MIGRANT MACHINES
"Sewing done on a Singer machine is highly complicated. It comes out expensive in the store, but it's cheap in the factory. " Elena (Dominican Republic) BLAMING THE VICTIM Most recent studies of...
...See "Apparel's Last Stand," Business Week, May 14, 1979, p. 60...
...6 WORLD-CLASS COMPETITION This interpretation handily sweeps aside a history of decline in New York apparel that dates back to the end of World War II, a decline which has not run parallel to the ebb and flow of immigration into the United States in the same period...
...But "the whole range of difficulties" they face today include overcoming past ILG practice and present contradictions, to be met with choices like those arising at W and W Knitting Mills: between a declining shop or a runaway...
...At this point we will take a brief look at the apparel industry in New York, to demonstrate that the impetus behind the deterioration of wages and working conditions comes not from the type of labor employed, but instead from the logic of capitalist production...
...In 1979, the average welfare payment (including food stamps) to a family of four in New York State was $6528, not including over $100 in medicaid coverage, $1500 in taxes that didn't have to be paid, and unquantified savings in childcare costs...
...An employer, particularly in seasonal apparel industries like those in New York, acquires more flexibility to lay off workers and replace them with others...
...3 According to conservative estimates from both industry and union sources, undocumented workers might amount to as much as a third of New York apparel labor...
...6. NACLA interview with Edgar Romney, July 12, 1979...
...industries...
...However, as early as 1960, observers noted that these women were beginning to look elsewhere (primarily to the then burgeoning service and clerical sectors) for jobs...
...Julia Vitullo-Martin, "The Real Sore Spot in New York's Economy," Fortune, November 19, 1979, p. 92...
...But as one ILG staff member pointed out, the overall decline in the industry is such that, "The distinction in terms of work conditions between a union and a non-union shop is very slight...
...The boss had locked them out, and they were enraged...
...One source provided NACLA with a list of ILG shops in Chinatown, each of which is now primarily doing business as a front for distributing piece goods to as many as five non-union satellites...
...2 0 a dearth of commercial loft space at less than luxury rents...
...Older women workers are driven out of straight union shops by the relentless rushing of the piece rate, or they can no longer travel distances to work, or they can't make it on the NovlDec 1979 41NACLA Report Undocumented garment worker...
...The sweatshop pays in cash, piece rates with no minimum, no overtime, no vacation pay...
...Pursuing standard ILG practice, the union went "over the top": circumventing the workers, it threw up a picket line around the shop for one day amidst a blaze of media coverage, then attempted to negotiate directly with the boss while cutting off the supply of goods to the shop...
...The union targeted one sportswear shop, Janet Lynn, with about 70 workers, which was sewing goods from a union manufacturer illicitly...
...From industry, unions, the Labor Department and the press came a chorus of assent on the agent of decay...
...Competing producers profit from the competition between laborers in two ways...
...NACLA's fifty interviews with immigrants helped to clarify the actual experience of the undocumented in New York City...
...8 Garment producers have been less attentive to the sex, race, language, immigration status or nationality of their workers, than to the price of their labor...
...XI, No...
...sales for 1979) was one of the first industries in the United States to undergo the internationalization of production now occurring in many major U.S...
...But soon this position was affirmed at the national level, making the ILG the most prominent of a bare handful of U.S...
...But unfortunately, the union's reaction was to persistently ignore warning signs of the return of the sweatshop to New York...
...It does however, result from "unfair competition" between capital and labor, in which capital can run from one site to another to take advantage of regional wage disparities...
...THINGS FALL APART New York City apparel production clearly shows the depletion wrought by runaways...
...An effective defense against the sweatshop would have to confront the vulnerabilities of the illegal together with the vulnerabilities of the immigrant woman worker...
...It is anywhere from four to about twenty workers in a narrow space, performing highly routinized sewing machine work at a breakneck pace on chaotic schedules...
...Old, larger shops had given way to new, smaller, primarily nonunion storefronts...
...They cited the flexibility of hours as an advantage of doing home work...
...3 Led by Local 23-25 (which by then had been burned by press exposes of garment sweatshops), in 1979 the ILG undertook a vigorous media campaign to denounce illegal contractor practices, and established a counseling service on immigration law for undocumented members...
...Over the last thirty years, the decline of the conditions has restricted the type of workers willing or economically able to sew for low wages...
