Clements is a fifth-year psychology student. Ramirez is a
fifth-year American literature and culture and Chicana/o studies
student.
By Cecily Clements and Erica
Ramirez
Last Saturday, members of California United Students Against
Sweatshops gathered in protest outside of Niketown stores across
California. From San Francisco to Beverly Hills, students came out
in solidarity with factory workers in Mexico whose rights are being
abused at the Kukdong factory.
In addition to producing for Nike, this factory also makes
collegiate clothing for UC Berkeley, making the serious human
rights violations in this factory a consumer and a student
issue.
As defined by Sweatshop Watch, a coalition committed to
eliminating sweatshops, a sweatshop is a factory or a home-work
operation that is usually characterized by extreme exploitation,
including the absence of a living wage or benefits. It is also a
place in which poor working conditions, such as health and safety
hazards are rampant.
In addition, a sweatshop is usually a site of inappropriate
discipline, such as verbal and physical abuse. By this definition,
many garment factories just 20 minutes away from UCLA in downtown
Los Angeles, are sweatshops.
 Illustration by HINGYI KHONG/Daily Bruin In Los Angeles
County the apparel industry is the largest manufacturing employer
with more than 120,000 employees, the majority of which are
immigrant women.
Many American corporations such as Nike, Gap and Disney profit
from hiring this easily exploitable labor force. In a
“sample” survey conducted by the United States
Department of Labor in January 1998, 61 percent of the garment
firms in Los Angeles were found to violate wage and hour
regulations. This amounts to the underpayment of workers by an
estimated $73 million per year (Behind The Label, Edna Bonacich and
Richard Appelbaum, 2000).
But, these low wages do not translate into cheaper prices for
consumers. Often corporations make upward of 200 percent profit
from their sales, not only exploiting their laborers, but consumers
too.
Moreover, garment workers rarely benefit from advancements in
technology that are supposed to increase production rates. Often
when machines are modernized, workers are forced to work even
harder to “keep up”.
Furthermore, many garment workers consider the minimum wage
increase a curse. Norma Ramirez of the grassroots organization
Comité de Costureros Unidos explained that many feel the
minimum wage increase has only been beneficial to the contractors.
She went on to say that although it is not legal, many workers
receive payment for the “pieces” of clothing they
produce, not for the hours they work.
Some workers are told that in order to account for the higher
minimum wage, they must increase their hourly rate of production,
which means working faster and harder without recompense.
In order for corporations to succeed in exploiting sweatshop
labor, they must have a large and vulnerable labor population,
which they attain through hiring undocumented immigrants.
The current political climate in California, exemplified by the
passage of Proposition 187, allows for intimidation tactics to be
used toward immigrant workers. They are often told that any form of
resistance will be followed by deportation. The terrorization by
bosses makes it difficult for workers to feel safe addressing their
concerns. They are threatened with being dismissed without pay, or
being “blacklisted” from other garment jobs.
Another major challenge encountered when trying to organize the
garment workers of Los Angeles is finding ways to improve
conditions while not driving the industry offshore. This has become
increasingly difficult with the passage of the North American Free
Trade Agreement. In Los Angeles, garment workers find themselves
competing with workers in Mexico that are paid as little as
one-tenth of the already low wages paid in the United States.
Often, corporations deliberately seek out the country where
workers are being paid the least, and conditions are the worst;
unfortunately, since many families are dependent on these incomes,
garment workers are forced to accept the minimal wages and often
debilitating conditions.
When confronted about these issues of exploitation many
corporations claim ignorance, citing the structure of the industry
as the reason they should not be held responsible. Since the bulk
of the actual labor is generally contracted out to several
factories, large retail companies claim they are not direct
employers of the workers being exploited, and that the conditions
under which their apparel is made are out of their control.
A closer look, however, at the way the industry works allows one
to see just how false this claim is. The fact is that the
retailer/manufacturer sets the tone of how the clothing will be
made.
When a retailer such as Gap is looking for factories to
contract, they choose the factory that will make the clothes at the
lowest cost and in the shortest amount of time, thus creating a
situation where factories are pitted against each other in
cutthroat competition for business. Factories are forced to work
their laborers to the bone or else they will not meet the
expectations of the manufacturer.
And if factory owners aren’t willing to squeeze the life
out of their employees, then corporations have the options of
taking their factories overseas where discrepancies in monetary
value between the U.S. dollar and the foreign currency often work
to the CEO’s advantage.
At times, the obstacles put forth by powerful corporations seem
insurmountable, especially when you consider that the life
expectancy of a factory is usually one to three years. Much of the
problem in investigating sweatshops is that factories often open up
and shut down in very short periods of time. The fact that it takes
very little capital to start a factory allows for a very volatile
industry that tolerates exploitation from large corporations.
Nonetheless, we as students have a voice here on campus that we
can use to combat sweatshops.
Over the past two quarters, the UCLA Students Against Sweatshops
has been organizing a campaign to bring union-made clothing to the
UCLA store. A report released last year (the Independent University
Initiative, October 2000) revealed that UC and other collegiate
clothing are being made in factories employing sweatshop conditions
here in the United States and abroad.
The UCLA Students Against Sweatshops is working to bring
union-made clothes to our campus as a way for students to have a
guarantee that the clothes we are buying are “sweat
free.”
Given the difficulty in monitoring the conditions in factories,
union-made clothes are considered to be the only current option to
guarantee a “sweat free” product.
Because unions give workers the right to organize and fight for
the improvement of their working conditions and wages within the
factory, students and anti-sweatshop activists around the country
and the world are supporting workers and their efforts to unionize.
This is why students spent their Saturday protesting outside of
Niketown Saturday and Sunday, to support the workers in Mexico who
are trying to organize an independent union.
Please join our efforts bring union-made clothing to our school,
and to pressure corporations, such as Nike, to take responsibility
for the way their clothes are made. Come to our meetings every
Thursday at 5:30 p.m. in Public Policy 6274 to find out more about
how you can help to end sweatshops or e-mail us at
[email protected].