From: John Young <jya-AT-pipeline.com> Date: Sun, 20 Aug 1995 11:07:10 -0400 Subject: Neo-Imperial Assault Ponder the parallels of this NYT article on the garment industry with Progressive Architecture's August articles on the rag-tattered architecture profession. Much of what Reich says about fashion industry trends is true of the art/design and construction industries, at least in New York City, with MBA mutually beneficial cultism, er, wise business plans, among the art-culture celebs and their financial-legal marionetteers who cheerfully disregard borders in art and design domains. These nitrite-loaded bacons club, inebriate, engorge and emflatulate in the Hamptons and Gstaad together, oinking tres amusant vanities of outfoxing local laws for losers, while underwriting resume-grants to academicize quaint ethnologies of primitive benevolence -- neo-traditionalist, iron-fisted civilists all -- Calvin uses neo-primitive sex and Trump HRH-prince-ily deploys faux-historicist preservation to mask disdainful, neo-imperial assault of ill-paid, ill-treated, illegal oh-so-colonial "immigrant" laborers. ---------- The New York Times, August 20, 1995, Week In Review, p. 7. Conversations / Robert B. Reich. How an American Industry Gets Away With Slave Labor [Photo] Secretary Reich: a plan to prod manufacturers and retailers. The Labor Secretary, saying most Americans don't want clothes made in sweatshops, appeals to higher-ups in the 'garment food chain. ' Just 10 days atfer about 70 illegal immigrants from Thailand were freed from a prison-like California garment factory, where they had worked in virtual slavery, Federal labor officials notified more than a dozen large retailers last week that goods from the sweatshop may have ended up in their stores. Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich said the retailers had been asked to attend a meeting in Washington next month to discuss ways of preventing apparel made by slave labor from being sold in American stores. The invitation came amid a widening investigation of the garment shop in El Monte, Calif., and debate about the many other, more traditional sweatshops that still fail to pay minimum wage or overtime and often ignore health and safety laws. In an interview, Mr. Reich elaborated on what the Government, retailers and garment manufacturers can do to curb abusive labor practices. By Alan Finder Q. Do stores know from whom they have purchased apparel or under what conditions it has been been produced? A. The garment "food chain" is fairly complicated. Manufacturers often subcontract with cutting and sewing shops. The retailers contract with the manufacturers. Retailers increasingly specify what kinds of garments and the particular designs they need. Manufacturers using just-in-time inventory techniques deal with a whole set of subcontractors. It's often difficult for retailers to know precisely where a garment is cut or sewn. Q. Was the women's garment industry fragmented this way so manufacturers could avoid responsibility for working conditions in shops? Or were economic conditions behind the creation of these complex networks? A. We see the same pattern in many other industries. Increasingly, industries are fragmenting into networks of contractors and specialized subcontractors. The old model of a large, vertically integrated mass-production enterprise is becoming outmoded simply because consumers can now have goods tailored to their particular needs. Technology permits a wider array of enterprises to create niche markets and to supply one another with specialized services. Q. Do you think consumers care whether clothing that they buy was made in a sweatshop or a factory that was abiding by all the labor laws? A. Undoubtedly consumers are interested first and foremost in price and quality. But most American consumers probably don't want to buy clothes made by slave laborers in the United States. Q. What can the Government do to make consumers more aware and force retailers and manufacturers to be more vigilant? A. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 authorizes the Department of Labor to bar interstate shipments of goods made in violation of the act, such as in sweatshops. That power was used rarely in the past. But it has proved to be an important instrument to get an industry to take responsibility for preventing these kinds of abuses. By barring shipments or threatening to bar them, we've managed to make significant progress. The numbers of workers who have been identified as working in sweatshop conditions and whose employers have been fined has grown by 50 percent over the last 2 1/2 years. Now in this instance we traced the invoices to several national retail chains, Mays department stores and so on. There's no evidence that these retailers knew that the garments that they bought were cut and sewn by slave laborers in the United States, but I don't think it's too much to ask them to take greater responsibility for helping prevent these kinds of abuses in the future. Q. You're planning to meet with a number of these national retailers. What do you want them to do? A. Let me give you an example. In June, we got the agreement of many brand-name manufacturers operating in Los Angeles County, representing about a third of the garment industry in Los Angeles, to voluntarily audit their cutting and sewing contractors for compliance with labor laws. This was a direct result of our enforcement efforts. Obviously the manufacturers did not want to run the risk of having their shipments impounded. By the same token I would expect that retailers don't