...37NACLA Report North Carolinians by Mexicans, Mexicans by Filipinos and Filipinos by Sri Lankans...
...The source alleged that the reward to the ILG came in the form of a small but regular cut to the business agent...
...However, the ILG strategy has proven doubly ineffective...
...We work by piece work, paying the union minimum, $3.80...
...The unarrested decline of wages in apparel commenced in the late 40s, long before the wave of illegal immigration which first hit after 1965...
...Justice, September 1979, p. 9. 16...
...cit...
...See Michael Meyerson, "The ILGWU: The Union that Fights for Lower Wages," Ramparts, 1971...
...2 8 As late as 1978 Jay Mazur, head of ILG Local 23-25 in Manhattan, which organizes sportswear shops and has a large Chinatown membership, said that industry abuses were "a matter of definition...
...In closing, Posse warned ominously, "I only have one choice to stay in garment...
...8 The capability to take advantage of dispersed production sites is critical to apparel producers because theirs is a highly competitive business...
...The anthropologist described the home workers she interviewed as Spanish-speaking women with less than a secondary education...
...Remaining are small, intensely competitive and therefore less stable shops (in the range of 5-30 workers) with more sharply seasonal schedules...
...Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment and Earnings, States and Areas, 1939-1974...
...In recent years, a few big U.S...
...When the strike ended, the boss was not able to make that move...
...Research Department of the ILGWU, op...
...Business Week, May 14, 1979, p. 60...
...One said, "I've had people hesitate to sign a union card because they were undocumented...
...Ed Schneider, General Manager of the ILG Joint Board of Sportswear and Allied Workers in New York, gave NACLA the official stance: "Once any worker is in this country, the ILG will fight to see that a boss pays that worker what's due...
...5. Rinker Buck, "The New Sweatshops: A Penny for Your Collar," New York Magazine, January 29, 1979, p. 40...
...The average garment wage barely amounts to two-thirds of the average for all factory workers in the city...
...Home work is the extreme low-end of the process of breaking up production and shifting costs to workers...
...For example, in the summer of 1979 the ILG launched a drive against sweatshops in the South Bronx...
...Discussion with Allen Richardson, Women's Wear Daily, September 20, 1979...
...Undocumented immigrant women can end up in New York City sweatshops, though they are not solely concentrated there any more than are abuses of wage, overtime and labor standards...
...In all, routine sewing was progressively segregated into contracting shops flexible enough to be moved wherever the price and supply of labor were right...
...But to simply identify the personal characteristics of workers as immigrants does not of itself explain the effect on the industry of the competition between them for jobs...
...Most producers in the underdeveloped countries sell finished goods to American retailers, and more and more U.S...
...I close down here, change the company name, and go small...
...market this year...
...Also, the policy is "highly popular with the members," as one ILG organizer said, reflecting the lack of conflict between undocumented garment workers and legal ones...
...and New York Times, January 9, 1979...
...And I can't get enough good ones with experience to keep the machines running...
...At the same time, "labor time at home is paid less than labor time in the factory," according to one anthropologist now researching Hispanic immigrants in New York...
...apparel manufacturers are cutting piece goods in the U.S...
...Shop maintenance is poor...
...Today, garment pays the lowest wages for factory work in New York City...
...Thus, the recently uncovered proliferation of sweatshops in New York City cannot simply be laid to a fringe of scoundrelbosses, those unscrupulous enough to exploit the vulnerabilities of undocumented workers...
...Perhaps a more important obstacle to genuine worker participation is the ILG's ambivalent definition of workers' interests, as reflected in its organizing strategy...
...Ibid...
...The sweatshop passes the costs of seasonality to the worker by hiring and laying off constantly, which also obviates seniority wage raises and any temptation to unionize...
...What gets left behind is the rump of the industry...
...ILGWU Called Lax and Corrupt," Women's Wear Daily, May 21, 1979, p. 1. 26...
...NACLA wishes to thank her for her generous assistance on this project...
...and "compete successfully with low-skilled, lowstatus U.S...
...Larger, more stable shops producing standardized clothing not tethered to fashion (such as men's shirts, or uniforms) have tended to move elsewhere in the United States...
...Nevertheless, the shift in position was clearly in order, given the role of new immigrants in garment...
...NACLA, Vol...
