Asian American Women: Issues, Concerns, and

2 While men and boys are also trafficked into involuntary servitude, the vast majority of trafficking victims are women and girls. They suffer harms of a different nature and degree than male victims. Women and girls are primarily trafficked for sex, as well as labor deemed to be “women’s work.” Or they are forced into marriages and/or reproduction while men and boys are not. Girls are most often trafficked for their virginity into marriage and the sex industry while boys are most often trafficked into sweatshop or other similar labor.

3 The income gap between the richest and poorest countries has increased from 30 to 1 in 1960 to 74 to 1 in 1997. The worldwide flow of migrants looking for work increased from 85 million people per year in 1975 to 145 million in 2000.

4 Trafficking for the sweatshop industries will be covered in Chapters Three and Four.

5 While many victims of trafficking are forced to work in brothels hidden in Asian ethnic communities and serve only Asian clients, many women freed from the brothels have also stated that white men were among their customers. Thus, more data is needed before the source of the growing demand can be determined.

6 Bill Wallace, Smuggling, Prostitution Indictments, San Francisco Chronicle, February 13, 2001.

7 Trafficking in women is much more extensive in the US than trafficking in girls, but it is a growing problem. For example, in 1999, 13 members of an Asian smuggling ring were indicted for trafficking up to 1,000 Asian women and girls, between the ages of 13 and 25, to Atlanta and other US cities for prostitution. The girls were held in bondage until their $30,000 to $40,000 contracts were paid off.

8 Given the lack of data collection, US law enforcement officials admit they do not know what degree large international organized crime syndicates are engaged in this industry.

9 Somini Sengupta, An Immigrant’s Legal Enterprise: In Suing Her Employer, Maid Fights Diplomatic Immunity, New York Times, Jan, 12, 2000.

10 Domestic workers enter the US legally on B-1 visas (temporary work visas). Because the INS does not keep a record of the number of domestic workers brought in under the B-1 visa category, it is difficult to estimate the number of women who may be in the situation of domestic servitude.

11 Interview with Muneer Ahmad, attorney with the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, who represented Ms. Shaefeli Akhtar, a Bangladeshi woman who was trafficked into the US for domestic servitude by a Bangladeshi couple in 1995. She worked for five years for this couple, enduring beatings and death threats to herself and her family. She escaped in June 2000. She was a material witness for the federal criminal prosecution that resulted in the conviction of the couple.

12 Women forced into prostitution are usually detected within a year or two because, unlike domestic work, prostitution is a crime for which law enforcement is actively seeking prosecution.

13 A more commonly used term for these brides is “mail-order bride.” However, this term is not used in this report because many Asian women consider it derogatory and because it places a stigma upon women who found husbands through these types of arrangements.

14 Author’s interview with Hae Jung Cho, Jan., 25, 2001.

15 A survey conducted in 1999 for the INS revealed that 94% of the men seeking brides through mail-order catalogues were white, 50% were college educated, 6% with M.D.’s or Ph.D.’s. They were politically and ideologically conservative and economically and professionally successful. Their median age was 47, whereas their brides are from 16 to 24 years old. Over 90% of the men surveyed were 20 to 50 years older than their brides and state that they want women they can mold and are not too educated. Most of the men surveyed talked about “traditional values.”

16 For the entire country, the DOJ has issued only one grant in the amount of $75,000 per year for two years for victim services and that grant was to CAST. Funding from private foundations is available for international organizations working on trafficking, but not for domestic groups because many funders find it difficult to believe that slavery can exist in America. When CAST went to a major funder for support, the program officer asked that they not use their letterhead but to make the request under the name of its fiscal sponsor, Little Tokyo Service Center, because the term “Slavery” on the letterhead might prompt concerns that would delay the grant.

17 If certain conditions are met, a T visa holder may petition the INS to become a permanent legal resident (green card holder) after three years.

18 Author’s interview with Joy Zerembka, Jan. 21, 2001.

19 While as many as 50,000 women and girls are trafficked into the US, during 1999 and 2000 the government prosecuted cases involving fewer than 300 victims. The DOJ has handled only 50 cases in the last five years.

References

Associated Press, Police break up Sex-Slave ring that preyed on immigrant girls, Nov. 13, 1998

Chelala, Cesar, The unrelenting scourge of child prostitution, San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 28, 2000

Daily News, 2 reported in poverty after fleeing employer, April 3, 1998

Honey, Martha, Campaign for Migrant Domestic Workers Rights, Feb. 15, 2000, presentation at the Congressional Briefing on Trafficking in Domestic Workers

Hughes, Donna M., Pimps and Predators on the Internet, 1999

Jordon, Ann, Slave trade still alive in US, San Francisco Examiner, Feb. 13, 2000

Lim, Lin Lean, The Sex Sector: The economic and social bases of prostitution in Southeast Asia, a study for the ILO (no date)

Los Angeles Times, House OKs crackdown on trafficking in sex, Oct. 7, 2000

Los Angeles Times, The dark side of the new world order, Jan. 13, 1998

McMahon, Katheryn, Trafficking of Women: A Report from Los Angeles

Poletunow, Mark, Fr., Spanish Catholic Center, Feb. 15, 2000, presentation at the Congressional Briefing on Trafficking in Domestic Workers

Richard, Amy O’Neill, International Trafficking in Women to the United States: A Contemporary Manifestation of Slavery and Organized Crime, published April 2000 by the US Central Intelligence Agency

Scholes, Robert J., The “Mail-Order Bride” Industry and Its Impact on US Immigration, A Report to the INS, 1999

Sengupta, Somini, An immigrant’s legal enterprise: In suing employer, maid fights diplomatic immunity, New York Times, Jan.12, 2000

Wallace, Bill, Smuggling, Prostitution Indictments, San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 13, 2001

William, Booth, 13 charged in gang importing prostitutes, The Washington Post, Aug. 21, 1999

Women’s Rights Law Reporter, Rutgers, Report from the Roundtable on the Meaning of “Trafficking in Persons”: A Human Rights Perspective, Vol. 20, No. 1, Fall/Winter 1998

Part 1, Chapter 3

Asian American Garment Workers:

Low Wages, Excessive Hours, and
Crippling Injuries

Introduction

Man Le Lo worked for 10 years in San Francisco sewing the private label garments of major discount retailers. She worked seven days a week, and except on Sundays, 10 hours a day, some days even longer. After 10 years of setting elastic bands, she sustained repetitive stress injury to her hands, wrists, and arms. In the mornings she could not close her fingers into a fist because of the pain. On piece rates, in the last two years of employment, she averaged $2.00 to $3.00 an hour, half of minimum wage. She was never paid overtime. She reported the violations in her shop to the US Department of Labor (DOL), triggering an investigation of five shops owned by her employer. When she began organizing her co-workers, she was fired. But 200 of her co-workers benefited from her bravery. They recovered $192,000 in unpaid overtime wages as a result of the DOL’s investigation.1

Ten to twelve hour days, six to seven days a week are the regular hours that garment workers toil in the United States. The majority of garment workers are Asian, Latina, and other immigrant women of color. In California, close to 100,000 garment workers are Latinas and 30,000 are Asian. New York’s 65,000 workers are half Latina and almost half Asian. On piece rates, they earn at or below the federal minimum wage of $5.15 per hour and often without overtime pay. They work under dangerous conditions that include blocked fire exits, unsanitary bathrooms, poor ventilation and suffer from repetitive stress injuries. The DOL estimates that more than half of the country’s 22,000 sewing shops violate minimum wage and overtime laws and 75% of US garment shops violate safety and health laws. In a 2000 survey of garment shop compliance with labor laws, the DOL found a 60% rate of overtime and 54% rate of minimum wage violations in Los Angeles shops, 61% overtime and 31% minimum wage violation rates in New York shops, and 25% overtime and 8% minimum wage violation rates in San Francisco.2

The US General Accounting Office has developed a working definition of a sweatshop as “an employer that violates more than one federal or state labor, industrial homework, occupational safety and health, workers’ compensation, or industry registration law.”3 This report focuses on the New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco garment industries where Asian American women are employed.

The US Garment Industry

Today, the US garment industry consists of almost 621,000 jobs, a decline of 56% since reaching a high point of 1.4 million jobs in 1973. The movement of production overseas to Asia beginning in the 1980’s and passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)4 in 1993, have been devastating to the domestic industry, particularly in New York and Texas.5 Today, over half of all apparel sold in the US is made overseas, resulting in tremendous downward pressure on wages and worsening of conditions in the domestic industry.

