Word: garments
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...force that drives the underground workplace is the free flow of illegal immigrants across U.S. borders. Sometimes illiterate, always frightened, the aliens form a vast pool of easily exploitable labor. Century-old Manhattan lofts that are dangerous firetraps once again house garment industry sweatshops where Chinese, Koreans and Cubans make as little as $60 a week for 70 hours of work-less than a third of the U.S. minimum wage of $3.35 an hour. Polish refugees have been found cleaning out oil-storage tanks in New Jersey for $2 an hour or less. At a small factory in Chicago, shifts...
...GARMENT INDUSTRY. Throughout New York City, the center of American garment manufacturing, the kind of horrid sweatshop common in the early 1900s is flourishing anew. In Chinatown lofts, Queens garages and South Bronx storefronts, workers toil from dawn until well past dark sewing pants, shirts and blouses for as little as 8? apiece. The rooms are often dimly lit and poorly ventilated. In many cases, huge rolls of cloth block fire exits. The workers range from the young to the very old. In a raid on Chinatown sweatshops last spring, federal investigators found one 90-year-old woman...
...garment industry and its sweatshops have spread over the years beyond New York. In Los Angeles, inspectors have uncovered more than 2,000 illegal workplaces using Hispanic labor. So many garment shops have popped up in Miami that one industry executive calls it "the Chinatown of the South...
California has taken the lead among states in fighting the labor abuse in the garment industry. An antisweatshop law that went into effect last month requires all locations where clothing is made to be registered. If a manufacturer is found to be contracting out work to an unregistered shop, the goods can be confiscated. Labor experts believe that this kind of legislation, and even harsher penalties, should exist in all states...
Once wary businessmen are quickly pouring money into a bewildering array of enterprises. These include textile-dyeing plants, large-scale pig- and poultry-raising operations, hotels, shipbuilding yards and even a Pepsi-Cola bottling plant. The LMK Group, a Hong Kong textile and garment maker, has invested $14 million in a large dyeing factory in Shenzhen that will employ 250 workers. Managing Director Eddie Lo predicts that LMK will have an output of 6 million yards a month by mid-October, and he already foresees expanding the operation to include spinning, weaving and garment making...