III. "Taking Advantage" of Immigrant Women: The NYC Apparel Industry

A. NYC: The Fashion Capital of the U.S.

The billion apparel industry is NYC's largest, and considered "the backbone of New York City’s industrial base."¹²  NYC currently produces an estimated 18% of all women’s outerwear manufactured in the U.S. and over 25% of all dresses made.  The sector employs 93,000 in manufacturing, 47,000 in wholesale and 85,000 in related businesses, with a citywide payroll of billion.¹³  The industry is made up mostly of small, family-owned businesses.  Eighty percent of apparel businesses in the Fashion District employ 20 or fewer people.¹⁴  The size of establishments corresponds to retailers’ and manufacturers’ needs for flexible, fragmented labor.  The Department of Labor conservatively estimates that over 60% of NYC’s 7,000 to 7,500 garment factories are sweatshops.  As many as 80% to 90% of garment shops in Chinatown can be considered sweatshops, even though close to 90% of them are unionized.¹⁵

The garment industry has some features that have persisted, historically, around the world.  One common attribute of garment factories worldwide, including the U.S. (but with the exception of some countries like Pakistan), is that women make up the overwhelming majority – anywhere from 60% to 90% – of the production workforce.  Additionally, despite increased mechanization in other industries, apparel manufacturing remains a highly labor-intensive production process, even in industrialized countries.

Due to the labor-intensive feature of this industry, women have continued to be the preferred labor force.  Firstly, garment manufacture or "stitching" has been consistent with the stereotypes of women’s work, as women were the original seamstresses in Europe, including England – where the modern garment industry originated.  And, like all industries segregated by gender, garment workers have continued to receive wages below the average wage in manufacturing industries as a whole.

Describing the apparel sector, the Encyclopedia of American Industries (EAI) explains that NYC has evolved as the "center of the women’s apparel business for a variety of reasons.  For example, manufacturers were able to take advantage of the inexpensive labor found in newly arrived immigrants [emphasis added] … most of those working in the industry during the first half of the 20^th century were young Jewish and Italian women.  New York City also formed an ideal location for the industry due to its position as a port city and its proximity to the textile mills in New England and the South."¹⁶

By the 1960s, the older base of Italian and Jewish women garment workers had mostly retired, and rising levels of public aid made working in sweatshops unattractive while a great deal of manufacturing moved first to the South and then offshore.  These workers were replaced shortly by black and Puerto Rican women, before Chinese and other Latina immigrants arrived in large numbers due to the 1965 Immigration Reform Act, which removed quotas and increased immigration from Asia and Latin America.

Though the racial/ethnic identities of NYC’s current workforce have changed, they still continue to be immigrant women – mostly Chinese and Latina.  Factory locations (see box on page 5) correspond to the profile of the workforce – most factories, with the exception of those located in midtown Manhattan’s fashion district, are concentrated in neighborhoods that newly arrived immigrants make their homes.  Since the 1960s, manufacturers and other garment-business related firms have provided financial aid to Chinese contractors to help them start up factories, indicating that those with influence in the industry have deliberately targeted immigrants in NYC for garment production in factories.  Consequently, the number of Chinese-owned garment factories in Chinatown increased from 8 in 1960 to 500 in 1984.  Between 1969 and 1982 the number of Chinese women working as garment workers in Chinatown increased from 8,000 to 20,000.¹⁷

B. The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA)

With the passage of IRCA by Congress in 1986, working conditions in NYC garment factories have steadily declined and the employment of immigrant, especially undocumented immigrant workers, has gone up.  Under the employers' sanctions provision of IRCA, the employer is theoretically responsible for the monitoring and hiring of undocumented workers and can be sanctioned for up to ,000 if caught employing undocumented workers.  The employers' sanctions provision operates on the principle that employers, rather than the government, have the responsibility to determine the "eligibility" of applicants, thereby giving employers another tool to impose low wages and poor conditions on workers.  In practice, therefore, IRCA has enabled employers to hire undocumented workers as a "favor" in return for their compliance, made easier by minimal oversight from government agencies, unions and the media.  Contractors tell workers, whether documented or undocumented immigrants, that they should be grateful for the job and not complain about conditions, as there are many people looking for work.  When possible, contractors try to hire undocumented workers because employers find they can pay undocumented immigrants less and not fear complaints.¹⁸

In contrast to the stated objective of the act, IRCA has increased employment of and the resulting flow of undocumented workers to NYC.  The employer sanctions law has "helped employers to create a larger army of surplus labor and forced the immigrants to work for whatever rates they can find"¹⁹ while pushing down wages and lowering conditions for all workers.