...New, primarily women immigrants to New York City (including the undocumented) form a growing supply of low-skilled labor for 38NovlDec 1979 Cutters- the skilled workforce of the garment industry...
...But render under Caesar what is Caesar's: the forces that create the sweatshop belong to the industry...
...In apparel, employed workers in one region are constantly being edged out of work and replaced by workers from another...
...2. U.S...
...apparel workers still equaled 95% of the average of all U.S...
...But the interviews themselves cannot conclude the argument since, by itself, a sample of only fifty people does not permit generalizations about the undocumented workforce as a whole in the United States or even in New York City...
...Though New York union wages are the highest in the country for apparel, the average of $3.86 an hour does not amount to half of what the Bureau of Labor Statistics says is needed as a lower level budget for a family of four to survive in New York...
...Frankly," the president of one U.S...
...shores than the domestic-made variety...
...The question is, does labor's competition for jobs in New York lead to direct displacement of "domestic" workers by the undocumented...
...At the same time conditions are worsening, and the membership grows increasingly disheartened about the usefulness of a workers' organization...
...Both permeate the industry...
...2 6 One sample of 12 home workers showed that they worked nine or ten hours a day, and several hours on Saturday, to earn averages as low as $1.60 an hour...
...New York Times, November 4, 1979...
...This is reflected in a lack of friction among the union membership over the presence of undocumented workers...
...The New York region, for example, lost 158,600 jobs between 1950 and 1970, as New Yorkers were replaced by Pennsylvanians, Pennsylvanians by North Carolinians, *For the purposes of this Report we focused on the ILGWU because the industry in New York City is predominantly organized by them...
...Press estimates suggest as many as 4500 sweatshops have sprouted city-wide, employing 70,000.5 Meanwhile, New Jersey cities on the outskirts of New York began to discover a cottage industry of illegal apparel home work thriving in their midst...
...Elena (Dominican Republic) BLAMING THE VICTIM Most recent studies of illegal immigration to the United States, particularly those which have informed protectionist policy proposals, center on the characteristics of undocumented immigrants as a labor force...
...The union has also collaborated closely with industry in forcing higher productivity from workers...
...3. New York City Council on Economic Education, 1980-81 Fact Book on the New York Metropolitan Region (New York, 1976), p. 36...
...For example: *Maintaining profits by depressing wages is an inexorable tendency in this competitive industry...
...Subsequently, marketing and design increasingly split away from production...
...Posse knows better than to blame the undocumented for the revival of the sweatshop...
...Manufacturers rarely enjoy the heady sensation of undisputed command over a product or market...
...Sub-contracting also thrives by farming out piecework to unlicensed home workers...
...Even before the specific situation in New York is taken up, it's apparent that the decline in New York apparel, of which the sweatshop is the most extreme expression, derives from imperatives of the system of production itself...
...it has been held back for half a century by the nature of sewing and the technological limitations of the sewing machine...
...workers...
...Saddling him with a $100,000 loss and driving him out of business was the most that the workers' militant action could achieve...
...3, p. 20...
...Minors and children of immigrant parents fear school because they don't speak English, or can't attend it because their parents lack immigration papers...
...down, all the workers are out on the street, undocumented or not...
...One possible solution to the competition squeeze- automation-- is too costly to be accessible to any but the largest of the nation's 15,000 apparel companies...
...All five shops were organized by the ILGWU...
...The new immigrants' labor will serve to prolong the old age of New York garment, but not to improve its health...
...I'm on the phone with the New Jersey unemployment office every week...
...This augurs badly for workers in the industry, undocumented or not...
...On the basis of the study's findings, one of its authors, David North, has asserted that a growing supply of "docile, hard-working, super-motivated" illegals will: maintain or increase profits, productivity and the use of labor-intensive work systems (thus retarding mechanization...
...We will show that the sweatshop requires an abundant supply of labor as the condition for its revival in the context of New York City...
...Advances in cargo transport in the last two decades have put Taiwan and Sri Lanka in the backyard of a New York City clothes manufacturer...
...Undocumented women immigrants are part of a larger population powerless to defend its conditions of labor in the garment industry...
...These wages don't even compete favorably with welfare...
...The boss began laying off the workers, and finally signed with the union...
...New undocumented immigrants don't retard mechanization in the garment industry...
...The flight of garment jobs from New York has not abated...
...MIGRANT MACHINES 1. Hearings before the Select Committee on Population, April 4-7, 1978, p. 53, p. 349...
