Garment Gumshoes : State, U.S. Agents to Step Up Hunt for Labor Violations in Booming L.A. Clothing Industry, Despite Accord With Firms

Overbearing bosses in Los Angeles’ garment industry often get hot under the collar when Howard Hernandez tries to look out for the little guy.

Hernandez, along with other investigators for the state Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, is a watchdog for the working poor who toil in garment production warehouses across the city, people for whom a decent wage is more dream than rock-bottom reality--skilled and unskilled laborers often forced to work hours of unpaid overtime under sometimes treacherous conditions.

“These are real people,” said the 15-year deputy labor commissioner. “They’re fathers, mothers and family breadwinners who work hard for their pay.”

Decades after labor reforms supposedly wiped out so-called clothing sweatshops, some garment companies remain throwbacks to another time. Investigators say conditions in many garment factories run from “primitive to god-awful,” with cases of bosses locking fire exits and children as young as 13 working nine-hour days.

After local garment manufacturers last month signed an agreement with federal Labor Department officials to begin policing their own industry, Hernandez knew his job was going to be more important than ever. Rather than relaxing, he and the other investigators are ready to step up enforcement.

Under the new Compliance Alliance, private police hired by manufacturers are to assist government labor investigators by auditing contractors and identifying shops that break laws on minimum wage, overtime pay and child labor.

For Hernandez, the agreement is “like letting a few foxes guard the henhouse.”

He is suspicious of this new enforcement arm, worrying that the ranks of the private industry police will include former state and federal labor agents paid to point out legal loopholes, not expose violations.

The concerns are timely: In the last five years, the local garment-making business has tripled to become an $8-billion-a-year industry--the largest of its kind in the nation. Outstripping even New York City, the industry employs more than 150,000 workers through its manufacturers and contractors.

And as business booms, labor abuse grows along with it.

“In an industry this large, you’re going to have problems if you completely abdicate enforcement,” said Jose Millan, assistant chief of the California Labor Commission. “You have to stay aggressive with these people. There’s just no substitute for that.”

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The wage investigators are out to protect people such as Luis Diaz, 25. For $4.25 an hour, the father of two makes his living fashioning women’s clothing from spools of cloth for JB America Inc., a South-Central firm supplying such well-known clothing outlets as Sears, Miller’s Outpost, Broadway, Mervyn’s and Wet Seal.

Recently, Hernandez and a handful of investigators launched a surprise inspection of the windowless factory where Diaz labors, often six days a week. Spawned by a letter from an underpaid employee, the raid was part of a program in which state and federal authorities pool resources to enforce labor laws in the garment and agriculture industries.

The two-hour sting, resulting in $20,000 in fines for violations including illegal cash payments and unpaid overtime, brought a nervous smile to Diaz’s face.

“In the end,” he said, motioning to other workers, “it makes things better for us.”

Garment makers claim that abuses--though severe--do not occur industrywide.

“Not all manufacturers are hoodlums trying to circumvent the law,” said Bernard Lax, president of an industry lobbying group called the Coalition of Apparel Industries in California. “You can’t paint the whole industry with the same brush.”

More than 90% of 4,000 local garment contractors have staffs of 50 employees or fewer, he said. “Many are ethnic small-businessmen who don’t have the resources to stay informed. The enforcement people need to realize that while some shops are knowingly breaking the law, others are ignorant that what they’re doing is a crime.”

Lobbyists are pushing for a bill to establish guidelines and a licensing program for the industry’s new police force “to make sure these private police know they’re working to enforce the law and not for the manufacturers,” Lax said.

Meanwhile, labor investigators say they are intensifying efforts.

Under the 3-year-old Targeted Industries Partnership Program, federal, state and local agencies--including the federal Department of Labor, state Division of Labor Standards Enforcement and state Division of Occupational Safety and Health--have joined resources to enforce labor laws.

In monthly sweeps, a phalanx of investigators who once worked separately, often overlapping, now share information and investigative results. The routine raids by Hernandez and his fellow investigators are follow-ups to sweeps of suspect shops where federal investigators used undercover agents for surveillance.

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Since 1992, investigators have confiscated a warehouse full of merchandise from offending manufacturers--clothes later donated to charity. They have fined garment makers for working with unlicensed contractors, enforcing a little-known 1938 law known as the “hot goods statute,” which bars interstate transport of products made at companies violating federal labor laws.

In 1994, investigators conducted about 500 garment industry audits statewide--most of them in Los Angeles--assessing $4.5 million in penalties and collecting $2.6 million in unpaid wages. Targeted were such well-known garment makers as Quicksilver, Guess, Dakota sportswear and Contempo Casuals.

“We’re making a difference, we’re making a dent,” said Hernandez, 44, a father of three from Montebello. “We have to believe that. It keeps us going.”

State Labor Commission official Millan said bosses know they can get away with breaking the law because many garment workers are undocumented laborers and other working poor fearful of reporting abuses. And heightened competition within the industry has inspired bosses to cut corners by ignoring safety and wage laws.

Many smaller shops play a cat-and-mouse game with investigators. Labor agents once closed a plant, only to find that it opened a week later at a new location--but with the same workers.

“You can’t blame the laborers,” Millan said. “You ask them, ‘Why are you still working for these scumbags?’ And they tell us, ‘Because we need to eat.’ We can’t allow these people to . . . abuse workers willing to labor at any cost.”

Wary of sending a chill through the ranks of undocumented workers, state investigators say they choose to look the other way in enforcing immigration laws for what they call the greater good of improving working conditions.

When asked if he was doing workers any favors by closing down shops that at least offer steady work, Hernandez said he believes his efforts eventually will benefit workers across the board.

At JB America, four investigators--one federal and three state--fanned out across the factory’s floor to interview a dozen workers in Spanish about conditions, hours worked and time paid. Using a laptop computer, Hernandez checked workers’ stories against those of management, inspecting time cards and other records.

Company Vice President James Moon observed the inspection with a sigh: “This is part of the price of doing business. We don’t purposely break rules. Our record is clean.”

Not anymore. The firm racked up state fines for having no garment manufacturing registration, maintaining incomplete records and paying employees in cash for Saturday work. There were additional violations for unpaid back pay and added health and safety fines for exposed electrical wires and faulty fire extinguishers.

Hernandez said that when he was young, he and his brothers bought socks and underwear in the garment district. “We . . . couldn’t believe how cheaply they could make the stuff,” he said. “Now I know how.”