Los Angeles

The Los Angeles garment industry has been the exception to the declines, though not to the worsening of working conditions. The Los Angeles garment industry has grown in the last decade into the country’s largest garment center, from 137,000 in 1991 to 156,000 jobs in 1997, with 120,000 of those jobs in the downtown Los Angeles area. Between 1994 and 1998, the number of manufacturers and the contract shops producing work for them increased from 4,000 to 6,000, with about 5,000 in the Los Angeles area. The 1,000 garment manufacturers based in Los Angeles tend to produce locally, contracting out to 4,000 contract shops. Production has stayed local because Los Angeles’ niche market of constantly changing women’s casual wear, with brand names like Guess, Bugle Boy and Chorus Line, requires “Quick Response” production; garments orders are turned around within five to seven weeks or even shorter time periods. A local contractor can process reorders within a week or two. Contractors in Asia require a turnaround time of 10 to 12 weeks or longer. However, with the skills of Mexican garment workers, quality control, and turnaround times improving and with NAFTA eliminating quotas and tariffs, a greater percentage of California’s production is expected to shift to Mexico. By the end of 2000, Los Angeles garment worker jobs dropped down to 142,100.

Despite the loss of jobs, the Los Angeles’ garment industry still accounts for $28 billion dollars of the region’s economy. Los Angeles’ lucrative garment profits are made off the backs of Latina and Asian women-94% of whom are immigrant, 75% Latinas, and about 15% Asian (Chinese and Vietnamese) women. The vast majority are non-English speakers. Work is assigned on the basis of gender. Higher paying cutting and heavy pressing jobs are almost exclusively performed by men while the sewing operations are almost exclusively performed by women. Over half of Los Angeles’ Latino garment workers are undocumented, most arriving within the last 15 years. Immigrant workers are employed by contractors who are also immigrants. Production is concentrated in downtown Los Angeles’ garment district but in the last 10 years has spread to the immigrant communities of El Monte, East Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Fernando Valley as contractors look for cheaper labor and better space.

Given the large numbers of undocumented workers, Los Angeles’s workforce is especially vulnerable to exploitation, which may explain the higher rates of minimum wage and overtime violations than in San Francisco with its mostly documented workforce. Passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) contributed to the worsening of conditions for garment workers. IRCA prohibits the employment of undocumented workers but imposes such low sanctions that few employers are deterred. Instead, employers use IRCA as a weapon against workers. Some contractors prefer to hire undocumented workers and call the INS when workers protest conditions. Employers threaten to call “la migra,” undocumented workers stay compliant, and a whole sub-class of workers in the Los Angeles garment industry work at sub-minimum wages, driving the wages of the entire Los Angeles industry down with them.

San Francisco

Historically, San Francisco’s garment industry was located in Chinatown. For decades, Chinese immigrant women walked to work from the crowded tenements where they lived to small mom and pop sewing shops, employing 10 to 15 employees and operating out of storefronts. In the 1970’s and early 1980’s, this began to change as entrepreneurial immigrants from Hong Kong began setting up larger, more efficient shops outside of Chinatown.

Today, 13,000 workers, primarily Chinese, work in 400 contract shops in the San Francisco’s South of Market and Outer Mission districts and 2,700 workers in 175 shops across the Bay in Oakland’s sewing shops. The larger, more modern South of Market and Mission district shops survive and grow larger. These more efficient shops of over 100 workers, operating with new machinery and using assembly line methods of production (vs. one worker assembling the whole garment,) are able to produce higher quality apparel in greater volumes. They have greater bargaining power to obtain higher contract prices and are able to pay at least minimum wages to 75% of their workers.

Chinese garment workers, however, continue to work 10-hour days, six days and even seven days a week, without overtime pay. Garment jobs in San Francisco have also decreased (from a high of 15,000 in 1997) as many of its local manufacturers, such as Esprit, Koret of California, Byers and Eberts, have moved production to Southern California or Mexico where wages are lower than in the Bay Area.

New York

The New York garment industry remains the US’s leading center for high fashion even though production jobs have declined precipitously. Apparel jobs declined to a low of between 65,000 and 74,000 in 2000 from a high of over 149,000 in 1980. However, a local industry will always remain because, like Los Angeles and San Francisco, New York manufacturers must also have “Quick Response” strategies for its unpredictable market of women’s wear. New York’s niche is producing high-end fashion and more formal apparel. This includes dresses (25% of all US-made dresses are produced in New York), overcoats, blouses, slacks, and tailored women jackets with names like Oscar de la Renta, Donna Karan, and Calvin Klein giving New York fashion its glamour. Many of the higher end fashion houses produce in small batches of hundreds, not thousands, and prefer to stay in New York where their designers can walk across the street to their contract shops to personally oversee the quality of production.

About 54% of sewing shops are concentrated in New York’s midtown (in a zoned garment district) and in Chinatown, 26% in Brooklyn (with half in Sunset Park), and the remaining in Queens and the Bronx. There are 1,600 garment manufacturers and 2,600 contractors registered with New York’s Department of Labor and an additional 2,500 contract shops that are unregistered, bringing the total of contractors to about 5,100 primarily small shops with less than 20 workers each. The small size of a sewing workforce provides manufacturers with a flexible and fragmented workforce that can be laid off easily during seasonal lows. The majority of garment workers are Chinese immigrant women and Latina workers, with a smaller number from the Dominican Republic and other countries.

The majority of the midtown and 80% of Chinatown sewing shops are unionized by UNITE (Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees). However, UNITE has not been effective in enforcing the union contract in these shops and rampant minimum wage and overtime violations continue to exist. In the early 1980’s, most garment manufacturers were also under union contract and produced locally. During that period, UNITE members working in the Chinatown shops could earn from $5.00 to $15.00 per hour. Support for the union was strong. In 1982, 20,000 Chinese garment workers went on strike to demand that contractors renew the union contract. However, union manufacturers such as Liz Claiborne, Donna Karan, and Calvin Klein began moving the bulk of their production overseas: 66% of Liz Claiborne’s garments are made abroad. With union manufacturers moving their work, union contractors were forced to compete with nonunion contractors for work from nonunion manufacturers. The union contractors were thus forced to accept contract prices too low to pay even minimum wage.

Additionally, involuntary servitude is a regular part of the New York industry. Between 1991 and 1994, at least 100,000 people from the city of Fuzhou in the coastal province of Fujian, China, have been smuggled into the US, with the majority of them settling in New York. Most of them owe snakeheads (people smugglers) $30,000 in fees. A large number are women who end up in garment sweatshops. These workers have been harassed, beaten, and even killed by snakeheads for protesting poor working conditions and/or not working hard enough to repay their “debt.” Desperate to pay off their debts, the Fuzhounese take the lowest paying jobs in the Chinese community and line up outside the sewing factory long before the doors open to be the first to begin work. At night they work until after 10 p.m., sometimes until 4 a.m., sleeping in the factory, and start work again after sunrise. Increasingly, garment manufacturers offer contracts to Chinese subcontractors who hire Fuzhounese, whose willingness to accept low pay and poor working conditions has further dropped standards in Chinatown garment industry in New York.

The combination of jobs going overseas, involuntary servitude, and fear of the INS have resulted in wages of New York garment workers dropping to between $2 and $6 per hour. Working hours have steadily increased, with legal immigrants and naturalized citizens working six to seven days a week, 10 to 12 hour days. Homework and child labor are becoming more widespread. It is now common in New York shops, including unionized shops, for workers to work several months without receiving a paycheck. It is also not unusual for employers, seeking to reduce their taxes, to pay workers half in cash under the table and half by check, then take back a percentage of the cash payment.

The Root Causes of Sweatshops

Four key factors contribute to the proliferation of sweatshops in the US and worsening conditions for garment workers.

A Pyramid of Exploitation

The very structure of the garment industry encourages the creation of sweatshops. Retailers sit at the top of the apparel pyramid, placing orders with brand-name manufacturers, who in turn subcontract to sewing contractors to assemble the garments. Contractors receive cut garment parts from manufacturers and recruit, hire, and pay the workers who occupy the bottom level of the pyramid, to assemble finished garments. Most contractors must accept the low price set by the manufacturer, even if the contract price is insufficient to pay minimum wages, as they risk having the work given to another contractor. To stay in business, contractors “sweat” profits out of their workers, cut corners, and operate unsafe workplaces.

