Survey of Garment Industry Finds Rampant Labor Abuse : Workplace: The random inspections turn up numerous violations of state and federal laws.

In a groundbreaking survey of workplace abuses, state and federal inspectors uncovered rampant violations of safety and labor laws among California garment makers, including cases of bosses locking fire exits and children as young as 13 working nine-hour days.

The study, released Thursday in Los Angeles, is based on random inspections this year of 69 garment manufacturers and contractors. The survey found that all but two of the firms were breaking either federal or state laws or both.

“This is an industry that ignores the law,” said Maria Echaveste, the Labor Department enforcement chief for minimum-wage and overtime violations.

The statewide study--which covered garment manufacturers from San Diego to the Bay Area to Stockton--found the most widespread abuses in Los Angeles and Orange counties, which have the state’s biggest concentration of garment sewing and fabric cutting shops.

State and federal authorities said the survey marks the first time government officials have taken a random look at an industry to determine the severity of its workplace safety and labor law abuses. They said they singled out the California garment manufacturing industry because of its size and rogue reputation.

The most serious violations were the use of child labor at two shops and about 10 instances in which workers were at risk of being trapped inside in the event of a fire because doors were either locked or blocked. In all, more than a third of the 69 firms were said to have serious safety problems.

Officials said their discovery of garment shops with locked or blocked exits brought to mind such tragedies as the 1991 fire at the Imperial Food Products chicken-processing plant in North Carolina, where 25 people were killed after being trapped inside the building.

Also, officials said, the garment shops routinely failed to pay minimum wage and overtime. In one instance, a contractor paid as little as $3 an hour, far below the $4.25-an-hour federal standard.

“If our survey results are indicative of the industry as a whole, then garment workers currently working in the sewing shops are owed tens of millions in back wages,” said William Buhl, San Francisco-based regional administrator of the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division.

At the same time, at a number of the firms inspectors found only record-keeping problems or minor safety violations that did not pose serious risks to workers.

Bernard Lax, president of the trade group Coalition of Apparel Industries in California, countered that government officials “are painting the whole industry with the same brush, but I do think there are a lot of people who obey the law.”

Lax said he had not seen the survey, but he questioned whether it is truly a random sampling of the industry. He also complained that while industry leaders want to clean up abuses, government officials have refused to work with them.

“Their attitude is they’re going to go on their own agenda and do what they’re going to do without any industry input,” Lax said.

Among the 69 firms in the survey, seven were ordered closed by authorities because they failed to buy workers’ compensation insurance to cover employees hurt on the job. In addition, penalties totaling $1.14 million were imposed.

Officials said they will use the study’s findings to judge the effectiveness of future efforts to crack down on apparel industry sweatshops, the worst of which tend to be small contractors. Echaveste said one of the key enforcement strategies will be to pressure the contractors’ customers: big and often well-known garment marketers and manufacturers.

To that end, she said she plans to expand use of a 1938 law known as the “hot goods” statute, which bars interstate transport of goods made at companies that violate federal labor laws. In a major precedent in 1992, the Labor Department investigated Guess Inc., Southern California’s biggest apparel firm, under the hot goods statute and extracted an agreement making the company responsible for its contractors’ labor practices.

California Labor Commissioner Victoria Bradshaw, while also promising stepped-up enforcement, said the problems of the industry will persist until the flow of illegal immigrants to the state is curbed. She said that few undocumented workers who work in the industry file complaints against abusive employers for fear their immigration status will be discovered.

“We have a whole pool of people who are very vulnerable” to abuse, Bradshaw said.

Officials contended that, notwithstanding the severity and frequency of violations found in the survey, there was some good news in the results.

For instance, they noted that a casual, non-random survey of garment firms in 1992 found that about 80% were failing to pay the minimum wage over proper overtime pay. By comparison, the survey released Thursday showed that 50% violated minimum-wage rules and 68% violated overtime requirements.

However, officials acknowledged that despite their efforts to ensure a random sampling of apparel firms, the biggest potential offenders--firms operating completely underground and not paying taxes--may have been under-represented in the survey.

The study was conducted under the Targeted Industries Partnership Program, an educational and enforcement program involving the Labor Department and California’s divisions of Labor Standard Enforcement and Occupational Safety and Health.

Workplace Abuses

In a recent survey of 69 California garment manufacturers and contractors chosen at random, investigators uncovered rampant violations of safety and labor laws. The following figures reflect the percentages of companies found to be violating the law.

Type of violations found: Health and safety: 92.8% Record-keeping: 72.5% Overtime: 68.1% Minimum wage: 50.7% Cash payments: 30.4% Illegal work at home: 14.5% Child labor: 2.9% *

Violation facts:

* Employers that were investigated had an average of 4.17 violations each.

* On average, employers were found to owe $218.84 in back wages per employee for the period covering the 90 days preceding the investigation.

Source: Labor Department