Apparel Factory Workers Were Cheated, State Says

[flashl]

Source: NY Times


NY Times

It was one of the worst sweatshops that state inspectors have visited in years, they said, sometimes requiring its 100 employees to work seven days a week, sometimes for months in a row.

The factory, in Queens — which made women’s apparel for Banana Republic, the Gap, Macy’s, Urban Apparel and Victoria’s Secret — handed out instructions to its workers telling them to give false answers about working conditions when government inspectors visited.

Wage violations were so widespread, state labor officials said at a news conference on Wednesday, that the factory, Jin Shun, cheated its workers of $5.3 million. The case made by the State Labor Department against Jin Shun is one of the biggest involving back pay that it has ever brought.

According to state officials, most employees, virtually all of them Chinese immigrants, were paid just $250 when they worked their typical 66-hour, six-day weeks, amounting to $3.79 an hour, far below the state’s $7.15-an-hour minimum wage. They received more when they were required to work seven-day weeks.

No one answered the phone at the factory on Wednesday afternoon.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/nyregion/24pay.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin

[eleny]

1. My dad worked in factory shops for his whole working life

They had a union and worked "piece work". Paid by the piece.

Back in the '60s he and mom worked as partners and put two kids through private college. I never had a college loan.

Now, it's back to the freaking dark ages.

[flashl]

2. This country is riddled with similar places but 'we' mostly react when its in another country. nt

[eleny]

3. P.S. Your post would be good in the Labor forum, too, btw

[flashl]

4. Thanks. Done. nt

[MisterP]

5. technically, it's back to Dickensian times: you had far less

proletarianization in the 7th century...

[eleny]

7. good point!

[armodem08]

6. It's worth reading the whole article...

“This factory paid sweatshop wages, kept fake records and coached employees to lie, even though it had signed retailer codes of conduct to comply with the law,” Ms. Smith said. “Although there appear to be great advances in the industry with retailers’ having codes of conduct, that’s just a first step. There really has to be aggressive enforcement and monitoring” by government officials and the factory’s customers."

"The Labor Department announced that on Wednesday morning it placed special tags on more than 10,000 items of Jin Shun’s apparel, stating that the garments were produced under unlawful conditions."

"Within hours of that tagging, the clothing company Urban Apparel paid state officials $60,000 to have the tags removed. The money covered the amount of wage violations that the department found had occurred when employees were making the tagged garments."

The real way to hold these sweatshops accountable is not to buy from them. Unfortunately, these companies only stop that when they get caught buying sweatshop products. That's why this company worked out such a complicated system to avoid detection.

[eleny]

8. Illegal sweat shops existed for decades and decades in NY's "Chinatown"

The kind where workers were paid under the table. I'm surprised that this guy's factory wasn't of that type given his practices.