Pic: CALMATTERS
US garment manufacturers feel the unexpected boost to their businesses because of the pandemic is now threatened by a bill that creates new liabilities across California’s clothing supply chain from factory sub-contractors to retailers. The bill, aimed at fundamentally changing how garment workers are paid, is said to have enough votes to pass during last year’s legislative session, but ran out of time during the session’s final hours.
This year, the Garment Worker Protection Act is back as Senate Bill 62, and its sponsor Los Angeles Democrat Senator Maria Elena Durazo is on a barnstorming tour across Southern California to drum up support ahead of this year’s session.
“I’m proud to be a Californian,” she told an audience in Venice. “One thing I’m not proud of is the exploitation and the wage theft that’s taking place in Los Angeles day after day after day.”
“We don’t need anything right now to hinder that [surge of business], at all. This is a golden window. And I’m concerned that this bill will cut the knees out from underneath the garment industry here in Southern California,” Scott Wilson, president of Los Angeles-based organic garment manufacturer UStrive Manufacturing, told a non-profit news portal dedicated to California policy and politics.
The bill, however, is targeted at the underground garment industry by forcing them to pay by the hour. Underground operations reportedly shift locations overnight to avoid detection.
While running underground operations, they pay a rate of a few cents per piece, which garment worker advocates term as wage theft.
According to a report in a top British newspaper, thousands of garment workers in Los Angeles who make apparel for several well-known fashion labels are paid less than minimum wage through a piece-rate payment system.
Workers even reported working an additional five hours on Saturday—about 60 hours a week with no overtime pay—which results in overall wages at $5 an hour or less, far below California’s statewide minimum wage of $14 an hour for companies with more than 26 employees.
Most of the over 46,000 workers in the Los Angeles garment industry are undocumented immigrant women from Latin America and Asia. Though most clothing brands rely on outsourced garment workers abroad, they quickly turn around immediate orders to the Los Angeles-based manufacturers to produce ‘Made in America’ clothing.
Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)
US garment makers feel the boost to their businesses because of the pandemic is now threatened by a bill that creates new liabilities across California's clothing supply chain. The bill, aimed at changing how garment workers are paid, is said to have enough votes to pass during the 2020 legislative session, but ran out of time during its final hours.