Sweatshop Exhibit Gives Voice to Abuse

WASHINGTON —  The scene is haunting: A 12-foot fence crowned with razor wire bracketing two sides of a square large enough for two outdated sewing machines set on two tiny tables. On one open side of this cage-like setting is a reproduction of a letter, a desperate plea from a worker begging for freedom.

“I want to go home. . . . I give you my word as an honest person, I won’t cause trouble for you. . . . Have mercy on poor people who are working . . . for [their] destitute families in Thailand.”

This re-creation of the slave-like conditions discovered in 1995 at an El Monte sweatshop is the centerpiece of the Smithsonian Institution’s exhibition “Between a Rock and a Hard Place: A History of American Sweatshops, 1820-Present.” The display opens Wednesday.

Images from the early part of the century are also disturbing: a pre-adolescent Italian boy bent under the weight of a huge bundle of fabric; five young women, one with a glazed look, another with a feeble smile, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder as they hand-stitch garments at a narrow table; a bearded Jewish man, shoulders hunched, trimming a coat in a dreary New York tenement.

The exhibit has split the garment industry. Many manufacturers oppose it as unduly negative. But a number of retailers and government labor agencies believe it’s accomplishing a worthwhile objective: teaching the public about the rising demand for apparel and the growth of immigration--human and economic forces that have been factors in the exploitative conditions of the past.

*

All agree, however, that history’s lessons have gone unheeded. Despite stepped-up enforcement efforts by regulators, sweatshops are rampant, particularly in California, where, in the final quarter of 1997, the Labor Department uncovered 36 wage violations and secured compensation for more than 500 underpaid workers.

“Sweatshops should not be a part of our present and sweatshops should not be a part of our future,” says Labor Secretary Alexis Herman. “This project, which will also be a traveling exhibit, will remind consumers that their spending power can influence the apparel and retailing industries. Hopefully, the exhibit will mobilize consumers to use that power.”

The exhibit will be on display in Washington through October, then travel to museums in garment centers throughout the country. It will come to Southern California, the nation’s leading producer of apparel, in November or December. After that, it will go to San Francisco, the Midwest and New York.

The most gripping part of the exhibit is the re-creation of the El Monte sweatshop uncovered in an August 1995 police raid. The display includes a forged passport (a sample of the type of documents a criminal ring used to smuggle more than 70 fellow Thai nationals into the United States) and an indentured servant’s agreement to repay in labor $5,000 in travel and other expenses.

There is also a bundle of cut fabric, a packet of beans, a box of cough syrup and unwrapped packages of soap and toothpaste, items from a makeshift store in the garage of the apartment complex where the enslaved workers lived. (The workers’ wages were apparently docked when they bought food and sundries at the store.)

The exhibit includes samples of the clothing the workers produced--a boy’s shirt embroidered with a cartoon character, a pair of athletic shorts, a pink blouse.

Police and state labor investigators collected the items after the raid. A letter from the boyfriend of a worker who escaped and led authorities to the site is encased in a panel at the exhibit. The letter includes a hand-drawn map of the apartment complex.

“Please be careful,” it says. “This apartment very dangerous. . . . Please bring much manpower.”

*

Finally, there is a courtroom drawing of eight Thai nationals (at least two were never captured) who imprisoned the workers. The eight were sentenced in 1996 on slavery and smuggling charges.

The exhibit, which chronicles labor history, also brings the horrors of sweatshops to life. But industry observers say apparel producers, retailers and regulators still have work to do.

El Monte escaped scrutiny for at least seven years partly because the operation was never registered with state regulators.

Even today, many retailers continue to deal with apparel contractors they know are unregistered, says Ilse Metchek, director of the California Fashion Assn., a Los Angeles-based group that represents apparel manufacturers.

“We’ve seen some of these transactions,” she says. “We’ve seen them deliver orders to unregistered contractors and we’ve seen the deliveries.”

The exhibit highlights other practices that persist, such as unusually long workdays. The extreme example is in the El Monte exhibit. A text panel notes that the 72 workers labored 18 to 22 hours a day and were paid 59 cents an hour--money they never actually received.

*

Although now free and working elsewhere in Southern California’s apparel industry, most of those workers still make less than minimum wage, says Julie Su, a Los Angeles-based lawyer who obtained back wages for the laborers through suits against retailers and manufacturers who allegedly bought the apparel produced at El Monte. (The companies admitted no wrongdoing in the settlements.)

“The workers know that they are entitled to the minimum wage and overtime, but this industry is so rife with abuse,” Su says. “If the workers want to survive, they have no choice and must accept these wages. If they complain to the employer, they are fired. If they complain to the [state] labor commissioner, the commissioner responds by raiding the shop and fining the owner. The owner passes those costs along to the workers in the form of even lower wages, or lays off some workers.”

Su says many workers earn less than minimum wage because many apparel contractors base pay on the number of pieces their employees produce, and pay inadequately.

“This is not just an underground economy problem,” she says. “Some of these [shops] are registered with the state, and their workers are sewing for big-name clothing labels.”

The exhibit includes an essay by Su on the lessons of El Monte, as well as essays by the head of the apparel union UNITE and the chief executives of Kmart and Levi Strauss on the need to stop sweatshop abuses.

There’s also an essay from TV personality Kathie Lee Gifford, who was stung in 1996 by the disclosure that some of her signature Wal-Mart line of clothing was produced in sweatshops.

*

The exhibit includes material on sweatshop reform efforts of the past. Observers note that the Gifford controversy helped spawn the formation of a White House task force, which is developing recommendations for addressing the problem.

However, activists say the biggest impetus for reform came after the El Monte tragedy showed how the American dream can quickly become a nightmare.

Videotaped interviews with some El Monte workers--which will also be displayed at the exhibit--drive that point home. One of worker recounts the pitch she received from a recruiter for the Thai slavery ring.

“The recruiter said: ‘In the [United] States, no one can force you to do anything. It’s a free country.’ ”