Sweatshop Items Were for Big Firms, U.S. Says : Probe: Labor Department names Disney, J.C. Penney and Bloomingdale’s. State holds hearing in El Monte.

Merchandise manufactured at three alleged Los Angeles sweatshops raided by federal agents this week was destined for major national retail chains, including Disney, J.C. Penney and Bloomingdale’s, the U.S. Department of Labor said Friday.

At one of the sites--an Eastside manufacturer where authorities say they discovered a 12-year-old girl toiling in violation of child labor laws--workers were assembling Classic Pooh label children’s clothing for Disney, said Scott Sutherland, a spokesman for the Labor Department, which is investigating the matter.

A Disney spokesman later said the company was investigating the goods’ origins, but said Disney was unaware that any goods were manufactured in violation of the law.

Meantime, as revelations continued about how clothing produced at Los Angeles-area sweatshops is winding up on the racks and counters of prestigious national retailers, a California legislative committee subjected the garment industry to intense scrutiny during a hearing in El Monte.

The suburb east of Los Angeles has become associated with the sweatshop problem since Aug. 2, when a state-led task force raided a clandestine garment factory where officials say 72 Thai laborers were working in conditions of near servitude and being held against their will.

During the daylong hearing, most speakers agreed that sweatshops were a serious problem in the Los Angeles garment industry, the nation’s largest and most dynamic, with more than 100,000 workers, mostly immigrants. But when the question of prospective solutions was broached, two distinct viewpoints emerged.

Industry representatives, all of whom said they deplored sweatshop conditions, called for greater enforcement of existing laws--a viewpoint shared by federal and state regulators. Many back proposals for bolstered ranks of California and U.S. labor inspectors, though budgetary pressures make such staffing increases difficult to accomplish.

“We have good laws on the books, but we need better enforcement,” said Bill Dombrowski, president of the California Retailers Assn.

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But union activists and workers, while backing more enforcement of labor laws, called for other strategies, notably cracking down on union-busting and passage of new laws holding manufacturers--and even retailers--legally responsible for wage violations at contracting and subcontracting firms where their goods are often manufactured.

“Manufacturers create, maintain and control this system of exploitation and then cry crocodile tears when the suffering becomes known to the public,” said Steven T. Nutter of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial & Textile Employees. “Thus, claims of ignorance and non-responsibility by both manufacturers and retailers for the conditions of the workers who sew their garments are totally hypocritical.”

The hearings were chaired by state Sen. Hilda L. Solis (D-El Monte), who has sponsored legislation that would hold manufacturers jointly liable for wage violations at sewing shops with which they subcontract. Gov. Pete Wilson has twice vetoed similar legislation, maintaining, as the garment industry does, that such a law would drive the apparel trade from California--an assertion disputed by Solis and union representatives.

The federal raids at three Los Angeles sweatshops Wednesday again dramatized the proliferation of subminimum-wage labor in the thousands of sewing shops concentrated in Los Angeles.

Labor Department investigators have determined that more than $434,000 in back wages is due the 66 workers found at the three sites. Most are Thai nationals who authorities say were working off debts to professional smugglers.

Since the three garment factories have been in operation for some time, authorities assume that clothing manufactured at the sites has already been shipped to the retailers, said Sutherland, the Labor Department spokesman.

Retailers named by the Labor Department are Disney, New York-based Lerner, Bloomingdale’s, J.C. Penney, Los Angeles-based Contempo Casuals, Columbus, Ohio-based Structure, Arlington, Va.-based Hecht’s, and The Limited, the Ohio-based parent of Structure, Lerner and other retail chains.

Tom Deegan, vice president of Burbank-based Disney, confirmed that two Los Angeles manufacturers that federal authorities say were conduits for sweatshop-produced clothing are Disney licensees. Disney merchandise is marketed at more than 400 retail outlets worldwide.

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The entertainment giant is “shocked and angered that Disney merchandise was being manufactured in such a place,” Deegan said.

“If they were violating the labor laws, and they knew they were violating the labor laws, we will seek immediately to terminate their contracts,” he added.

One Disney licensee, Nathan J, contracted with an alleged sweatshop for the production of children’s clothing with the Classic Pooh label, said Sutherland, the Labor Department spokesman. Nathan J representatives could not be reached for comment.

However, Patrick Guetta, a representative of Too Cute, the other Disney licensee named by the Labor Department as a supplier of sweatshop-produced clothing, said the garments in question were intended for other clients, not Disney. At issue, he said, were 2,300 plain white T-shirts that his firm arranged to have made at another shop, which in turn subcontracted the work to another factory, which subcontracted with another company--not an unusual sequence in Los Angeles’ intensely competitive apparel industry.

“There’s not one Mickey Mouse, nothing on those T-shirts,” said Guetta, who said the problem is indicative of the difficulties of doing business in Los Angeles, with its plethora of sewing shops, many of them underground operations. “You give work outside, and, unfortunately, sometimes you get burned. Unfortunately, this business is run by a lot of greedy people.”

Hank Rusman, a spokesman for J.C. Penney said the company is looking into the disputed merchandise’s origins.

Also on Friday, criminal complaints were filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles charging the six owners of three apparel factories with harboring and employing illegal immigrants.

The six suspects--three couples, including four Thai nationals and two Laotians--could face up to five years in prison and $250,000 in fines if convicted of the harboring charges, and six months in prison and a $3,000 fine per illegal immigrant hired.

Times staff writer Edward J. Boyer contributed to this story.