...59 out of 136 jobs in the sample were in apparel (48 out of 67 women's jobs...
...Traditionally, of course, apparel has been an immigrant conduit into American society...
...They pay less than the union minimum...
...If you tell me the work is hard and unpleasant, I will agree, but if you call it a sweatshop, like my grandfather worked in, I will say no...
...The workers there can collect unemployment at the same time...
...union pension of slightly over $100 a month...
...During an interview the Argentine owner, Alberto Posse, cast fretful glances over the floor of his well-ordered shop, where 60 or 70 sewing machines stood idle...
...In the 70s, New York manufacturers have to grapple with taxes which even the Department of City Planning admits are "disproportionately high for small manufacturing firms...
...Thus, it appeared an unlikely move when, in 1975, ILG locals inLos Angeles and New York began to move toward a new policy of actively organizing undocumented workers, instead of condemning them as scabs...
...But within the immigrant communities there are other groups of workers with restricted options which can be utilized by sub-contractors...
...global industry...
...Workers assigned to a single task...
...In that period, when both the demand for clothing and the supply of immigrant labor were rising dramatically, highly skilled workers who created a whole garment were gradually replaced by semiskilled sewing machine operators massproducing the same piece of a garment (say, a collar or sleeve) over and over again...
...Moreover, the contracting system has effectively eliminated wage and skill mobility for those who enter as unskilled sewing machine operators or floor workers (and neither the industry nor the union is providing much training...
...NACLA interview with Ed Schneider, August 14, 1979...
...Unsightly factories in its center have offended generations of city administrators who envisioned New York as the elegant center of world finance...
...27, 1979, p. 11...
...At the time, Mary's father was working nearby in a shop with no less a name than Prosperity Sportswear...
...Some of the ILG organizers interviewed did insist on organizing workers where possible...
...Many skilled union workers with seniority wages have been rendered obsolete and overpriced by global competition while entry wages have been held down to levels unacceptable to all but the most disadvantaged workers...
...In general these shops are non-union...
...Joanna Gould-Stuart, notes, 1979...
...The elevator already had three citations for safety violations against it at the time of the accident...
...They send a woman down here, she puts her head in the door, winces and never comes back...
...The semi-skilled nature of the work allows a revolving door effect, where the cost advantages of paying beginning wages outweighs the drawbacks of breaking in new employees...
...This exclusive focus on the migration of labor also leads analysts like North to overlook what lies behind the forced march of laborers from underdeveloped countries towards industrial centers: the restless migration of capital from one site to another in search of favorable conditions for business and profit...
...By this formulation, then, undocumented workers perform the unique function of causing their own exploitation...
...Said Edgar Romney, head of organizing for ILGWU Local 23-25, "Sweatshops and undocumented workers go together like ham and eggs...
...Seventy-five of the workers, many of whom were recent immigrants from Colombia, were undocumented, but they marched on the picket line every day anyway...
...First, in the absence of strict union vigilance, producers in established shops tighten the screws, pushing for higher productivity and holding down wages amidst implicit or explicit threats of firings...
...and a chaotic transportation system by which it can be cheaper to shop from Manhattan to southern New Jersey than from Manhattan to the Bronx...
...Home workers normally provide the sewing machines and pay electricity and maintenance costs...
...In past years I did one lot for $30...
...unions to break ranks with the anti-immigrant protectionism of the AFL-CIO...
...Even that wage is so low, there's no worker incentive to produce...
...recently said, "we've joined the import tide...
...The control over wages and working conditions exercised by bosses, owners and investors--in short, by the interests in the realm of capital-- is summarily ignored...
...As an established contractor, I keep books, pay taxes and union fees...
...By 1977, that ratio was down to 64%.13 ,The forces of competition have actually been abetted in apparel by the unions organizing in the industry, primarily the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) and the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU...
...5600), February 1976...
...As a result, many manufacturers, those companies which design and distribute apparel, no longer have to concern themselves with labor conditions at the production level, as long as quality holds...
...In singling out the apparel industry, we forego any discussion of other light manufac34NovlDec 1979 turing in New York where the 50 workers had been employed...
...The sweatshop is a means for a small apparel sub-contractor with limited capital to take advantage of competition between workers to bring down the costs of production in an area of high wage rates relative to the 40 NACLA ReportNovlDec 1979 41 A union shop- distinction between this and a sweatshop are "very slight...
