|
 Printer-Friendly Version
Archived News Release--Caution:
information may be out of date.
For more information call: 202-219-8211.
U.S. Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich said today that
pervasive worker abuse in the garment industry requires active, diligent
efforts by retailers to improve labor law compliance.
Today, Reich and a group of prominent retailers announced
the first ever nationwide effort on the part of the powerful industry to stem
worker abuse. But Reich said this is just a beginning and much remains to be
done to improve enforcement of laws that mandate basic worker rights in the
garment industry.
"I am pleased to see this prominent group agree that they
can help improve compliance throughout the industry by assisting us with
education and outreach," Reich said. "I look forward to a continuing, ongoing
relationship that will result in better protection for the one million workers
who cut and sew the world's clothing."
Reich announced he would convene the summit last month
when he learned some of the nation's most prominent stores had received
merchandise manufactured in one of the most brutal sweatshop operations ever
discovered. Federal and state investigators raided a compound in El Monte,
Calif., and discovered more than 70 workers being held in virtual slavery while
producing millions of dollars in garments. Those workers were paid less than a
dollar an hour, less than a fourth of the $4.25 minimum wage.
While Reich stipulated the El Monte operation was an
extreme example of worker abuse, he has continued to maintain that violations
of minimum wage and overtime laws are the norm in the industry. In about 1,100
garment investigations last fiscal year, the department's wage & hour
investigators recouped back wages for more than 9,100 workers, up from only
about 5,000 workers just two years before.
Just two weeks after the El Monte raid, department
investigators raided three Los Angeles area sweatshops and found another 60
workers making garments for prominent retailers. Immigration and Naturalization
Service investigators said many of those workers were smuggled into the country
by Far East organized crime syndicates.
"The abuses we find in this industry are severe and much
too common," Reich said. "Our increased efforts to crack down have brought
increased attention to the problem and are aimed at reducing violations. But
our increased activity has also made it clear that abuses are close to
careening out of control. The current workplace situation is not acceptable to
the American public. I am certain it is not acceptable to the legitimate
garment shops and least of all to the retailers."
The El Monte raid has brought the nation's focus on the
Los Angeles garment industry, but it has long been the center of the
department's enforcement activity. Los Angeles has overtaken New York as the
nation's garment manufacturing center. More than 4,000 sewing shops employ more
than 100,000 workers in Southern California.
A 1994 department compliance survey of the California area
garment industry revealed widespread abuses of the nation's labor laws. The
survey revealed 51 percent of garment contractors were not paying the minimum
wage, 68 percent were not paying overtime, 73 percent did not maintain proper
payroll records. The survey also revealed 93 percent of the contractors were
not in compliance with safey and health standards.
"Unfortunately, the results of the California survey
reflect the sorry state of compliance in the industry nationwide," Reich said.
"The level of abuse is simply overwhelming. It is a problem far too vast for
the relatively small number of investigators the labor department can devote to
the problem."
The department's Wage & Hour Division, the agency
which enforces the nation's minimum wage and overtime laws for every industry,
has only about 800 investigators to police more than six million workplaces.
Congress has proposed cutting wage and hour enforcement resources by 12 percent
in the coming fiscal year.
Archived News Release--Caution:
information may be out of date.
| 
