Using Religion’s Suasion in Garment Industry

Globalization has redefined the problems of the workplace and challenged us to find new solutions. The hard-won rules and regulations that protect workers are rapidly evaporating in a world where footloose businesses cross borders with impunity.

The lessons of globalization have been hammered home by L.A.’s garment industry, now threatened with decline as a growing number of manufacturers move operations elsewhere. Clothing provides more manufacturing jobs than any other industry in the county, with more than 140,000 workers in 5,000 factories. Many are small sweatshops jammed into run-down office buildings built up to 75 years ago. Some are worse than factories I have seen in South China, Hong Kong and Vietnam, where buildings are likely to be newer and well-ventilated, and workers subsidized with housing and food.

For more than 25 years, this industry has provided an increasing number of low-wage jobs for poor immigrants from Latin America and Asia. No more. In recent weeks Guess?, L.A.’s largest clothing manufacturer and the target of well-publicized union organizing, has announced it is moving some operations to Mexico and Latin America, where labor is even cheaper and unions weak.

Guess? follows Chorus Line and other major manufacturers moving operations south to Mexico, enticed by the unrestricted cheap labor now available under the North American Free Trade Agreement and frustrated by stepped-up local efforts to enforce state and federal labor laws. The dollar or so of savings on each garment goes into the pockets of manufacturers and retailers, not consumers.

The threatened decline of this vital industry points to a paradox in the global economy: When labor unions or government agencies fight against low pay and squalid conditions, they risk driving the industry away entirely. The factories that sew garments are completely separate from the so-called manufacturers, who reap the lion’s share of the profits.

Manufacturers are little more than design and marketing offices, selling an image instead of making clothing. Clothing is actually sewn in independently owned shops, which can be contracted a mile down the road; across the border in Mexico, or halfway around the world in China. Guess? can keep its headquarters in L.A., a leading design center, while making clothing anywhere it pleases.

In Los Angeles, this arrangement has created a pyramid that invites inter-ethnic exploitation and strife. Of the approximately 1,200 manufacturers in L.A. County, 81% are white-owned; the rest are owned by immigrants from Asia and Latin America. Manufacturers place orders with factories owned by immigrants from Asia (50%) and Latin America (29%). Among Asian factory owners, nearly half are Korean; the rest are Chinese and Vietnamese. Three-quarters of all factory workers are Latinos, the majority (69%) from Mexico. In other words, white manufacturers squeeze Asian factory owners, who, in turn, employ Latino workers under sweatshop conditions.

At the top of this ethnically divided pyramid, rewards can be substantial: The three Marciano brothers who founded the $500-million corporation took home nearly $30 million in salaries, bonuses and perks between 1993 and 1995, according to Guess? corporate reports. At the bottom, workers average less than $7 an hour, and many earn half that.

The regulatory vacuum created by globalization needs to be filled by innovative solutions. While enforcement of labor standards is badly needed, global businesses can also be pressured where they are most vulnerable: at the point of sale. In an industry where image is everything, consumers still have clout. A company like Guess? may outsource its production around the world, but it still has to sell at home--the U.S. market accounts for nearly one-third of the global apparel trade.

Consumers can be made aware of how their clothing is made in many ways. In the last two years, media revelations focused public attention on such high-profile labor abuses as Kathie Lee Gifford’s reliance on factories that used child labor, and the El Monte sweatshop where 72 Thai garment workers were enslaved for years behind barbed wire, turning out clothing for such upscale stores as Macy’s and Neiman Marcus. Now is the time to build on growing consumer concern.

One potent vehicle to increase consumer consciousness is also one of the oldest--through the values of culture and religion. At a time of sweeping social change, people from diverse and disparate societies are increasingly turning for guidance to religions and cultures that have survived dozens of defunct political systems.

In a public statement last September, the auxiliary bishops of the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles supported the efforts by UNITE, the garment workers union, to help workers “attain the level of power necessary to demand just compensation, humane working conditions and basic workers benefits.” In the same spirit, the executive committee of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California last month passed a resolution calling for the elimination of illegal sweatshop production; a halt to industry union-busting practices, and an end to exploitation.

Fighting garment-industry exploitation is of special interest to the Jewish community, because Jews have historically seen the industry from all sides: as workers, factory owners and manufacturers. At the turn of the century, Jewish and Italian immigrants comprised the vast majority of garment workers in the sweatshops of Eastern cities. Jewish workers helped organize the unions that improved wages, job security and working conditions. Many owners of those sweatshops were also Jewish, typically from an earlier generation of immigrants. In Los Angeles today, 23% of all manufacturers are Jewish; but of the approximately 200 largest manufacturers whose annual sales exceed $10 million, Jewish-owned firms account for 56% of combined sales. Jewish manufacturers are well-positioned to assume moral leadership in the Southland’s apparel industry.

Judaism has a long-standing tradition of social justice that calls on Jews to exercise moral and civic responsibility. Jewish religious law, Halacha, strongly respects the rights of workers. Talmudic (oral) law establishes the principal of workers rights.

Prompted by a desire to develop a pointedly Jewish response to the growing problem of sweatshops, a group of prominent local rabbis and lay leaders met late last month under the umbrella of the American Jewish Congress. The discussion took on a special urgency in light of Guess? plans to move to Mexico.

The religious leaders debated tactics that could force manufacturers to reappraise the marginal benefit that results from moving off shore in hopes of shaving a dollar or so off the cost of $50 jeans. Among the tactics considered: Congregations would conduct an “ethical audit” of L.A. manufacturers, publicizing individual ratings based on labor practices. The ratings would then be made into “ethical content” labels, and sewn into the garments of participating manufacturers.

Garment workers would also be invited to make “wage slavery” informational visits to local synagogues during appropriate holidays--for example, on Passover, which celebrates of the end of Jewish slavery in Egypt. The workers would bear personal witness about harsh working conditions. Rabbis and other religious leaders would accompany federal and state labor officials when they conduct their periodic unannounced sweatshop sweeps. First-hand exposure would give them a moral imperative to organize members of their congregations.

Such ethically motivated actions, aimed at mobilizing local consumers to do something about worker exploitation, may seem idealistic in the face of an industry with global reach and power, but they have already proven effective. Last year, the Gap, which prides itself on following a strict labor code, was embarrassed by a well-crafted campaign that publicized labor abuses by one of its El Salvador contractors. The company’s initial response, simply to terminate its contract with the factory, was rejected by the campaign organizers. Instead, the manufacturer was pressured into forcing its contractor to bring working conditions up to acceptable standards.

Ultimately, a global economy requires global regulations. NAFTA does not go nearly far enough in protecting workers’ rights. The agreement’s labor provisions must be expanded and given muscle. The U.S. has a strong interest in assuring that the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and its successor, the World Trade Organization, guarantees workers’ rights throughout the world. Yet such solutions are years, perhaps decades, off.

In the mean time, moral pressure may be a limited weapon, but is one of the few that can be used today to convince manufacturers that there are alternatives to sweatshops in Los Angeles beyond relocating them half a world away.