...4. Ibid., p. 46...
...7 In order to sustain growth, maintain profits and circumvent the advances made by labor unions, apparel capital has tended to disaggregate and migrate to take advantage of labor pools around the world...
...The threat of deportation, and their anxiety about making any commotion, can force them to tolerate illegal conditions...
...Posse believes downward pressure on prices from above plus cutthroat competition from below are driving him, like many other union shops the size of his, to close...
...Unemployment among union workers in some sectors of the industry is running as high as 20...
...Instead, in the plain words of a recent Federal Government report on the industry, most manufacturers contend with profits rates "which reflect the absence of monopoly power," dropping to as low as 1% on net sales after taxes in 1975.9 Concentration is inhibited by the vagaries of fashion (which make for an unpredictable market), and by the industry's simple, inexpensive and relatively unchanging technology: the sewing machine...
...Now they tell me $24, take it or leave it...
...More experienced, skilled workers making union seniority wages compete less with the undocumented in New York and more with 3940 NACLA Report other skilled workers overseas...
...Legal immigrant women with families to support work unregistered so that they can collect welfare at the same time...
...Interview with ILGWU staff member, July 24, 1979...
...Tony De Stefano and Allen F. Richardson...
...manufacturing workers...
...By 1976, the New York State Department of Labor reported a "chronic" shortage in apparel sewing of "experienced workers willing to accept wages offered," (emphasis added) for both skilled and semiskilled work.22 Today, then, New York apparel presents the confounding aspect of an industry with high unemployment among its unionized workers and a "chronic" labor shortage together with an increasingly abundant supply of immigrant labor...
...cit., p. 26...
...4 Earlier this year, the city press heralded, "The sweatshop has returned...
...The lot of blouses I sew at $24 (that costs me $30), one of those shops does for $20...
...In apparel, these foundations were laid with the rise of contracting and what is known as "section work" beginning in the final two decades of the last century...
...Recalling the results of the NACLA interviews, it is clear that industry employers only require a ready supply of any laborers at the appropriate skill level to be able to take advantage of this competition...
...A very modest outlay of capital will suffice to open a small sewing shop...
...He said, "I go into Manhattan these days to pick up blouses to sew from the manufacturers...
...The Council on Wage and Price Stability, "A Study of Textile and Apparel Industries " (Washington, D.C.: July 1978), p. 27...
...In 1978, 18% of the apparel firms in New York City were in their first year of operation, while 20% went out of business during the year.' 9 The City itself has, if anything, aggravated the problem...
...All of them except one took on home work when childcare responsibilities prohibited their leaving the home...
...For example, a computerized fabric cutter now retails for $450,000...
...Whether or not they wanted to work at a sewing machine, they couldn't afford it...
...Apparel (an industry with a projected $38.5 billion in U.S...
...Romac Sportswear, a unionized contracting shop in West New York (a small town in New Jersey, just outside of Manhattan), had just about gone broke in October, 1979...
...ACTWU centers on organizing in the men's clothing branch of the industry which is located, for the most part, outside New York...
...As the pool of potential garment workers grows, the competition among them for jobs intensifies, contributing to the stagnation of wages and conditions in the New York industry, long established by the competition between manufacturers on a world level...
...When they can't finish one lot in the designated time, they recruit their children to help them...
...By this year, the average pay of a union garment worker went up 5.2% over 1978,"5 with inflation now at 11.3...
...On February 20, 1979, 13-year-old Mary Goon dropped six stories to her death when an open, unmarked elevator shaft in a building in Manhattan's Chinatown district occupied by five small garment shops...
...On the other hand, what the manufacturer pays me for a piece is so little, the workers can only produce an average of $2.50 worth of goods in an hour...
...Also, for most basic apparel jobs the turnover is so rapid, there is hardly a stable labor force of any description to be displaced...
...The essential supposition of these analyses is that the social and legal condition of the labor force largely determines the conditions of an industry...
...THE CENTER WILL NOT HOLD In 1977, 250 workers went out on strike for six months against W and W Knitting Mills in Brooklyn, a shop organized by Local 155 of the ILGWU...
...The Federal report concludes that to start an "efficient" dress operation requires $300,000...
...But for thousands of small and middle manufacturers, labor, which accounts for about 27% of production costs, remains the one expense which can be whittled 36 NACLA ReportNovlDec 1979 away- through lower wages, or higher worker productivity--to increase profits...