want to run the risk of not having their orders filled because the garments they ordered were produced by sweatshops. Retailers are also concerned about their public images. They want to be good corporate citizens, I assume. The national retailers and brand-name manufacturers working together can police this industry because they are directly in the food chain. Q. The number of Federal labor investigators declined by about 20 percent in the last six years. Do you have enough resources to crack down on sweatshops? A. No. We've done a great deal with relatively few resources, because we've enlisted the help of manufacturers and we've used the legal authority in the Fair Labor Standards Act, which had rarely been used before. But obviously the industry has got to start taking a greater responsibility. There are nearly one million employees in the industry who are cutting and sewing garments. Almost 80 percent are women. In Los Angeles County alone there are 100,000 cutters and sewers in 4,000 separate cutting and sewing shops. It's extremely difficult for Federal inspectors to root out sweatshops. Manufacturers, however, know whom they are contracting with. Retailers are able to follow the invoice trail and assert some pressure on manufacturers and their subcontractors. Q. American manufacturers are often competing with foreign manufacturers who pay much lower labor rates. Is it reasonable to expect American companies to remain competitive, or should we consider abolishing laws like the minimum wage and allow the international marketplace to determine labor rates here? A. The garment industry in the United States is alive and well despite foreign competition. That's because there is an increasing demand for quick turnaround. Fashions change quickly, retailers want certain models, patterns, designs, immediately. It's often difficult for retailers to get the quick turnaround from foreign-sourced manufacturers. The amount of money we're talking about here, the difference between a sweatshop and a legitimate cutting and sewing operation, is relatively small considering the cost of the final garment. Remember, retailers are often marking up 60 to 100 percent. Q. Are you reasonably optimistic that the American garment industry will do a better job of policing itself? A. The cutting and sewing end of the garment industry in the United States has had a sad history of worker abuses for more than a century. Immigrants, some of them legal, some illegal, crowded together in unsafe, unsanitary conditions working for very little money have characterized cutting and sewing shops since the turn of the century. Sometimes there's a calamity like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York at the turn of the century, in which hundreds are killed. Laws are then enacted. But enforcement is always difficult. Unscrupulous employers and vulnerable workers in fly-by-night operations that can move from one location to another within days or hours make a difficult target for enforcement. The question is whether national brand-name manufacturers who contract with these small enterprises and large national retailers can have an impact. I'm cautiously optimistic. [End] ---------- Supplement to Progressive Architecture, August, 1995 issue. New Directions in Architectural Practice A one-day conference conducted by Progressive Architecture. Listen to what firms, both large and small, are doing to adapt to the changing economics of architectural practice. Learn what impact the globalization of practice is having on the structure and operation of firms, as well as on the type of work they produce. Hear how strategic mergers with other firms can position your office to take advantage of opportunities. Find out how the structure of the medical and legal professions is relevant to architectural practice, especially that of small firms. Discuss with management consultants your own thoughts about where you see the practice of architecture going. Discover what they see as important trends in practice and how the profession might respond to them. Pursue with colleagues your ideas about restructuring practice and education. Share with others your work experiences and how you see the profession steering a course for the future. Earn 10 AIA continuing education credits for your attendance at the presentations and panel discussions and your involvement in the question and answer period. Take away ideas and information directly relevant to the successful operation of your own firm. Responding to New Client Demands The Impact of the Megafirm Larry Self, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Director of European and Middle Eastem Operations, HOK, St. Louis, Missouri What Mergers Mean to You Robert Hillier, Chief Executive Officer, The Hillier Group, Princeton, NewJersey The Rise of Small Firm Alliances Louis Marines, President, Advanced Management Group and Founder of the design-firm alliance Strategic Team of Allied Resources (STAR), San Francisco, California Responding to New Project Delivery Methods Revolutionizing the Small Firm Dale Mulfinger, Partner, Mulfinger, Susanka & Mahady Architects, Minneapolis, Minnesota Why Design/Build May Be in Your Future John Merkler, Practice Management Associates, Ltd., Newton, Massachusetts. The Impact of Information Technology on Practice Jerry Albert Laiserin, Executive Director, Design Technology Forum and Design-Office-Technology Committee, Woodbury, New York --- from list avant-garde-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- ------------------
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