National Skills Summit

National Skills Summit
Innovative Initiatives: Consortiums

Garment Industry Development Corporation

The Challenge:

To preserve and improve jobs in the garment industry, to retain workers by developing opportunities for career advancement across industry segments, and to provide the New York fashion industry with a highly-skilled workforce, advanced technologies, and effective production systems.

The Solution:

Form a consortium of garment industry companies and organizations to provide training facilities for workers and management, universal resource databases of manufacturers and contractors, and recommendations for improvements to new and existing companies.

The Partners:

Garment Industry Development Corporation (GIDC) is governed by a tri-partite board of directors that includes industry, labor, and government.

Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees (UNITE) The New York Skirt and Sportswear Association; and The Greater Blouse, Skirt, and Undergarment Association are all organizations that have pooled their resources to make the consortium successful and effective.

City of New York, New York State, and the U.S. Departments of Labor and Commerce provide additional support to the consortium.

The Story:

With its huge Seventh Avenue wholesale garment market, 4,000 garment manufacturers and contractors, and 80,000 garment workers, New York is the fashion capital of America, rivaling Paris and Milan. In the past 20 years, New York lost many apparel production jobs to Asian, Latin American and Caribbean countries, where wages are much lower.

The Garment Industry Development Corporation (GIDC) provides a number of programs and services aimed at keeping the New York garment industry competitive, by helping companies increase productivity, improve management, form business plans and marketing schemes, and by training workers. GIDC sponsors a number of training and employee support efforts, including JOBNET, a centralized referral system to match unemployed garment workers with companies looking for qualified employees, SuperSewers, which helps displaced workers improve their sewing machine skills, and evening courses in apparel skills to help garment workers advance in their careers.

GIDC operates a centralized training and technology center, the Fashion Industry Modernization Center. The center provides technology demonstrations, training and education services, and management assistance to over 500 people from over 200 manufacturers each year. Not only does the center provide comprehensive, quality training, but the skills that it teaches are portable within the entire garment industry. This makes hiring easier and workers more valuable since the universal skills that they learn can be applied to any company within the industry.

A Model of Innovation:

Because it is a consortium of unions, government, and manufacturers, GIDC is able to address the needs of all people involved in the garment industry. It can provide training for managers and for workers. This multi-faceted approach yields industry-wide solutions.

Contacts:

Linda Dworak, Executive Director
Garment Industry Development Corporation
275 Seventh Avenue, Ninth Floor
New York, New York 10001
212-366-6160 (p)
212-366-6162 (f)
www.gidc.org