Word: sweatshops
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...pressure became too great. Local TV was showing black congressional employees working in sweatshop conditions; Roll Call, a Capitol Hill weekly, was printing stories of sexual harassment of female workers. So last week the House finally applied the anti-discrimination laws to itself. It got around the separation-of-powers argument neatly by setting up an office staffed by its own members and employees to enforce the law -- a solution that was just as readily available in 1964. The Senate is expected to follow suit next year...
...place on Capitol Hill where most employees are black is the House folding room. Workers there complain that they are sometimes forced to labor 70-hour weeks under sweatshop conditions. A House committee found that the dingy basement room has poor air circulation and that it exposes workers to noxious fumes...
Deep in the bowels of the building, the employees toil in cramped, poorly ventilated rooms, working up to 70 hours a week without overtime. A Dickensian tale about a 19th century sweatshop? Hardly. The scene takes place in the mail "folding room" of the U.S. House of Representatives, where workers have long complained about "prison-like" conditions of employment...
...sportswear is renowned for its sexy variations on the sweatshirt, but lately Designer Norma Kamali has been perspiring about her unwanted association with a different fashion tradition: the sweatshop. Last week the New York State department of labor said it had slapped Kamali with a record $10,000 fine for illegally employing workers to cut and sew garments for her at home. It was the first time a big-name designer had been singled out for breaking the state's 1935 sweatshop law. Kamali stopped using the homeworkers, mostly Hispanic and Asian, when state labor officials began in December...
...Labor Department, backed by unions, sued a Vermont skiwear maker who employed women to knit in their homes. The department charged the company with violating minimum-wage provisions. The law under which the department acted was passed in 1942 to prevent the exploitation of children and sweatshop workers in city tenements. The women in Vermont prefer working at home, where they can be with their children and do not have to travel to a factory, especially in winter over icy roads. Finally, the Labor Department rescinded...