

Neighbors on the quiet street where the imported workers live said two other groups of Asian workers had lived in the house since late last year.

After the garment workers union held a press conference outside Winnie Fashions on Tuesday, the owners allowed reporters to briefly interview the Chinese workers through an interpreter. The women said they were working five-day weeks and did not mind paying a housing allowance because the company paid for their food.

Immigrant-worker advocates said the guest-worker section of the immigration law is not the only section that can be used unscrupulously.

In a case several years ago, the owner of a Laguna Beach fast-food restaurant, working with an attorney friend, charged his workers $1,500 each to help them obtain immigration papers--even though their chances of obtaining visas were almost nil, said Nativo V. Lopez, director of Hermanidad Mexicana Nacional, a national mutual-aid group for immigrants based in Santa Ana.

The employer began deducting the legal fees from the workers’ weekly pay check, Nativo said, and even when they realized their applications were doomed, the workers were too afraid of immigration officials to complain.

“More times than not, people tend to follow the bad advice, they pay out the money, then a year, two years pass, and they realize they’ve been taken,” Nativo said.

In another case now under investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor, the owner of a Los Angeles garment factory charged 18 workers $2,500 each in return for filing immigration applications on their behalf, said Rolene Otero, director of enforcement for the Los Angeles office.

In such cases, the employer must convince labor and immigration officials that an American citizen cannot be found with the necessary skills, then advertise the job and show that there are no applicants.

The firm in question sewed women’s dresses, however, making it unlikely that such criteria would be met. Meanwhile, however, workers were allegedly toiling long hours without overtime pay while waiting for their paper work to arrive, Otero said.

Unscrupulous employers “can abuse that person any way they want, including not paying minimum wage, because they know the person’s going to stick around,” Otero said.