...While the union argues the unity of interest among workers in New York, it continues to target imports as a threat to domestic workers by "cheap foreign labor," ignoring industry mobility...
...State of New York, Department of Labor, Division of Research and Statistics, "Occupational Shortages and Surpluses, New York City Area" (no...
...Moreover, among ILG organizers NACLA interviewed there was consensus that, at least in New York City, undocumented workers are not a major obstacle to organizing...
...Research Department of the ILGWU, "Conditions in the Women's Garment Industry," Feb...
...Highly specialized, expensive finishing work is also done in New York, but occupies a minority of workers...
...pay scales, and labor is disorganized or shackled enough to provide American manufacturers with a competitive edge: for example, Hong Kong ($1.00 an hour), South Korea (50c an hour), Sri Lanka (25c an hour...
...They don't pay taxes...
...Nevertheless, we chose apparel because out of 50 workers, 29 had been employed in the industry at some point...
...Furthermore, we contend that consideration must also be given the structure of the industries which put the immigrants to work...
...The manufacturers are high on work, low on prices...
...Even as the number of workers seeking apparel jobs increases, a shortage still persists, as workers quit jobs due to low wages after short-term employment...
...Large numbers of undocumented workers have found their way into the ILG in recent years...
...Since conditions vary somewhat among different industries, apparel can only provide a partial picture...
...He had announced his intention to close up and move to Colombia...
...apparel firms (with earnings over $100 million a year) have stepped up automation, while absorbing smaller companies driven out of business by competition, to effectively corner the markets for their standardized products...
...From his business perspective, he understands that the degeneration of New York apparel production is hastened when capital flees Manhattan and resurfaces not only at the Mexican border, but also in the South Bronx, Brooklyn, or Queens, bringing with it conditions that recreate the Mexican border right here in metropolitan New York...
...Within its policy of cultivating favorable conditions for the industry, for example, the ILGWU has failed to enforce even union minimum wages, and has long been tolerant of sub-contracting from its shops to non-union operations...
...Some have obtained their residence visas while others have not...
...The undocumented will seek a small shop, close to their homes, feeling that it conceals them from the INS...
...XI, No.3, February 1978...
...They were required to mend incorrectly done work without pay...
...9. Wall Street Journal, October 18, 1976...
...All around me are springing up small shops which are not registered with the government...
...NACLA interview with Alberto Posse, October 13, 1979...
...Such assumptions underlie the 1976 survey on undocumented workers commissioned by the Department of Labor...
...4 This situation, far from being limited to the Bronx, reflects the reorganization of apparel production throughout the entire New York area...
...70-105...
...but NACLA met one established contractor, with 70 machines in his shop, who said he went into business for literally "$5.00 down," after negotiating a loan arrangement with the former owner.' 0 On the other hand, it is not uncommon in any given year for more apparel firms to show losses than gains...
...The undocumented are replenishing memberships and union treasuries slashed by job loss...
...Imports, which totaled $8 billion in 1978, are expected to amount to 22% of the U.S...
...The ILGWU has been understandably dismayed by the relentless demise of production in the very bastion of its power...
...The net result is the deterioration of all shop conditions...
...2 5 What characterizes the sweatshop is the failure to register fully (or at all) with the government, thereby avoiding workers' compensation, unemployment insurance as well as union payments-the required employer subsidies to a worker's welfare...
...Business this year is catastrophic, the worst I've seen in years...
...They turn out fashions which have to be made close to the market, or which are very cheap and fast-moving...
...would work faster as the repetition increases their efficiency, the executives were told," by none other than ILG President Sol Chaikin himself.1 Along the same lines, the ILG has allowed piecework, a regressive pay system, to become prevalent once again...
...It is not unusual, organizers said, for the undocumented to provide leadership in signing a shop, and INS intervention in union drives is too infrequent in New York City to permanently stifle workers' needs for an organization of support and defense...
...most don't have unions...
...But the wounded business did not survive...
...2 In short, the small contractor in a Manhattan loft is no longer just competing with the guy down the block...
...For approximately thirty years, the union--the largest single organization in the industry--has practiced an aggressive, amply documented policy of wage restraint and minimum advance of labor standards, thus catering to industry in an attempt to keep it from running away...