Consolidated Power of Retailers

The second factor is the power of retailers. During the past decade the retailing industry has experienced major mergers leading to considerable consolidation of their buying power, especially among discounters. In the United States, Wal-Mart and Kmart outsell all department stores combined and the 10 largest retailers account for nearly two-thirds of all apparel sales. With this consolidated buying power, retailers dictate the price of clothing and ultimately what workers earn. Retailers have forced manufacturers to reduce their wholesale prices by as much as 25% or more, with the worker at the sewing machine feeling the biggest pinch.6 Retailers also control the apparel industry by producing their own private labels instead of buying from brand-name manufacturers. The Federated Department Store’s private labels, for example, include INC/International Concepts, Charter Club, and Arnold Palmer. Retailers, acting as manufacturers, design the garment, contract out and oversee production, and set the prices for garments created exclusively for their stores. Approximately 32% of women’s apparel sold in the US is manufactured under retailers’ private labels. Retailers’ domination of the garment industry means their decisions directly affect whether sweatshop conditions improve or worsen.

Race to the Bottom of the Global Assembly Line

A critical factor leading to resurgence of sweatshops in the US is the movement of production overseas. Production began moving to Asia in the early 1980’s where hourly wages were as low as 20 cents per hour and to Mexico after adoption of the NAFTA in 1993. Forced to compete with overseas labor costs, domestic contractors lost their leverage to extract higher prices from manufacturers. Attempts by workers to improve their lot have resulted in manufacturers and retailers “running away.” For example, when UNITE targeted Guess factories and contract shops for unionizing in 1995, Guess moved 70% of its jeans production to Mexico, Peru, and Chile. In San Francisco, when Esprit de Corps’ Chinatown shop unionized in the mid 1970’s, Esprit closed the shop, moved to Hong Kong, and did not return for 10 years. The threat of shop closings has kept workers from organizing even as conditions worsen. Overseas production has led to a race to the bottom in terms of wages, affecting workers in all major garment centers, including California’s strong and stable industry.7

Poor Enforcement of Labor Laws

The final factor contributing to the persistence of sweatshops is the chronic under-enforcement of labor laws by state and federal labor agencies, both of which are underfunded and understaffed. In New York, there are only five state-level DOL inspectors to monitor over 4,000 garment shops. Even if a factory is given a citation for a violation, re-inspection for compliance is rare. In California, only 25% of all sewing shops are inspected each year by state or federal DOLs. Most contractors violate the law with impunity, assuming they will not be inspected. If inspected, the contractor simply pays the unpaid minimum wages, overtime premiums, and fines as part of the “cost of doing business” and returns to business as usual, knowing that the inspectors will not return for at least four years. In any case, most contractors do not even remain in business that long.

Advocacy Needed

Given the numerous factors that affect garment workers who labor in sweatshops, advocacy to improve conditions requires a multi-pronged approach. The approach includes making retailers and manufacturers legally accountable for sweatshop practices, improved government enforcement of labor laws, organizing and unionization of workers, consumer education and corporate accountability campaigns, as well as impact litigation and legislative advocacy. No one approach is sufficient and each is the necessary complement of the other.

Holding Retailers and Manufacturers Legally Accountable for Sweatshops

State and federal governments’ response to the proliferation of sweatshops has been to go after the sewing shops, often with the media in tow. Harassing contractors has proven to be an ineffective and misdirected strategy. Given that it is the retailers and manufacturers who force contractors to accept contract prices so low that contractors cannot pay minimum wage, it is they who must be responsible for the resulting labor law violations. But because production work is subcontracted out to “independent” contractors, manufacturers are often not considered the employers of the production workers and are shielded from legal liability.

Unless manufacturers are held legally responsible for the wage and working hour violations of their contractors, they have no incentive to increase contract prices or avoid using contractors who are chronic violators. Garment worker advocates have used impact litigation successfully to hold retailers and manufacturers jointly liable along with their contractors for minimum wage and overtime violations. However, impact litigation is costly. Plaintiffs face high hurdles in establishing a sufficient degree of control by the manufacturer for it to be held liable. Hence, less than 10 such lawsuits have been filed in the last 20 years. Thus, legislation creating strict manufacturers liability without lengthy litigation is needed.

In California, garment workers succeeded in 1999 in getting a strict manufacturer’s liability law, AB 633 (Steinberg), passed. AB 633 created a “wage guarantee” requiring manufacturers and retailers acting as manufacturers to guarantee payment of minimum wages and overtime. However, in exchange for the guarantee, garment workers gave up the right to enforce the new law in court and agreed to bringing all wage guarantee cases before the state Labor Commissioner under an expedited administrative process. Retailers are attempting to escape AB 633 coverage by influencing the rule making process. They hope to craft a regulatory definition of “manufacturer” that excludes most retailers and garment manufacturers. Continued advocacy is needed to ensure that rules and regulations are adopted which properly implement the new law. In the meantime, joint liability impact litigation must continue to be brought.

A strict liability law is needed in New York State. The current version of the joint liability law, SO7628 (Spano), passed in 1998, holds manufacturers liability only if they knew or should have known, with the exercise of reasonable care, of the contractor’s failure to comply with labor laws. Meeting the reasonable care standard mires garment workers in time-consuming litigation, which California’s AB 633 avoided. On the federal level, after the November 2000 Presidential and Congressional elections, advocates will have to wait until a friendlier political climate in Washington before attempting federal joint liability legislation.

Advocating for Government Enforcement of Labor Laws

Laws do not protect unless vigorously enforced. Advocacy is needed to increase staffing levels at state and federal labor agencies. Advocates must exert pressure on these labor agencies to direct their enforcement efforts against contractors and manufacturers. Advocates must oppose the labor agencies’ joining with INS in their investigations and their inquiries. Workers will not step forward to complain or cooperate if they fear being apprehended by the INS. Vigorous enforcement has brought results. A case in point is the San Francisco Bay Area where minimum wage violations are significantly lower than in Los Angeles and New York. This improvement in wages in the Bay Area is due to the concerted outreach efforts to Chinese garment workers that began in 1990, media coverage on the lack of government efforts, successful lawsuits by the Asian Law Caucus against manufacturers and contractors, organizing efforts by UNITE, a national anti-sweatshop campaign launched by the Asian Immigrant Women’s Advocates, and pressure by ALC and UNITE on DOL to use the “hot goods”8 provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act to confiscate garments made in sweatshops. Using the threat of seizing hot goods, the DOL compelled manufacturers to increase contract prices and monitor their contract shops to bring them into compliance. Monitoring by manufacturers and combined federal and state agency raids on sewing shops led to the demise of San Francisco Chinatown’s mom and pop industry, the growth of larger, more efficient and stable garment factories outside of Chinatown and higher wages for San Francisco garment workers.

Empowering Workers

In the long-run, lasting improvements in the industry can occur only with an empowered and organized workforce. After a lawsuit or government inspection, after wage judgments and fines have been paid, neither government agencies with increased staffing nor lawyers are in a position to monitor factories day to day to ensure compliance with labor laws. After the scrutiny is over, employers revert to violating the law. Only an organized workforce can monitor factory conditions on a routine basis. However, workers face serious challenges to organizing because they are employed in the most globalized industry in the world.

Workers in Southern California face an additional challenge to organizing. Over half of the 100,000 garment workers in the Los Angeles garment industry are undocumented and the fear of deportation prevents them from becoming an empowered workforce. Garment workers in Southern California need amnesty. For sweatshop conditions to be eliminated, workers need to move from undocumented to legal status. These challenges are formidable but not insurmountable and require that new and innovative forms of organizing be developed.

Public Education and Consumer Campaigns

Traditional methods of union organizing, lawsuits, and government enforcement are not enough in today’s global economy. As long as garment manufacturers can close shop and run away overseas with impunity, sweatshop conditions will remain and worsen. Garment workers need the support of the public and consumers. In August 1995, 72 Thai immigrant women were discovered behind barbed wire fences in an apartment complex in El Monte, California, working under conditions of involuntary servitude: they were sewing the private labels of major retailers such as Mervyn’s, Montgomery Ward, and Miller’s Outpost. Sustained media attention and intense advocacy by garment worker advocates around the El Monte case, as well as other high profile campaigns, began to turn public opinion. The refusal to patronize retailers and manufacturers who break worker organizing drives sent a clear message that the public did not support manufacturers who profit off the sweat of garment workers, domestically or internationally. Through numerous high profile campaigns and lawsuits, the public has been educated and no longer believes manufacturers’ claim of ignorance of conditions in their contract shops. Indeed, the support of an educated public contributed to garment workers success, after 10 years of effort, in obtaining AB 633 in California.

