Walking the Line on Abuse : Garment Strikers Say U.S. Labor Laws Don’t Work
A picket line of garment workers outside a posh Guess? store in Beverly Hills this month aims to reveal alleged weaknesses in federal efforts to end apparel industry abuses through compliance agreements with manufacturers.
The striking workers say they were mistreated by Good Time/Song of California, a contract sewing shop, after Guess? Inc. lowered the price per garment it was paying the firm. The workers say their wages were lowered and that some people were fired and others harassed and threatened with firing after they protested and tried to form a union.
About 140 workers at two Good Time/Song factories walked off the job last month and have been picketing those plants, the Guess? headquarters on Alameda Avenue and the Beverly Hills store on Rodeo Drive.
Guess? was targeted for a consumer boycott and picketing because it sparked the dispute by lowering its payments, said David Young, a labor organizer with the Union of Needle Trade Industrial and Textile Employees. UNITE was called in by the workers to help with the strike.
The walkout illustrates the structure of the Los Angeles garment industry, in which manufacturers dictate prices, contractors are forced to respond by lowering wages and workers suffer, Young said.
The federal government has tried to maintain adherence to employment laws in the industry by signing compliance agreements with manufacturers such as Guess?.
Commonly known as the “long form,” the agreements require manufacturers to monitor sewing contractors for compliance with minimum wage, overtime and child labor regulations. Labor Department officials said they have received no complaints of violations against Good Time/Song. As long as the regulations are observed, contractors are free to lower wages or dismiss workers, one official said.
That means the agreements are fundamentally flawed, Young said.
“Compliance agreements don’t work, even when they are supposedly being enforced,” he said. “This strike proves it.”
Guess? representatives did not return phone calls. Sang Lee, owner of Good Time/Song, declined to comment, except to accuse union officials of lying.
“I’m not doing anything illegal here, and I don’t have to talk to you,” Lee told a reporter before ending a telephone call.
The Labor Department typically puts compliance agreements in place once manufacturers’ contractors have shown a pattern of repeated violations. Under the agreement, manufacturers with contractors who violate labor laws face seizure of their garments unless they pay all past-due wages and overtime.
In Southern California, nearly 20 manufacturers are under the agreements, including such well-known companies as Chorus Line, Rampage and Ocean Pacific.
Guess? signed the agreement in 1992 after paying $500,000 in back wages. Since then, the company has paid another $500,000 for other violations, Labor Department officials said.
According to some accounts, the latest dispute began when Lee brought new, more efficient machinery into his factories on Main Street and Broadway Place. He then reduced the piece wages paid to operators so they would receive the same hourly pay, despite the fact they were producing more garments per hour with the new machines.
Workers replaced by the new machines were offered job training for other tasks, sources said. The workers failed to understand that arrangement and the strike began.
But workers picketing outside the Guess? store gave a different account.
They said a factory manager told them the rate reductions were necessary after Guess? lowered its garment payments to Lee. Workers say the lowered rates affected not only workers given new machines, but the majority of the people in Lee’s factories, many of whom are Latino. When they tried to organize a union, they said, Lee threatened to close the factory and began retaliating against certain workers.
Reina Chavez, 43, said she was switched to a new machine but that when she couldn’t keep up the required pace, she was sent back to work trimming jeans by hand at a piece rate of five cents per garment. To earn the same pay she’d been getting at her previous rate--17 cents per pair--she would have had to trim 800 pairs of jeans in a day, Chavez said.
“By hand, it’s not possible,” she said.
Anatolia Ramirez, 24, another trimmer, said she is now earning the minimum wage of $4.25 an hour, instead of the $7.80 she used to earn.
“We don’t want to get more money,” Ramirez said. “We just want what we were getting before.”
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Monitoring the Garment Industry
Some facts on how the Labor Department deals with the garment industry: * If a manufacturer’s sewing contractors have shown a pattern of labor violations, the federal government usually signs a compliance agreement with the manufacturer. * The agreement requires the company to monitor contractors for compliance with minimum wage, overtime and child labor laws. * Under the agreement, manufacturers with contractors in violation of labor laws face seizure of their garments unless they pay all past-due wages and overtime. * About 20 garment manufacturers in Southern California--including Guess, Chorus Line, Rampage and Ocean Pacific--have such agreements in place.
