Garment Factories Thrive on Immigrant Labor : Exploitation: Workers include teen-agers and younger children toiling in often-unsafe conditions for less than the legal minimum wage of $4.30.

Foil paper is taped over the shop’s windows on a Queens side street. There is no business sign, but the clatter of sewing machines filters through the closed door.

Inside, five Asian women piece together flower-print dresses. Down in the cellar, a teen-age Latina irons the outfits and adds finishing touches. Piles of material are shoved back by the furnace. The ceiling is a tangle of electrical cords and light bulbs. Steam from the iron adds to the heat.

Four inspectors, including one who speaks Chinese and another who speaks Spanish, walk though the front door.

“What’s the problem? What’s the problem?” cries the Korean-born owner racing down the steps.

“Typical,” said Joseph Halik, one of 18 state inspectors assigned to monitor the garment industry. “You have child labor, fire violations, wage violations. You see it everywhere.”

Decades after labor reforms wiped out so-called sweatshop factories, some garment shops are throwbacks to another time, experts and officials say.

In New York, the hub of the U.S. “needle trade,” state inspectors report an apparent rise in the number of illegal shops--dingy and dangerous places where elderly workers may toil alongside school-age children for wages well below the $4.30-an-hour legal minimum.

Some of the problems are traced to low-paid foreign competition, which has reduced New York’s garment work force to about 100,000 from more than 150,000 in the late ‘70s. But the stumbling U.S. economy also has pushed clothing retailers and designers to cut costs, and garment-making shops have followed suit by dropping wages and increasing hours, officials said.

And those who work in illegal shops--including many illegal immigrants--are often too scared or unfamiliar with the city to report violations, say inspectors.

“There’s a word for what’s going on: greed,” said Hugh McDaid, head of the State Labor Department’s Apparel Industry Task Force. “Everyone is trying to squeeze a little extra money and it trickles down to the workers, who pay the price in low wages and long hours.”

McDaid estimates there are up to 6,000 garment makers in New York, including at least 2,000 unlicensed shops in lofts, back rooms and garages. The remaining 4,000 are registered with the state and offer at least minimum wage, he said.

Halik said most of the sweatshops have opened since 1985 in Queens and Brooklyn, where many immigrants live. Some shops may have several generations of workers from the same family, he said.

“The quest for cheap labor knows no bounds,” said Jeffrey Newman, executive director of the New York-based National Child Labor Committee. “There are 6-, 7- and 8-year-olds out there sweeping floors and sewing on buttons.”

In more than 5,000 investigations since 1987, the task force has uncovered about 2,100 unregistered shops and more than 600 child labor violations, according to state records. There have been 500 minimum-wage violations and about 2,000 reports of unsafe working conditions.

Each violation carries a maximum $1,000 fine.

“But the bosses just close up, move down the block and open under a different name. As long as there is work, they’ll find a way to stay open,” said task force supervisor Charles DeSiervo.

The inspectors visit another shop located over a billiard hall. About 50 workers, mostly Asian women, are hunched over sewing machines.

Some wrap their noses with cloth to protect against breathing lint and dust. In another section, young men cut material and iron finished garments--women’s suits and children’s outfits. Some carry the Jordache label.

DeSiervo finds copies of pay checks ranging from about $250 to $420. None of the time-clock cards have been punched on this day.

“Who knows what this means?” said DeSiervo, waving the copies. “This could be for 100 hours or for more than one worker. Sometimes families work a machine 24 hours a day in shifts.”

One worker, an illegal alien from the Dominican Republic who will not give her name, says she earns $300 a week for about 70 hours at the machine.

“If you have no green card, where are you going to work? I don’t know,” she says.

Inspectors find 14- and 15-year-olds working in violation of laws prohibiting those under 16 from working in factories.

Often, the inspectors make reference to the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Co. fire in New York, which killed 146 workers.

“Don’t think it can’t happen again,” said DeSiervo. “I know it can.”

Much of the men’s clothing sold in the United States is made overseas, but many women’s and children’s fashions are still made in New York or in the emerging garment centers of Los Angeles or El Paso, Tex.

Some designers disagree that illegal shops have taken a significant amount of business from the established makers.

“Most manufacturers go with the people they’ve worked with for years and they trust,” said Eli Elias, president of the New York Apparel Manufacturer’s Assn. “These so-called sweatshops are too risky.”

Task force inspectors, however, say they have noticed no slowdown this year in the work at the illegal shops. Some operate around the clock to meet spring deadlines.

But hard work doesn’t always guarantee pay, say activists.

Wing Lam, program director of the Chinese Staff and Workers Assn., said he’s seen a trend among Chinatown shops to close up and leave workers without paychecks.

“They promise that the money is coming and just to wait,” he said. “Then they close up. A few months later, the open up under a different name and do the same thing all over again.”

Lam’s group and others have called for reforms to make designers more liable for the conditions in garment shops.

The International Ladies Garment Workers Union, which represents about 2,000 garment shops in New York, seeks to sign designers to pacts to use only union garment shops and contribute to pension funds and health benefits, said Susan Cowell, a union vice president.