Fending Off False Solutions from the Industry

In response to the public education and consumer campaigns, the fashion industry created The Apparel Industry Partnership, now called the Fair Labor Association (FLA), a coalition of companies such as Liz Claiborne, Nike, Reebok, and human rights and labor organizations. In April 1997, the coalition announced a scheme to eliminate sweatshops worldwide. It rolled out the Workplace Codes of Conduct to which industry members of the task force said they would adhere. But major flaws exist in the Code. For example, it institutionalizes indecent wages and inhumane hours for women of color around the world. For instance, the Code only requires US firms to pay a country’s minimum wage which, in order to attract apparel firms, governments set so low that it does not cover a family’s basic needs. The Code also adopts the 60-hour week, without overtime pay, as a standard workweek. In November 1998, the coalition announced its “independent monitoring” scheme. The scheme allows companies to pick the factories that will be inspected by monitors chosen and paid for by the company. Based on inspections of only five percent of factories hand-picked by the company, the FLA can declare the entire company in compliance with the Codes. Based on this monitoring scheme, the company is permitted to sew labels onto all of its garments that indicate that the garment was made under fair conditions. The apparel industry has developed various other schemes to clean up sweatshops which, like the FLA’s, are essentially public relations tools for damage control. Advocates have responded with critiques and exposés, assisted in developing codes of conduct requiring living wages and monitoring mechanisms with teeth. They have also developed an alternative, the Workers Rights Consortium, which has adopted Codes of Conduct and an independent monitoring system for the production of sweatshirts with university logos, baseball caps, and other products.

A Global Approach to Garment Advocacy

When workers in one country organize to improve wages and working conditions, US retailers and manufacturers move their production to countries where they pay workers even less. In the 1960’s, manufacturers moved production to Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. However, over time these economies boomed and wages rose to almost the same levels as in US. In the 1980’s, hundreds of thousands of women workers who had worked for 10 to 20 years in the garment industry lost their jobs as US manufacturers shifted production to the lower wage countries of Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines. Presently, Thailand’s garment workers are losing their jobs as manufacturers move production to Vietnam and China where wages are even lower. The US garment industry has a global strategy for production, profit making, and exploitation. It has acted with virtual impunity in implementing its strategy. Garment workers in the US, who have lost their jobs and those who work in ever worsening conditions, must begin working with workers overseas to the build coalitions and networks needed to challenge the industry’s heretofore unfettered exploitation of them.

Looking Ahead to 2005

Major changes in trade law portend further suffering for women garment workers in the US. Between 1993 and 1996, the US lost 143,000 apparel jobs due to the passage of the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement. Only because of quotas and tariffs on goods from the rest of the world did 460,000 jobs remain in the US between 1985 to 1996. However, the worldwide quotas for cotton and wool apparel imports to the US, provided for in the MultiFibre Arrangement of 1974 (MFA), which prevented the entire industry from leaving, will be phased out altogether by 2005. Removing these quotas will enable US companies to shift more of production to the lowest wage countries.

It is projected that only 379,650 jobs of the currently existing 621,000 jobs in the US apparel industry will survive the overseas shift likely to occur after 2005. As a result, the jobs of some 70,000 California and 35,000 New York garment workers, primarily Asian and Latina immigrant women, will be in jeopardy. Given the contraction of safety nets in the US, these working women will be in the same position as other low-wage, limited-English speaking immigrant women are now. Specifically, they will be in a crunch to learn English and new job skills before the expiration of their five-year lifetime bar for cash benefits under TANF. As described in Chapter One, Asian immigrants are being denied equal access to the welfare-to-work services they need to gain marketable skills that will enable them to find self-sustaining living wage jobs.

For the garment industry that remains, it cannot compete through a low-wage strategy since US wages will not drop as low as wages in developing countries. To eliminate sweatshop conditions in the US, manufacturers must compete through a high-value strategy, that is, by producing high-end fashions and investing in technology and in higher wages for workers to improve quality, skills, delivery, and efficiency in the production process.

The Anti-Sweatshop Organizations

For the past two decades, the anti-sweatshop work has been carried out by Asian American organizations. The leaders in this movement are Asian American women, many of whom developed into labor and community leaders through their advocacy on behalf of garment workers. The work of these Asian American women has helped garment workers of every ethnicity and race. Their collaborative and multi-pronged approach to organizing and advocacy has also built one of the strongest movements for civil and human rights among people of color.

California

The leading organization advocating on behalf of garment workers for the past two decades is the San Francisco-based Asian Law Caucus (ALC). The ALC was the first to use impact litigation to create joint liability case law holding manufacturers responsible for the labor law violations of its contractors. It has litigated or co-counseled most of the California joint liability lawsuits brought against a retailer or manufacturer. It is a named plaintiff in one of three lawsuits brought against retailers using sweatshop labor on the island of Saipan, a US territory in the Western Pacific, lending its expertise on the garment industry to the legal team. It led or participated in all the legislative attempts to pass joint liability laws in California, succeeding in 1999 in passing AB 633. ALC staff drafted the bill and its amendments and led the statewide coalition in negotiating and lobbying for the bill’s passage. The ALC played a large role in improving conditions in the San Francisco garment industry. When San Francisco manufacturers began moving work to Southern California in response to the higher wages, ALC’s work expanded to building the capacity of Los Angeles advocates who did not begin their work until after El Monte came to light. The ALC lends its expertise to the Southern California groups primarily through Sweatshop Watch (see below), which it co-founded. In addition, the ALC provided guidance to the national anti-sweatshop movement.

For the past 10 years, the Asian Immigrant Women Advocates (AIWA), an Oakland-based organization, have provided know-your-rights and leadership training to Chinese garment workers to improve the conditions in their shops. In 1992, AIWA launched a national campaign against designer Jessica McClintock when one of her contract shops closed, owing its workers weeks of pay. The high point of the campaign, a segment that aired on 60 Minutes in 1994, brought nationwide attention to the plight of garment workers. More recently, in April 2000, working with faculty, physicians and nurses from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), AIWA opened a workers health clinic. The project also works with an ergonomist to develop low cost solutions to prevent injuries in factories.

The Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California (APALC) began its advocacy work for Southern California garment workers in 1995 in representing the 72 Thai garment workers released from involuntary servitude in the El Monte sweatshop. APALC filed a lawsuit against the smuggler/employers and retailers and won a $4 million settlement for the workers. Since El Monte, APALC has brought several other impact litigation cases on behalf of garment workers, was part of the team that negotiated and worked on passage of AB 633, and represents garment workers who are filing wage guarantee claims before the Labor Commissioner.

Sweatshop Watch (SW), a coalition of 24 organizations formed in 1995, engages in statewide and national anti-sweatshop work that its member organizations cannot do individually. For example, working in conjunction with labor, Sweatshop Watch coordinated the community effort in qualifying a ballot measure to raise the minimum wage in California. It hosted a Living Wage Working Summit in 1998, which brought together 50 participants from across the US and abroad to popularize the concept of a living wage. In 1999, it coordinated the effort to win passage of AB 633. Currently, it coordinates statewide advocacy to implement AB 633, mobilizes public pressure against The Gap and other retailers accused of using a system of indentured servitude on Saipan, works with students across the country in their anti-sweatshop activities, and raises public awareness about sweatshops through publishing a quarterly newsletter and serves as an information clearinghouse. Sweatshop Watch recently opened a multi-ethnic Garment Workers Center, a worker membership organization, in Los Angeles’ downtown garment district, where Asian and Latina workers learn about their rights. The workers develop leadership skills through a special curricula for women workers, learn how to use AB 633 to advocate on their own behalf, and train other workers. The Center has a walk-in clinic as well as a telephone hotline in six languages. Asian and Latina workers have organized and worked together to win back wages from contractors and manufacturers. SW’s member organizations, APALC, Korean Immigrant Worker Advocates, and Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles guide the work of the Center.

New York

The Chinese Staff and Workers Association (CSWA) is a worker organization with garment worker members since 1979. CSWA believes that only empowered workers can make lasting changes in their workplaces and tells workers who come to them for help that “we will fight with you, not for you.” CSWA has a small staff, relying on its worker members to do the program work. CSWA’s modus operandi is direct action, rallies, and picket lines and campaigns to expose the inhuman conditions in New York’s sweatshops. In 1999, CSWA along with the National Mobilization Against Sweat Shops (NMASS), launched a campaign against Donna Karan accusing it of using subcontractors who operate 12-hour days, seven-day work weeks under intolerable conditions, such as padlocked bathrooms, surveillance cameras, and denial of time off to care for sick children. Identifying excessively long hours of work as one of the leading causes of health and safety problems, CSWA started its Garment Workers Health and Safety Project in 1997. CSWA also targeted corruption in the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board (WCB) where workers are not allowed to testify at their own hearings, are not provided translators, and their cases can drag on for up to seven to eight years or are closed without explanation. The workers held a demonstration in front of the WCB to protest the delays and collusion between insurance companies and workers’ comp judges. CSWA will be working with New York University Law Center to draft legislation to reform the WCB.

