Deukmejian Vetoes Legislation Aimed at Garment Sweatshops

SACRAMENTO — Dealing a blow to pro-labor forces in the garment industry, Gov. George Deukmejian on Friday vetoed legislation aimed at cracking down on sweatshops in Orange and Los Angeles counties by holding manufacturers liable for labor abuses committed by their contractors.

In a statement, Deukmejian said the measure would have placed an “inappropriate emphasis on garment manufacturers to monitor and control independent contractors.” Regulation of the industry, he said, properly rests with government. He also said there is nothing to prevent victimized workers from suing manufacturers in court.

Backers of the measure, sponsored by Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), said they were disappointed but determined to continue their efforts to enact similar legislation after Deukmejian leaves office.

“We were hoping that the governor, as the immigrant he once was, would understand the needs of all the immigrant workers” in the garment industry, said Antonio Orea, manager of the 5,000-member Los Angeles region of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. “It just shows how insensitive he is to the needs of the people at the bottom.”

But Marjorie Carne, executive director pro tempore for the Coalition of Apparel Industries in California, said the measure was “impossible and unworkable” because it would have forced manufacturers to hire people to monitor all of their subcontractors for labor law compliance.

Hayden introduced the bill, which would have held manufacturers “jointly liable” for labor abuses, after a series in The Times told of a new proliferation of sweatshops moving from Los Angeles to Orange County. The reasons for the movement, labor inspectors said, were cheaper rents and a burgeoning population of immigrants, especially Southeast Asians, willing to toil long hours for less than the state’s $4.25-an-hour minimum wage.

State and federal labor officials have conducted numerous raids on the new shops. In March, they conducted one of their biggest sweeps in Orange County, issuing more than $63,000 in fines to 70 sewing shops in Garden Grove, Westminster, Santa Ana and Huntington Beach. And last year, they discovered that a 7-year-old Santa Ana boy and his mother, a Mexican immigrant, had been toiling in their home for an average of $1.45 an hour.

Hayden and labor activists have blamed the very structure of the garment industry--in which brand-name manufacturers bid out their work to hundreds of independent jobbers throughout Southern California--for the labor abuses.

Independent contractors found to have abused workers must pay any back wages or child-labor fines. They often avoid the penalties, labor officials say, by simply closing up shop, often leaving workers stranded without even the meager earnings they had been promised.

The manufacturer, meanwhile, is free to shop around for another contractor.

“There is no incentive to care one iota about what conditions their work was made under,” said Steve Nutter, regional director of the ILGWU. “They use the mechanism of contracting out to see no evil and hear no evil when, in effect, there is great evil going on in the industry.”

Hayden’s solution was to close the loophole by holding the manufacturer “jointly liable” for any labor violations committed by its contractors. Backers had hailed the measure as a follow-up reform to the 1980 law requiring contractors to register with the state.

As Hayden’s bill made its way through the legislative process, it received only token opposition from the garment manufacturers and contractors.

Max Mont, secretary of the Los Angeles-based Citizens Committee to Help Apparel Workers, said the provision would have been a “radical change” that would have forced manufacturers to police their own industry.

“They have to scrutinize what is going on in the industry before they give contracts,” Mont said, representing the group, whose members include religious leaders, labor activists and three Los Angeles city officials. “If it becomes their self-interest to see that the law is enforced, then it will be done.”

Representatives of manufacturers and contractors, however, said that making manufacturers responsible for the conduct of their contractors would be unfair.

“A similar thing is not required in the furniture industry,” said Marjori Carne of the Coalition of Apparel Industries in California. “Are they required to be registered? I don’t think so, and they certainly hire a good many immigrants from all over.”

Carne also disputed the notion that labor abuses are widespread in the garment industry, which employs an estimated 108,000 people in California and generates $6.2 billion in annual sales.

“I’m sure they’re out there,” Carne said about sweatshops, “but I don’t think it is characteristic of the industry.”

Hayden was unavailable for comment late Friday, but he issued a statement through a spokesman that said: “It’s hard to make the plight of voiceless workers heard in Sacramento. But we’ll continue to try to persuade the next governor, and we’ll be back in January to try again.”

Orea of the garment workers’ union expressed the same thought.

“We’re going to make it an issue in the (gubernatorial) campaign and in the community because that’s what it is going to take to get joint liability,” he said.