II. The Needle Trades
Understanding the geographic movement of capital in any given branch of production requires some understanding of that industry's basic structure and activities. What does the industry produce?...
...July-August 1975...
...Some U.S...
...For the apparel industry, Item 807.00 has fostered the practice of performing only design and cutting operations in the United States, and sending out fabric to be sewn into finished goods abroad...
...The production of steel, chemicals and textiles, to name only a few examples, bears little resemblance today to the techniques of half a century ago...
...firms have established subsidiaries abroad to carry out all stages of production, from cutting to finishing...
...cit., p. 25...
...17 (2) Apparel is the largest industrial employer of women...
...Apparel produced under the provisions of Item 807.00 represent a rising percentage of total U.S...
...ILGWU, The Domestic Women's and Children's Apparel Industry, op...
...Manhattan Industries employs over 8,000 workers in plants producing many types of men's and women's clothing...
...The most advanced machines on the market are found in only a small number of shops, TABLE 1 MAJOR SUB-DIVISIONS OF THE APPAREL INDUSTRY, BY EMPLOYMENT IN 1972 Group No...
...7. Moody's Industrial Manual, (New York: Moody's Investor Service), 1975...
...Frequently, machines are found to be inadequate to the task...
...No worker must be irreplaceable...
...2 Nevertheless, the pervasive myth that women "don't have to work," that their earnings are only incidental to a stable family income, provides a convenient rationale for their super-exploitation: women can be laid-off when business gets slow, and they can be relegated to the lowest-paying job categories...
...Yet the manufacturer who is uncertain of future business prospects will think more than twice about investing in expensive machinery...
...Let us examine then the nature of this labor force-totalling over a million workers-and the conditions of their employment...
...Labor: The post-war boom in demand for casual, less styled clothing has accelerated changes in the industry's demand for labor...
...9. Fashion Institute of Technology, op...
...The heterogeneous nature of the industry's output, and the tendency for firms to specialize, make it necessary to supplement our discussion of the industry's general structure with distinctions among its different branches...
...Before proceeding to our discussion of capital movements in the apparel sector, it is useful to underscore several factors, outlined in this section, that enhance the geographic mobility of capital in this industry...
...A more common practice, however, is that of exporting only certain stages of production in order to take advantage of lenient tariff laws...
...Strikes, often brief but bloody, left a trail of defeats.'""' There was even talk of disbanding...
...Some sectors of the industry are less vulnerable than others to frequent shifts in fashion...
...In June 1976, the ACWA merged with the Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA) to form the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU...
...Nearly 80 percent of apparel workers are paid on a piece-rate basis, while time rates generally apply only to machine repair personnel, cutters, janitors and work distributors...
...CONTRACTING Easy entry, as the result of low capital requirements, is reinforced by the organizational structure of the apparel industry...
...The output of the apparel industry includes a very wide variety of products, broadly grouped as men's and boys' clothing, women's and children's apparel, and miscellaneous textile products.* Literally hundreds of different products, multiplied by as many different styles, are produced by the industry each year...
...House of Representatives...
...1 4 The major sources of imports have remained relatively constant since the 1960's, with the largest suppliers located in the Far East...
...PRESENT STATUS Representing a non-strategic sector, the number of workers organized was and remains the basis of the unions' strength...
...And recently, sewing machines have been developed that can guide fabric while it is being sewn and require an operator only to load and unload...
...Estimates of UGW membership made by U.S...
...Testimony by Howard D. Samuels, Vice-President, ACWA, at hearings before the Subcommittee on Trade of the Committee on Ways and Means, March 24 and 25, 1976...
...All must be interchangeable...
...and proximity to markets...
...Moreover, while large firms may be getting larger, most analysts predict a lasting role for the small enterprise that can "turn on a dime" with frequent shifts in fashion...
...The sewing machine invented by Elias Howe in 1846 is still the centerpiece of apparel production, although it has since been streamlined and greatly speeded up...
...In the apparel sector, long production runs are the rare exception...
...Apparel production has undergone important changes as well, through the5 introduction of new machinery and improvements on existing techniques...
...cit., p. 56...
...4. The Conference Board, New York, New York, Road Maps of Industry, monthly, cited in Statistical Abstracts, 1975...
...ILGWU, The Domestic Women's and Children's Apparel Industry and Multilateral Trade Negotiations (mimeo: July 21, 1975), p. 27...