For the past 10 years, the New York-based Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) has used lawsuits to supplement the organizing efforts of Asian workers. AALDEF, in cooperation with CSWA’s organizing efforts, is currently litigating a class action against Donna Karan on behalf of all workers in her contract shops in New York. By including all of Donna Karan’s contract shops, AALDEF has removed the opportunity to move work between factories as a method of frustrating the lawsuit. Also, AALDEF recently successfully defended itself against a $75 million defamation lawsuit filed against it, CSWA, and NMASS for a campaign against New York manufacturer Street Beat. Street Beat’s lawsuit claimed that the protests in front of their building caused the cancellation of contracts with Sears Roebuck. In this lawsuit, AALDEF created a new legal precedent that protects the rights of workers and activists to engage in protest and exercise their First Amendment rights.

Recommendations for Action

· Hold retailers and manufacturers legally responsible, through impact litigation and legislative advocacy, for the labor law violations of their contractors in order to end their practice of forcing contractors to accept low contract prices or using contractors who are chronic violators.

· Increase staffing levels at state and federal labor agencies and pressure them to direct their enforcement efforts against contractors and manufacturers.

· Organize and unionize workers because only an empowered workforce can monitor its own factory day to day and make lasting changes in their factories and industry.

· Enlist the support of the public to prevent “runaway” shops. Strengthen the ability of NGOs to conduct the necessary state and national level campaigns and advocacy.

· Conduct research to determine the potential impact of the removal of quotas for cotton and wool apparel imports in 2005.

· Obtain federal, state, and county funding for ESL and retraining programs to help garment workers who will lose their jobs in 2005 to transition to other industries.

· Foster global networks and coalitions of garment workers and advocates to counter the race to the bottom and coordinate responses to the elimination of quotas in 2005.

Footnotes

1 The author, who was a staff attorney at the Asian Law Caucus from 1992- 2000, represented Man Le Lo in her wrongful termination and wage violation lawsuit and assisted her with her workers’ compensation claim.

2 See DOL Garment Enforcement Report, January 2000-March 2000. Advocates believe that contractors are adept at hiding violations from the DOL and that the rates of minimum wage and overtime violations are much higher. While advocates agree that less violations occur in the San Francisco garment industry, based on their work with garment worker, they believe that the 25% and 8% rates underestimate the violations that are occurring and the actual rates for overtime and minimum wage violation are 50% and 25% respectively. Interview with Hina Shah, Employment/Labor Attorney at the Asian Law Caucus, March 14, 2001.

3 Historically, the word “sweatshop” originated in the 19th century to describe a subcontracting system in which middlemen earned profits from the margin between the amount they received for a contract and the amount they paid to the workers. The margin was said to be “sweated” from the workers who received minimal wages for excessive hours worked under unsanitary conditions.

4 Under NAFTA, garments assembled in Mexico with North American made yarn and fabrics have no quota limitations or tariffs.

5 Garment production was also concentrated in El Paso, Texas until NAFTA destroyed that industry. The vast majority of the workers were Latina. Regarding the Dallas-Fort Worth area, not much is known about the garment industry there primarily because of the lack of garment advocates there. What little that is known reveals some 8,000 to 25,000 home sewers laboring in the ladies apparel industry. Over the past 15 years, the contractors and home-sewers, mainly Vietnamese and Korean immigrants, have displaced nearly 10,000 factory jobs in Dallas, and perhaps as many as 20,000 in the larger region. The ability to pay home sewers a third to a half less enabled Dallas and Los Angeles manufacturers to keep production in the United States.

6 The $100 sale price of a garment is typically divided up as follows: $50 to the retailer, $35 to the manufacturer, $10 to the contractor, and $5 to the garment worker. A 25% reduction in price means the workers’ earnings drop to $3.75 for assembling the garment.

7 Heightened media attention on overseas sweatshops has led to consumers looking for the “Made in the USA” label. In response, retailers have shifted some production to US territories in the western Pacific Ocean. On Saipan, part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands, about 15,000 imported Asian women-Chinese, Filipina, Bangladeshi-produce garments for over 25 retailers, including The Gap and Tommy Hilfiger. They work 80 to over 100 hours a week, often “off the clock” without pay or overtime. They earn $2.90 per hour, a little more than half of the US minimum wage. They live seven women to a room in inward-pointing barbed wire enclosed barracks and are subject to lockdowns and curfews. The “Made in the USA” apparel are shipped to the US quota and tariff free.

8 Goods that are produced in violation of minimum wage and overtime laws are considered “hot goods.” The US DOL can seize hot goods and prevent them from being shipped or sold until the wages are paid.

References

The Center for Economic and Social Rights, Treated Like Slaves, Donna Karan. Inc. Violates Women Workers’ Human Rights, Dec. 1999

Chan, Anita, China’s Workers Under Assault: Exploitation and Abuse in a Globa-lizing Economy, Armonk, New York, M.E. Sharpe, 2001

Foo, Lora Jo, The Vulnerable and Exploitable Immigrant Workforce and the Need for Strengthening Worker Protective Legislation, 103 Yale L. J. 2179, June 1994

Ellis, Kristi, Blame It on NAFTA, Women’s Wear Daily, Oct. 1999

Esbenshade, Jill, Monitoring in the Garment Industry: Lessons from Los Angeles, University of California, Chicano/Latino Policy Project’s Working Paper Series, July 1999

Fenton Communications Press Release, First Ever Lawsuits Filed Charging Sweatshop Conspiracy Between Major US Clothing Designers and Retailers, Foreign Textile Producers, Jan. 13, 1998

Kwong, Peter, Forbidden Workers, Illegal Chinese Immigrants and American Labor, 1997

Kwong, Scott, The Triangle Legacy: 90 Years After the Fire, Sweatshops Persist, Women’s Wear Daily, March 22, 2001

Nutter, Steve, The Structure and Growth of the Los Angeles Garment Industry, published in “no sweat” edited by Andrew Ross, 1997

Owens, Jennifer, Apparel Drops 4,000 Jobs, Textiles, 5,000 in July, Women’s Wear Daily, Aug. 10, 1998

Ramey, Joanna, Domestic Apparel Employment Continues Downward Trend, Women’s Wear Daily, Jan. 8, 2001

Rosen, Ellen, The Globalization of the US Apparel Industry: Free Trade, Neoclassical Economics, and The Origins of Domestic Sweatshops, Aug. 2000

Reavis, Dick J., Sewing discontent, Cut-rate wages in the Dallas apparel underground, The Texas Observer, May 3, 1993

Sweatshop Watch Newsletter, Fair Labor Association=Starvation Wages, Dec. 1999

Sweatshop Watch’s Response to White House Apparel Industry Partnership Agreement, May 1997, http://www.sweatshopwatch.org/swatch/what/sw_respon-se .html

Part 1, Chapter 4

Other Low-Wage Workers:
High-Tech Sweatshops,

Home Care Workers, and
Domestic Workers

High-Tech Sweatshops-Asian Immigrant Women in Silicon Valley

“I have a very simple formula for hiring.... Just three things I look for in hiring entry-level manufacturing operatives: small, foreign and female. These little foreign gals are grateful to be hired-very, very grateful-no matter what.”1

A Segregated Valley with Asian Women at the Very Bottom

California’s Silicon Valley is famed for its semiconductor industry and the multi-millionaire entrepreneurs who created Hewlett Packard, Sun Microsystems, and other high-tech businesses associated with the seemingly endless possibilities for boundless wealth at the turn of the century. However, this industry is highly segregated along race, class, and gender lines. The high-paid and stock-optioned engineers and executives are overwhelmingly white males. Women, especially white women, make up nearly 80% of the secretarial workforce. Women of color dominate the bottom of the wage ladder in production, fabrication, and assembly jobs. Most of these women are immigrants of Mexican, Vietnamese, Filipina, Chinese, and Korean origin.