...After World War II, women (primarily Puerto Ricans and blacks) came to dominate its labor force, making up about 80% of it today...
...Welfare and unemployment benefits, routine government subsidies to low-wage labor, have served to further mitigate outright displacement...
...depress labor standards...
...2 ' Certain (citizen or legal resident) women workers with children could therefore have an income equivalent to $.95 an hour more on welfare than in apparel...
...A further prerequisite for globalization is the breaking down of production tasks to isolate low-skilled operations in order to export these stages of work...
...The Council on Wage and Price Stability, op...
...On the average, imported clothes wholesale for 20% less on U.S...
...In fact, the ILG (one-third of whose 365,000 members are in New York City) was once dubbed "the union that fights for lower wages...
...Most of the workers lost their jobs without ever being educated as to the union's purposes...
...The second way competing producers profit from a growing labor supply in a given region is by running away from just one neighborhood to another...
...The New York needle trades also present all of the symptoms of depression and disarray that critics like David North say result from 3536 the plague of undocumented immigrants...
...7. A comprehensive analysis of this process is given in NACLA, "Capital's Flight, The Apparel Industry Moves South," Vol...
...Wall Street Journal, October 18, 1976...
...it is only a way to give a human face to immigrants reduced by government policy to ciphers...
...Because these women are immigrants, restricted by few skills, little English and scant financial resources, their other work options in the United States are limited...
...The influx of Hispanic and Asian immigrants, many of them women, into highly localized New York neighborhoods since 1965 has opened this option to garment contractors...
...INNER CITY RUNAWAYS Where there had been a decade ago 150 contracting shops in the war-torn South Bronx, a 1979 census by the ILGWU showed there are now over 500...
...by unofficial estimates Local 23-25, for example, is one-third undocumented...
...the apparel industry...
...In 1947, the average wage of U.S...
...Ironically, this position on illegal immigrants directly contradicts the ILG's other well-known campaign, the "Buy American" blitz against garment imports...
...Wall Street Journal, October 18, 1976...
...For instance, since most production workers in apparel are women, the work situations of many of the undocumented men will not be fully explicated...
...In 1975, the union signed a contract which actually rationalized the lowering of piece-rates to adjust to the increased speed of the workers...
...This substitution clearly is not due to any "unfair competition" between workers with different attributes...
...For instance, in October 1976, the Wall Street Journal reported on a union seminar where industry representatives learned "how to use new assembly line techniques to cut costs...
...Barbara Koeppel, "The New Sweatshops," The Progressive, November 1978, p. 2. 30...
...The massive flight of manufacturing jobs from the city in the last decade, coupled with recessionary reductions in unskilled government employment, also objectively limit the jobs available to new immigrants (not to mention other local workers...
...and shipping them to foreign contractors for sewing...
...But in the whole range of difficulties I face as an organizer, that one was minor...
...Being undocumented was also one reason why women apparel workers were vulnerable...
...The strike at W and W is yet another indication that labor-intensive stages of apparel production will continue to migrate toward the vast reserves of labor overseas...
...Neither did he open up again for work...
...Instead, it pursued an "unusually close relationship with many domestic manufacturers," striking an unwritten bargain to refrain from pressuring for higher wages or strictly enforcing contracts if the industry would refrain from exporting New York jobs...
...However, even the union is finding that the sweatshops are getting out of hand...
...As a result, in the last decade garment shops have been multiplying in corners of the globe where wages are low enough in comparison to U.S...
...Accomplices to the dramatic erosion of labor standards at the bottom of the industry are the Department of Labor and the unions, since they fail to enforce labor codes and contracts respectively...
...8. See Max Hall, editor, Made in New York (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959), pp...
...As one apparel union organizer explained, "When a shop closes...
...NACLA interview with organizer, ILGWU L cal 155, September 12, 1979...
...Blanche Bernstein, "Options for Increasing the Welfare Grant in New York," 1979...
...In addition, metropolitan New York, home of Seventh Avenue and the Manhattan Garment Center, continues to account for more apparel production than any other comparable region of the country (though its share has been declining precipitously, from 41% in 1940 to less than 15% today) 2 It is also still the largest manufacturing industry in New York City, employing (according to official figures, which include the undocumented unevenly) 154,300 or 29% of the city factory work force...
...Today, apparel competition is global...
...apparel giant...
Vol. 13 • November 1979 • No. 6
