L.A. Protest Focuses on Labor Woes in Texas City

Lunch-hour shoppers who streamed into the downtown Broadway Plaza mall found their paths blocked Thursday by a loud, colorful demonstration that served as a lesson in the messy complexities of the garment industry.

Passersby could be forgiven if the scene didn’t make much immediate sense.

The tangled relationships between garment manufacturers, the shops they contract with to produce the clothes and the retail outlets that sell the items have befuddled regulators and reformers for decades.

What occurred Thursday was a microcosm: A prolonged, emotional labor dispute in the El Paso garment manufacturing industry spilled into Broadway Plaza.

Shoppers were forced to pick their way around a demonstration outside an outlet of Judy’s, a clothing chain carrying merchandise targeted for young women.

About two dozen members of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, using picket signs, music and guerrilla theater, yelled chants urging a boycott of Judy’s.

Among the clothing labels Judy’s carries are “Total Energy” and “Maximum Energy,” sold by Los Angeles-based D.C.B. Apparel.

D.C.B. farms out most of its manufacturing to contractors in the El Paso area, where an estimated 15,000 garment workers are employed near the Mexican border.

An El Paso women’s group has spent the past year attempting to call attention to what it describes as sweatshop-like conditions in many contractors’ factories.

The biggest complaint is that contractors routinely refuse to pay workers for weeks or months of labor, and keep them hanging on by threatening to fold up if the workers complain to authorities.

Late last year, the Labor Department estimated that El Paso garment contractors owed $85,000 in back pay to about 1,000 workers.

Two weeks ago, garment workers struck one of D.C.B.’s prime El Paso contractors, Sonia’s, and occupied the factory to protest thousands of dollars in unpaid wages--money that Sonia’s admits is owed. They demanded repayment from D.C.B.

D.C.B.’s president, Arthur Bangle, said in an interview Thursday that he feels no obligation to make up for Sonia’s unpaid wages, but has nevertheless paid $5,000 of the owed money to the workers, and has loaned Sonia’s owner substantially more in order to keep the contractor in business.

He said characterizations of Sonia’s and other D.C.B. contractors as “sweatshops” are inaccurate.

Critics of the industry have claimed for years that it can be reformed only if manufacturers such as D.C.B. are forced to assume liability for the sins of their contractors. The California Legislature passed a bill requiring such responsibility last year, but then-Gov. George Deukmejian vetoed it.

Lacking such legal leverage, the union Thursday tried to put more pressure on D.C.B. by launching a boycott of Judy’s. It demanded that the 70-store, Van Nuys-based chain, stop carrying clothes with D.C.B.’s labels until D.C.B. satisfies demands of El Paso garment workers.

Officials of Judy’s did not return phone calls seeking comment.

In another attempt to pressure D.C.B., the union last week tipped off state labor officials about alleged violations in the downtown Los Angeles plant where D.C.B. makes the samples of garments that are manufactured in El Paso. The state responded by citing the company for several violations, including operating without a state license or state workmen’s compensation insurance.

Bangle said he has shut the Los Angeles shop until he is in compliance, and is appealing some of the citations.

A D.C.B. attorney in El Paso said Thursday’s demonstration should more properly be viewed as part of a campaign by the garment workers union to force Bangle to unilaterally recognize the union as bargaining agent for D.C.B.’s 30 El Paso employees without a National Labor Relations Board election.

Steven Nutter, the union’s regional director, said the union had not demanded recognition and is more interested in “human rights” in El Paso and Los Angeles.