The high-tech industry is so segmented that segregation exists even among women of color. Fabrication workers, who work in the “clean rooms” and wear the white bubble suits, are primarily Filipina women who, as the result of US colonization of the Philippines, have the English language skills to program and operate the computerized machines that make microchips. By contrast, the semi-skilled and unskilled assembly line workers, those who solder wire and transistors onto circuit boards, are non-English speaking Vietnamese, Korean and Chinese women. Seventy percent of the approximately 50,000 to 70,000 assembly line workers are Asian and Latina women who do not get health benefits. In the subcontracting shops, the percentage is higher-75% to 100% of the assembly labor force is Asian and Latina women.2 Entry-level jobs in the assembly industry pay between the California minimum wage of $6.25 per hour to $12 per hour, with the median wage at between $7 and $9 an hour. Often these jobs are temporary and the women move back and forth between assembly jobs and welfare.

Beginning in the 1960’s, as much as 90% of high-tech production shifted overseas. However, faced with intense competition from among firms in product development, semiconductor companies needed a convenient source of labor for prototypes and short-term projects. Most big computer companies handled manufacturing in-house and turned to outside firms, the mom and pop “board stuffer” shops, for help only when demand spiked. These mom-and-pop shops provided savings of 15% to 50% on labor costs and quick turnarounds. By the 1990’s the contract industry grew to a $120 billion industry. Today, there are over 800 manufacturing firms in Silicon Valley; 300 of those are contract manufacturers.

Racist and Sexist Stereotyping to Justify Discrimination

In the high-tech industry, white male managers hire immigrant women for low-tech jobs. They justify the low pay and poor treatment by claiming that women, whom they assume are attached to a man, can afford to work for less. These managers also believe Asian and Mexican immigrant women are better suited for boring, repetitive assembly line work and assume that the women have superior hand-eye coordination and patience. One white male manager said that the women’s small size makes it easier for them to sit quietly for long periods of time doing detail work, qualities that neither immigrant men nor white women have. White managers consistently refer to Asian workers as “girls,” while non-Asian workers were “women.” One manager claimed:

“Asian women are more subservient than American females; if I refer to them as “girls” it’s because to me, they act like girls: they only speak when spoken to, do exactly as they are told, and so forth. So I play into it-I treat them firmly like a father figure....”3

Based on these racist and paternalistic stereotypes, managers steer white women away from assembly line work (“They don’t look right there, they’re Americans”) and toward office or professional jobs. Immigrant men are channeled into higher paid technician work. Immigrant women are only hired for assembly work. Relying on stereotypes that make Asian women different, into the “other” and hence less valued in society, enables these mangers to justify paying them less, laying them off as needed, and exposing them to dangerous chemicals without fear of a societal outcry.4 As one factory owner admitted:

“Let’s face it, when you have to expand and contract all the time, you need people who are more expendable. When I lay off immigrant housewives, people don’t get as upset as if you were laying off regular [sic] workers.”5

The Creation of High-Tech Products in Immigrant Homes

In the 1980’s, Silicon Valley electronics assembly companies regularly used immigrant women workers, many of whom were welfare recipients, to assemble circuit boards in their homes.6 At that time, the state Labor Commissioner began an investigation of homework that screeched to a halt when high-tech firms met with labor officials and local politicians and convinced them they should be allowed to police themselves. With the fox guarding the chicken coop, homework flourished throughout the 1980’s. The industry’s largest contract manufacturer, $5.3 billion Solectron and other contractors, grew into the industry giants they are now by using homeworkers throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s.

A 1999 investigation by The San Jose Mercury News found whole families, particularly Vietnamese, working far into the night at kitchen tables, in living rooms, bedrooms, and garage workbenches, soldering tiny wires, strip cables, and transistors onto printed circuit boards, painstakingly assembling the nervous system of high-tech products. Often nighttime workers had day jobs at a manufacturing firm earning $7 to $9 per hour while earning well below the minimum wage by doing piecework at home at night. The Mercury News reported that at least 30 electronic contract manufacturers-ranging from small firms to multi-billion dollar Solectron-used homeworkers. Contract manufacturers are no frills operations with after tax profits of just three to five percent. They turn to homeworkers and piecework for rush jobs or orders priced so low that they cannot otherwise deliver the required results. On piecework, production is sped up because the faster a worker works, the more money she makes. Says a former Solectron production manager, “We give the workers 100 boards and the next day they have to bring back 100 boards. Maybe at home they do it faster if they have brothers and sisters helping them.” Of course, these siblings never show up on the company books. In July 2000, after conducting an investigation of five assembly factories, the federal DOL ordered four of them to pay nearly $105,500 in minimum wage and/or overtime wages to 57 home assemblers. Two companies were cited for allowing underage children to assist in the homework.

To avoid legal responsibilities, companies that use homeworkers treat them as independent contractors, even though technically they are neither independent nor contractors. If they were treated as employees, the company would be required to pay them minimum wage, overtime, and employer taxes such as unemployment, disability, and Social Security. To evade these laws, companies ask workers to get a business license for themselves or others working in the same house so that they pay them as “independent contractors,” which may also include other relatives, including children as young as 10-years-old. Those who work exclusively at home work 12 to 15 hours a day, seven days a week and frequently 24 hours at a stretch on rush jobs.

In recent years, large companies have reduced their reliance on homeworkers. However, the practice remains robust in smaller companies, particularly cable assembly houses. The persistence of homework reflects both the manufacturers’ demand for cheap labor and the more than ample supply of desperate Asian immigrant women. These women suffer employment discrimination, lack on-the-job training and are in dire need to supplement their incomes. In a 1999 study of welfare reform, the Equal Rights Advocates found that a significant number of Vietnamese and Mexican American women welfare recipients had worked in electronic assembly jobs. Some were assembling computer parts at home, earning half the minimum wage and collecting welfare. Given the intermittent nature of the high-tech contracting industry, these workers move back and forth between employment and unemployment, without the security of unemployment insurance and rely on food banks and the welfare office to survive.

Heightened Health Risks to Asian Immigrant Women Workers

Asian and Latina women semiconductor production workers are exposed to dangerous chemicals that may cause cancer or neurological, vision, respiratory, or reproductive damage. One 1988 study of women working in the “clean rooms” (where the bubble units they wear are not to protect them from chemicals but to protect the product from being sneezed on) found that 38% of pregnant women suffered spontaneous abortions. Seven chemical agents used by fabrication workers were linked to spontaneous abortions. Of the 58 chemicals used in the construction of chips, circuits and monitors, 15 are suspected carcinogens. IBM uses a chemical in its “clean room” that is known to be linked to brain cancer. IBM’s own data of 25,000 employee deaths from 1975-89 show that 8,000 died from cancer, with 149 dying from primary brain cancer, which is a very high number for a rare disease. Repetitive stress injuries are common. In addition, homeworkers bring hazardous industrial materials, including lead and flux, into their homes when they solder parts onto circuit boards. The toxic chemicals are used in the kitchen and bathroom sinks throughout the house thus exposing children and other relatives. While occupational illnesses represented just 14.3% of all manufacturing workers’ ailments, they made up 30% of semiconductor employees’ maladies. The rate of injuries and illnesses from toxic exposures is three times higher for semiconductor workers than other manufacturing workers.

The Organizations

Neither labor, women’s, nor ethnic organizations have made major inroads in challenging the hiring hierarchy, occupational hazards, and homework violations in Silicon Valley. Each attempt has run up against the political might of the high-tech industry. In 2000, after The Mercury News investigation on homework, the industry again flexed its muscles to nix proposed state legislation to add five DLSE investigators to Silicon Valley to examine high-tech practices. A 1998 government study to measure cancer and birth defect rates among California semiconductor workers was scuttled when leading semiconductor companies refused to cooperate. The federal DOL is so understaffed that after the recent investigations of five assembly plants, it plans no further investigation of the industry since its investigation did not turn up “severe” levels of abuse, such as multiple minimum wage violations. Most homeworkers they interviewed earned $7 per hour. Despite the multiple overtime violations, the DOL’s view is that there are people in other industries making $2 an hour (presumably garment and agriculture) to which it must turn its attention.