The effects of IRCA were exacerbated on June 2, 1992 with a "Memorandum of Understanding" between the U.S. Labor Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS),according to which the two agencies agreed to share and exchange information in their investigations, thereby facilitating deportation of undocumented workers.  Thus, even if the Labor Department or the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) finds an employer guilty of withholding back wages, an undocumented immigrant cannot collect on the judgement without risk of deportation.  "The failure of federal agencies to protect undocumented workers’ rights on the job means that illegals will not complain of violations and that they will be left at the mercy of the employers...  The government is enforcing employer sanctions in ways that undermine U.S. labor standards."²⁰

C. Terms and Conditions in the Apparel Industry

“Sweatshops are most prevalent in New York because employers there know they can break the law with impunity.” ²¹

-- Peter Kwong

Despite a relatively high rate of unionization,²² the U.S. Department of Labor estimates that 4,500 of NYC’s 7,000 garment factories are sweatshops²³ and that 80% to 90% of the unionized garment shops in Chinatown may be considered sweatshops.  As described above, the passage of IRCA has resulted in deteriorating conditions in the industry for all workers.

Wages

Real wages have continued to decline in NYC garment factories in the 1990s, a trend that started in the 1970s and accelerated in the late 1980s with the passage of IRCA. Wages in Chinatown have fallen about 30% in the past 5 years.  The federal minimum wage is .15 per hour and the official UNITE minimum wage is between .72 and .15 per hour.  However, garment workers make between and per hour and older, slower workers make even less.  Nearly all manufacturers pay by piece rate.  In turn, many contractors, even in unionized shops, pay their workers by piece rate, which is reduced if the worker produces fast.  The piece rate system is known to intensify the pace of work and impose longer hours on workers.  Nonpayment of wages and overtime is extremely common in NYC garment factories, and contractors often shut down shop and re-open under another name to escape liability for labor claims. ²⁴

Hours

In the past two decades, working hours in NYC garment factories have steadily increased, especially in Chinatown and Brooklyn factories.  This trend, again, coincides with the passage of IRCA.  Many workers work 6 to 7 days a week, 10 to 12-hour days and 80-hour weeks are not unusual.  In addition, home-work and child labor have become more common.  During busy-order, rush periods, "owners even ask workers to put in 24 hours straight or face lay-off."²⁵  Officially, workers are entitled to overtime if they work over 40 hours a week (or 35 hours a week if they are unionized) and one day of rest if they work six full days a week.  In practice, however, overtime is rarely paid, whether factories are unionized or not.

Health and Safety

Long working hours under stressful and unhealthy working conditions combine to create numerous health problems for workers including blindness, bronchial asthma, dizzy spells, sore joints, swollen feet, headaches and repetitive stress. Workers who have been forced to work extremely long hours are also more prone to accidents in factories.  In addition, many garment factories are physically unsafe fire hazards with barred windows and without proper heat and ventilation.  Equipment is old and dates back to the 1960s or earlier, thus creating more hazards in the workplace.

Despite the numerous occupational health problems that workers suffer, many insurance companies and the Workers Compensation Board reduce, delay or refuse benefits and the workers have no recourse to an independent review process for claims denied.  Once ill, "workers are slowed down and cannot earn enough to be eligible for medical insurance."²⁶  Injured and ill workers, whose claims are denied, are forced to work without rest or medical attention until they are completely disabled.

One of the greatest occupational health problems that is not even recognized under labor law is injury and illness brought on by extremely long hours of work that are imposed on workers²⁷ through a combination of low-wages, constant supervision and the piece-rate system.  Domestic labor laws do not recognize long working hours as an occupational health hazard despite the damage they do to workers' health.

Harassment, Abuse and Blacklisting

In addition to the sweatshop conditions described above, workers are subject to intimidation and harassment by supervisors and bosses, who control theworkers' pace and movements in order to extract the maximum amount of effort from them.  Workers are also threatened with "blacklisting" if they speak out.  Often bosses do not hire workers who are identified as "troublemakers" for speaking out against conditions in one factory – a practice that coerces workers to accept conditions without seeking recourse.  This tactic is especially effective against non-English speaking workers, who are forced (due to language barriers and racism) to seek employment in and through their own ethnic communities in which they can be more easily identified and labeled.

The conditions described above are prevalent in NYC garment factories.  Exact wage rates, hours and the method of payment (hourly or piece rate) differ from one factory to another, but due to the nature of the sub-contracting system, conditions in most factories are in violation of labor laws.  The following section describes conditions faced by women workers in midtown Manhattan factories, which produced garments exclusively for Donna Karan International.