Garment Worker’s Suit Ends in Settlement
By Janet Dang

A lawsuit involving a garment worker who sued the factory she had worked for as well as the manufacturing companies with which it contracts, was resolved out of the courts with a settlement covering lost wages and legal fees.

The plaintiff, Hsiu-Chu Chen, claimed that while working at Angelique and Co. garment factory in Walnut, Calif., she sewed garments bearing expensive labels while earning well under the state’s $5.75 minimum wage. She also claimed that she was cheated out of overtime payments.

“I am thrilled with this settlement and that I have been paid all that I was owed,” said Chen in a written statement prepared by her lawyers.

“I was fighting not only for myself but to show that garment workers can step forward,” she continued. “I feel my victory sends a message to other workers that we can win if we have the courage to fight, and to manufacturers that they cannot bully workers.”

Chen’s employer was one of several contractors making clothing for BCBG Max Azria and City Girl, Inc.

Chen was awarded about $24,000 in back wages, statutory penalties and other damages. Though most sweatshop lawsuit settlements involve larger compensation sums, the sum Chen received was “definitely a full victory to the extent that Chen was paid what she was owed,” said her attorney, Julie Su of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California.

According to Su, at around 4 p.m. each work day, Chen’s time cards were punched out, showing that she had finished work, when in fact, she continued to work for two or more hours. A typical workweek for Chen involved sewing garment pieces for about nine hours a day, six days a week. Ultimately, Chen’s work amounted to a wage of about $3 an hour, Su said.

When Chen filed a complaint with management about her time cards, her problems worsened, according to her lawyer. Chen, who was paid by piece rate, was given more complicated articles of clothing to sew. As a result, she earned less than she had before because the pieces would take longer to complete. Chen worked for the factory for eight months before she was fired.

Last November, she, along with three other Latino workers from different factories, filed lawsuits against their employers, as well as several clothing manufacturers including BCBG. The plaintiffs, along with representatives from the Legal Center, met with reporters at a Southern California mall to draw scrutiny to labor practices of garment factories, and to hold retailers accountable for selling clothes made under unfair conditions.

Soon after Chen filed suit, City Girl, Inc., and its primary owner, Ron Perilman, counter-sued her, alleging defamation, libel and unfair business practices. Included in the settlement is $10,000 to the Legal Center for their costs in defending Chen against the defamation claim.

Perilman, who is CEO and president of the Los Angeles-based City Girl, Inc., said that his company is admitting no wrongdoing and settled the suit out of economic necessity.

“Nobody wants to use a shop that doesn’t pay its people properly. But in this instance, there was no wrongdoing,” he said.

“The woman [Chen] who claimed that she wasn’t paid overtime signed all of her time cards and she can’t prove that there was any wrong doing. The problem with this is that it gets expensive to defend allegations like this.”

“No one was interested in the truth,” he said, referring to Chen’s attorneys. So he settled.

Perilman agreed that as a clothing manufacturer, he is responsible for monitoring the garment factories with which he contracts, and has no doubt that some clearly violate labor laws—but his contractor wasn’t one of them.

“We monitor our shops. Any shop that has been working with us for the last five years, has all their time cards monitored by us. The working conditions are monitored by us … if they’re doing anything unethical, even if they slip and fall back, we pull our goods from them. No questions about that,” Perilman said.

Perilman contended that Chen’s lawyers refused to investigate the claims, and that they were only interested in using him as a scapegoat.

He added: “I’m all for justice. I’m against extortion, and that is what this amounts to.”

Chen’s previous employer, Angelique and Co., is no longer in business, said Su, adding that it is common for contractors to “claim they don’t have any money,” and to close up shop and leave.

At that factory about half the workers were Asian and the other half were Latino. Though most garment workers are new arrivals to the United States, some like Chen have been in the garment industry for over a decade. She now works for another garment factory in Los Angeles, earning $6.75 per hour.

“Many of them stay for a very long time. Conditions are so poor, wages are so low, there really isn’t a way out,” said Su.

Statewide there’s an estimated 160,000 garment workers, mostly within the in Los Angeles area, according to the Department of Labor. Su said most garment factories have found their way to Los Angeles and have persisted because the region continues to foster low-wage labor.

The language barrier between Latino and Asian garment workers at many factories keeps them from organizing, she said. Moreover, the vastness of Los Angeles makes it easy for garment factories to slip past labor inspection radar screens.

“It really is a function of corporate decisions to seek out the most exploitative labor,” Su said.

One of the most notable cases of garment worker abuse occurred in Southern California in 1996. Police uncovered an El Monte sweatshop with 80 Thai and 22 Latino workers. Each made 70 cents per hour. Clothing manufacturers and retailers ended up paying more than $4 million in an out-of-court settlement.

Meanwhile, in and around the S.F. Bay Area, a region that is a port entry for many new immigrants, the number of garment factories has been slowly dwindling over the years, largely because of more stringent regulations, and successful union organizing among workers, Su said.