Two Asian American organizations work with high-tech workers in Silicon Valley. For several years, the Oakland-based Asian Immigrant Women Advocates (AIWA) has worked with Korean women in a number of assembly plants, educating them on occupational hazards, providing ergonomics training, and teaching advocacy skills to prevent repetitive stress injuries at the worksite. The involvement of the San Francisco-based Asian Law Caucus (ALC) is more recent. In 1999, the ALC filed a lawsuit on behalf of a Cambodian worker who took work home after a full day, working four extra hours each night on piece rate and earning less than minimum wage. ALC co-counseled the case with Equal Rights Advocates and currently represents five other homeworkers in unpaid minimum wage and overtime claims. ALC hired an attorney in 2001, funded through a National Association of Public Interest Law (NAPIL) fellowship, to work on health and safety issues in Silicon Valley, provide legal services through a clinic, and assess needs and the most appropriate advocacy models. The ALC also formed the High Tech Collaborative that includes ERA, AIWA, and Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network (SIREN). The Collaborative is currently developing a work plan for public education and outreach to workers, research into the industry, litigation and policy advocacy. The Santa Clara Center for Occupational Safety and Health (SCCOSH), while not an ethnic-specific organization, has a Working Women’s Leadership Project (WE LeaP) that in the past year has trained 200 primarily Filipina, Vietnamese, and Korean women to identify workplace hazards, reduce exposure to toxic chemicals, develop better communications skills to talk to their supervisors as well as to Cal-OSAHA inspectors about health hazards, and advocate for themselves before the Workers Compensation Board. SCCOSH has done legislative and regulatory advocacy work before the EPA to ban the use of dangerous chemicals and to push OSHA to lower acceptable exposure levels.

Domestic Workers in the Hidden Economy

About Domestic Workers

There are no reliable statistics on the number of domestic workers employed in the US, let alone the number of Asian American domestic workers. Given the small number of organizations that advocate for domestic workers, even anecdotal information is sparse. While it is possible to monitor the number domestic workers employed by diplomatic personnel by looking at the number of work visas issued each year, the overwhelming majority of domestic workers are employed in the homes of private citizens. In states with large immigrant populations, most domestic workers are immigrant women. More often than not, they receive their wages as cash under the table and as such, are part of a vast underground economy. In the 1970’s, Congress estimated that domestic workers comprised approximately half of all female heads of households and that three-quarters earned less than minimum wage. Over the last three decades, some of these women have moved to higher paying, more secure jobs but hundreds of thousands continue to work as domestic workers, and this remains a low-wage, female dominated workforce.

The Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence (CAAAV), an organization that works with domestic workers, estimates that about 200,000 to 300,000 domestic workers work in the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. CAAAV’s estimate is based on the number of professionals likely to have full time nannies, cooks and housekeepers.7 In the tri-state area, the vast majority of domestic workers are Caribbean immigrant women, about 25% are Asian immigrants, and a smaller number are Irish women. Among the Asian workers, 80% or about 25,000 are Filipinas, working in the suburbs primarily for white families. 3,000 are Tibetan women. This exact figure is derived from INS data; Tibetan women enter the US as political asylees and 99% of them work as domestic workers. South Asian domestic workers (from Nepal, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan) and Malaysians make up the rest of the Asian domestic workforce. It is estimated that there are thousands of South Asian domestic workers. Except for the South Asian domestic workers who work for employers of the same ethnicity, e.g., Bangladeshi for Bangladeshi, all other Asian domestics work primarily for white families. Most domestic workers in the tri-state area, except the Tibetans, are undocumented migrant workers who work in the US in order to send money home to their families and many have been here up to a decade or more.

Regardless of ethnicity, the issues domestic workers face are the same across the board: low wages and long hours, isolation, sexual harassment, and lack of health care. Many continue working despite their exploitation because of their isolation, particularly for suburban live-ins who may become homeless if they were to leave an abusive situation. They are unaware of their rights and fear deportation by the INS because of their undocumented status. Employers threaten to turn them over to the INS if they complain and many do not leave the house for fear of being picked up by the INS. Under these circumstances, organizing among undocumented domestic workers is particularly difficult. Among South Asian domestic workers employed by those of the same ethnicity, many work in conditions of involuntary servitude.8 Their passports are confiscated, they cannot leave the house or use the telephone and may be physically abused, and may work 100 hours a week for wages as low as 50 cents an hour.

Other live-ins isolated in the suburbs, such as Caribbean, Filipino, and Latina immigrants, work long hours for wages that average $2 per hour. Conditions for those who work as live-out domestic workers in Manhattan are better as they have each other for support. They meet in the park, at playgrounds, schools, and play spaces or while walking the dog or shopping at grocery stores. They teach each other how to negotiate with employers and spread the word about job openings. But even these workers work 12 hour days with no overtime pay. Their wages range from $5 to $7 an hour. Another issue is that the average age of domestic workers is in the late 40’s and 50’s. For many, Social Security taxes have not been paid during their years of work. What will happen to them in retirement?

Gaps in Legal Protection

Exacerbating the abuses spawned by their isolated work situations is the fact that domestic workers are excluded from federal and state labor laws that protect most other workers. Not until 1974 did Congress include domestic workers within the protections of minimum wage and overtime laws of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). But FLSA’s overtime protections do not apply to live-in domestic workers. Nor do they apply to babysitters and companions to the disabled or elderly whose principal duties do not include housekeeping. The National Labor Relations Act, which grants employees the right to organize, does not cover domestic workers. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, only covers employers with 15 or more employees, thereby excluding virtually all private households and domestic workers. As for state laws, a number of states exclude them from their higher minimum wage laws, resulting in domestic workers making the lower federal minimum ($5.15/hour). Over half of states exclude private households and domestic workers from their civil rights and workers compensation laws. And while all states but one offer unemployment benefits to domestic workers, most do not qualify because of requirements such as the need to earn $1,000 per quarter from the same employer; many domestic workers work a few hours a week for several employers.

The Organizations

Advocacy on behalf of immigrant domestic workers is very challenging. They must be located, then educated about their rights and given a place to turn to for help. The ethnic communities from which these domestic workers come do not look at them as workers with rights, but rather as servants. Thus, there are very little resources for domestic workers in these communities. The numerous issues they face in addition to low wages and long hours are still hidden. Moreover, to advocate legislatively to address their issues and expand their limited legal rights, hard data is needed to persuade lawmakers. Broad based organizing must be done among domestic workers as a critical part of any advocacy work.

CAAAV’s Women Workers Project (WWP), formed in 1998, is engaged in organizing work. Today, the WWP has 70 members, about 40 Filipina and 30 from other Asian groups. CAAAV also spearheads a multi-racial campaign for domestic workers, involving 400 workers, 80% Caribbean and 20% Asian workers, and is conducting a survey of them and other domestic workers. To reach these workers, WWP goes into parks, the streets of wealthy neighborhoods, and indoor play areas during rainy days, such as gyms for babies, or on the subways.9 The WWP provides workshops on basic rights under labor laws, negotiations with employers, and health fairs such as mammogram days. It has also developed a standard contract for domestic workers to use in negotiating with a prospective employer. However, the WWP is not a service provider; its emphasis is organizing for broader change. When a domestic worker seeks assistance from the WWP, the eight-member Organizing Committee (seven Filipinas, one Malaysian) decides on accepting the case based on whether it will further all workers’ rights and whether the woman seeking help agrees to be part of a public campaign. For example, the WWP accepted a case on behalf of a Malaysian woman injured on the job and organized a demonstration in front of her employer’s office. The gathering in front of the well-known psychologist’s office brought public attention to the occupational hazards faced by domestic workers and the role of employment agencies who send woman to employers known to be abusive.

In addition to individual campaigns, WWP has lobbied private banks to adopt codes of conduct for their international staff who hire domestic workers. In a highly publicized case, CAAAV targeted a Crédit Lyonnais executive who was transferred from England to the US and brought a Filipino domestic worker with him. She was paid $2 an hour to work on-call 24 hours a day, seven days a week as a live-in nanny and housekeeper. The nanny sued the executive for unpaid wages. There is no legal precedent to include Crédit Lyonnais as a defendant. In addition, WWP has targeted Citibank and Merrill Lynch but to date, both corporations have refused to respond. WWP has also pulled together a legal team to advocate for expanding existing labor laws to include domestic workers and providing for standardized contracts for domestic workers. The legal team includes the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), National Employment Law Project (NELP), and New York University School of Law’s Immigrant Rights Project (NYIRC). The legislation could, for example, regulate employment agencies that refer domestic workers. A campaign to garner support for the legislation would include education of workers on the concept, media work to educate the public, demonstrations in front of employment agencies, a citywide domestic workers negotiations day, or a one-day sick out.

