Garment workers in Southern California faced wage loss and widespread illegal pay practices last year from manufacturers and contractors, according to a report from the Labor Department.
The federal agency canvassed more than 50 contractors and manufacturers for its 2022 Southern California Garment Worker Survey and found that 80% of them were violating the Fair Labor Standards Act. More than 50% of the employers were “illegally paying workers part or all their wages off the books, with payroll records either deliberately forged or not provided,” the report said.
“Despite our efforts to hold Southern California’s garment industry employers accountable, we continue to see people who make clothes sold by some of the nation’s leading retailers working in sweatshops,” Ruben Rosalez, a regional administrator for the Labor Department in San Francisco, said in a news release. “Many people shopping for clothes in stores and online are likely unaware that the ‘Made in the USA’ merchandise they’re buying was, in fact, made by people earning far less than the U.S. law requires.”
Southern California is home to the nation’s largest apparel producing hub. In Los Angeles alone, more than 45,000 garment workers are contracted among the more than 1,800 registered garment manufacturers and contractors clustered within or adjacent to the downtown Fashion District, according to the Garment Worker Center, a local workers rights group for low-wage employees.
The majority of garment workers in...
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