Workers Awaaz and Andolan are both New York-based South Asian women worker organizations. They are membership and all-volunteer organizations without paid staff or funding. Andolan has 15 to 20 active members and 15 to 20 domestic worker supporters. Like CAAAV, Andolan uses cases as a way to educate other domestic workers and the public. Andolan currently has five back-wage claims. Andolan also provides services such as pro bono attorneys, self-defense classes, phone advice on how to leave the house and use public transportation, and has helped numerous workers escape involuntary servitude situations. In conjunction with the lawsuits, workers are asked to protest and demonstrate in front of employers’ homes to bring forth other domestic workers and educate the public. These two groups are working with CAAAV on its standardized contracts campaign. Domestic workers from as far away as Los Angeles have called Andolan for assistance.

In bringing minimum wage and overtime lawsuits and in their legislative advocacy, CAAAV, Andolan, and Workers Awaaz rely on AALDEF, NELP, and NYIRC for their pro bono services. AALDEF and NELP have a joint South Asian Workers’ Rights Project staffed by attorneys funded by Skadden-Arps and NAPIL fellowships that focus on domestic workers.

Homecare Workers Unionize-A Labor Success Story

On February 25, 1999, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) won the right to represent more than 74,000 homecare workers, primarily women of color, in Los Angeles County. This was the biggest organizing victory for the US labor movement since workers at Ford Motor Company’s River Rouge plant joined the United Auto Workers in 1941. This stunning achievement was accomplished over 12 years among a low-wage, ethnically diverse, and predominantly female workforce scattered throughout the 4,083 square miles of Los Angeles County. Similar organizing efforts in the Greater San Francisco Bay Area have also succeeded with SEIU now representing 30,000 homecare workers, also women of color. In the past decade, 100,000 homecare workers have become union members. Through the union’s collective bargaining and backing from elderly and disabled advocates, San Francisco homecare workers now earn $9.75 per hour, with medical and dental benefits. Alameda County workers earn $7.82 per hour with health care benefits, receive free bus passes to get to work, and got funding for a Workers Center. Los Angeles County homecare workers earn $6.75 per hour, without health benefits.

A Profile of Homecare Workers

Homecare workers are personal attendants who provide assistance to sick, elderly, and disabled people in their homes. Their duties may include helping their clients bathe, dress, move around the house, eat, and use the toilet. Other routine household tasks might include meal preparation, doing laundry, and managing household money. Homecare workers are also legally permitted to perform medically related tasks such as bowel and bladder care and administration of medications. Their jobs are often difficult and stressful, requiring a variety of skills ranging from heavy lifting to coping with death. In California, homecare workers are paid by the California In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS), which administers funds from Medicaid and other government programs.

In California, currently there are about 200,000 IHSS homecare workers providing care to 230,000 consumers. Overwhelmingly, homecare workers are women of color, many of whom are immigrants. Los Angeles County has some 74,000 homecare workers. 83% are women, 39% are Latinas, 25% are African Americans, 14% are of Armenian or Russian descent, and 7% are Asian/Pacific Islanders. This contrasts with San Francisco and Alameda Counties where approximately 30% of the 15,000 workers are Chinese.

Half of homecare workers are family members of the consumers, e.g., a daughter caring for an elderly mother. Over half of Los Angeles homecare workers are over age 45. Prior to unionization, the wages paid to homecare workers was the state minimum wage, which was below the federal poverty level. Moreover, the workers were not entitled to any medical insurance, pension, or holiday pay.

The Challenges to Organizing and the Union’s Strategy

The union was faced with several formidable challenges in organizing the homecare workers. First, the workforce was dispersed throughout the county and difficult to locate. With individuals working in home settings, they had no occasion to come together as a group. They spoke many languages-more than 100 different languages in Los Angeles County alone. Due to the low pay and lack of benefits, and consumer death, their turnover rate was estimated to be a staggering 40%. Second, it was not easy to pinpoint who the employer was. While IHSS performed the administrative functions of issuing paychecks, it did not have the legal authority to enter into negotiations with the union and neither the state nor the county would accept the responsibility of being the workers’ employer. Moreover, some traditional functions of employers such as hiring, firing, and directing work, were performed by the consumers, who were unwavering about retaining this right as a means to control their lives. In fact, the consumers themselves were a potential obstacle if they publicly opposed homecare workers unionizing. Some were very concerned that the union would strike and leave them without critical care that no one else could provide, and others were suspicious that the union’s intervention would decrease the control they valued over their ability to lead independent lives. Finally, there did not seem to be any leverage that the workers could use to press their concerns. The traditional weapon of a strike was not a viable source of leverage because the workers were often family members of the consumers.

1. The Action Plan

Notwithstanding the formidable challenges, the union committed itself to the following plan of action. As a first step, the union needed to pass statewide legislation to create a public authority in each county, an employer-of-record, with which the union could collectively bargain. Once passed, the next step would be to form public authorities in each county and commence collective bargaining. To achieve these goals, the union utilized a three-pronged strategy in each county: 1) grassroots organizing and political mobilization around day-to-day worker issues, 2) coalition building among workers, consumers, and advocates, and 3) policy changes aimed at restructuring the homecare system to bring higher wages and benefits to workers, while delivering better care to consumers.

2. Grassroots Organizing

Without worker interest, the union could not claim representation rights. Grassroots organizing was critical. In a long-term campaign with a 40% turnover rate, this required constant organizing and reorganizing just to maintain a statewide level of support of 10,000 to 15,000 of homecare workers at any given time. The initial challenge in Los Angeles was to find the 74,000 workers. The union went to senior citizens’ centers, doctors’ offices, markets, and churches. It established a union office that provided assistance in finding jobs and gave workers a space to come together. It filed a successful lawsuit over late paychecks, organized to raise the minimum wage from $3.75 to $4.25, and fought cuts in funding for homecare workers’ services every year from 1989 to 1992. From these early successes, workers realized what could be done collectively. In Alameda County, SEIU set up a community-based Workers Center to conduct outreach. Once workers heard about the union and had a ray of hope that they could earn higher than minimum wages, they readily joined the union. Remarkably, the Los Angeles local was able to sign up 12,000 workers in a three-month period in 1987.

3. Coalition Building

After building a base among homecare workers in each targeted county, the union created partnerships with activists in the elderly and disabled communities. Most consumers came to see that by upgrading the pay and skills of their personal attendants, turnover would decrease and quality of their care would improve. The strength of worker/consumer partnerships formed the basis of a wider community alliance with church and other community-based organizations (CBOs). In the San Francisco Bay Area, Asian American CBOs such as Oakland Chinese Community Council, Korean Community Center, and Self Help for the Elderly supported the homecare workers. Delegations of workers, elderly, disabled persons, and CBOs met with politicians, rallied at government buildings, and chained themselves to the doors of the Capitol, all demanding dignity for homecare workers through a revision of the existing employer system.

4. Policy Making

In 1993, the homecare worker/consumer coalition succeeded in passing state laws providing the statutory authority for counties to establish public authorities. The public authority was designed to bargain with the union, train homecare workers, and provide a registry to match workers with prospective consumers. The union then turned its attention to establishing the public authorities in the counties and funding appropriations for IHSS workers’ wage increases. San Francisco was the first to establish one in May 1995 and San Mateo’s was the first to become operational in January 1996. In 1997, 10 years after the Los Angeles campaign began, homecare workers celebrated the establishment of their public authority.

After the public authorities were formed, finding common ground between workers and consumers was critical. For instance, while negotiating for the union contract with the public authority, the issue of who should have the right to hire and fire the workers was hotly debated. In the end, the union contract gave consumers the right to hire and fire with or without cause. “I came to understand how intensely personal this job is, and how important it was that the consumers had a choice in who touched their bodies,” said a SEIU Executive Vice President. The union contract prohibits striking. A bill passed in 1999 prevents funding wage increases by reducing the hours of care approved for consumers. In return, the union got from consumers their support in pressing for higher state and country appropriations to pay for wage increases.

In 1999, the worker/consumer coalition succeeded in getting a law passed requiring each country to establish an Advisory Board and an “employer-of-record” by 2003. The law also protects against reductions in consumers’ hours of care and requires all counties with a caseload of more than 500 individuals to provide the homecare option. Another law passed that year requires counties to provide the union the names, addresses, and phone numbers of all IHSS homecare workers it seeks to represent, solving the problem that the union faced 10 years earlier of locating homecare workers.

5. Establishing a Workers Center

Before the campaign, only one union business agent (paid staff of union) represented some 7,000 workers in Alameda Country. To provide more representation to homecare workers, the union decided to create the Homecare Workers Center. Workers are given four months of training on workers’ rights, the union contract, and IHSS rules and procedures and can then serve as business agents for fellow workers. Initial funding for the Workers Center came from private foundations. Union dues now pay for operations of the Center, includin