...After a series of strikes in the men's wear industry, which the UGW did its best to sabotage, the tensions over craft vs...
...THE LABOR FORCE As seen in the preceding sections, mechanization in the apparel industry is still at an incipient stage...
...This was overcome somewhat in the larger, mass-production shops that were developing alongside the earlier form...
...3D Until recently, the ACWA, with its primary representation in men's and boys' wear, claimed a membership of approximately 350,000, about one quarter of whom worked outside of the clothing industry proper, for example as laundry or xerox workers...
...Braverman, op...
...ILGWU testimony before the subcommittee on trade, Committee on Ways and Means, U.S...
...More than a dozen different styles of a particular item-blouses, for example-may be produced in a single small shop...
...2 According to a recent study conducted by the Fashion Institute of Technology, semi-automatic machines represent only a fraction of the 20-odd million industrial sewing machines currently in use...
...Despite this impressive array of new machines and techniques, the degree of mechanization in the apparel industry as a whole is still very low relative to manufacturing as a whole...
...Trends in the post-war period have accelerated the industry's switch to section work and unskilled labor...
...To simplify matters, because they represent relatively few workers in declining sectors, we will exclude them from our study...
...With the development of capitalist production, therefore, "every step in the labor process is divorced, as far as possible, from special knowledge and training and reduced to simple labor...
...The less skill that is required for a particular task, the larger the pool of workers that can potentially perform it...
...In 1975, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan accounted for nearly two-thirds of all apparel imports to the United States...
...Subject Series: General Summary, MC 72(1)-1...
...6. Bureau of the Census, Census of Manufacturers, 1972...
...In women's and children's apparel, the extent of import penetration rose from 3.8 per cent in 1961 to 23.1 per cent in 1974.13 Imports of men's suits have gone from 2 per cent of domestic production in 1968 to over 18 per cent in 1975...
...As an employer, the apparel industry has several distinguishing traits: (1) it has the highest concentration of semi-skilled jobs of any manufacturing industry...
...At the turn of the century two unions existed, both affiliated with the American Federation of Labor and both poorly equipped to organize workers in the needle trades...
...Labor in the Textile and Apparel Industries, op...
...A limited source of skilled labor can die with age and not be replenished without cost to the capitalist...
...The UGW's inherent weakness was this craft orientation, which threw up roadblocks to organizing the increasingly large numbers of unskilled, women and immigrants...
...One was the United Garment Workers (UGW), begun in 1891 as a craft union of mainly native-born males-highly skilled custom tailors and cutters organized in the men's clothing and overall shops...
...Handbook of Labor Statistics, 1975...
...The apparel jobber, on the other hand, buys fabric, designs garments and later sells them-but does not actually manufacture them...
...Men's and boys' wear was generally made up of relatively larger shops and a more skilled labor force...
...Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Labor in the Textile and Apparel Industries (Bulletin 1635) (Washington, D.C.: U.S...
...In the apparel industry, competition from abroad takes many forms...
...Government Printing Office), 1973, p. 3. 23...
...The average size of an establishment is very small...
...Productivity has soared, while millions of workers have been replaced by sophisticated, multi-purpose machines...
...Bureau of the Census, Census of Manufacturers, 1972, Subject Series: General Summary, MC 72(1)-1.7 Virtually all branches of the industry are affected by imports...
...or U.S...
...The ILGWU was also radically transformed by a series of strikes...
...There is no equivalent, however, to G.M...
...For a much fuller account of assembly operations in the northern border region of Mexico, see NACLA's Reports Hit and Run: U.S...
...In apparel, skills have been gradually diluted both by newer production techniques and by the minute subdivision of labor...
...The apparel industry currently accounts for about 8 per cent of total employment in the manufacturing sector as a whole...
...Skilled laborers may band together to demand higher wages, in the knowledge that untrained labor cannot readily take their place...
...firms setting up production facilities abroad, in order to re-export apparel to the United States...
...Three and four-digit SIC numbers referred to in the text correspond to sub-groupings within the industry classified according to product...
...Those producing standardized, casual types of clothing tend to be more highly mechanized: jeans, sport shirts, underwear and trousers in the men's wear branches, and skirts, pants, underwear and nightwear in ladies' apparel...
...Eloy Ricardo Mestre, The Growth of The Apparel Industry In Southeast Georgia (unpublished dissertation for a doctoral degree in economics, New School for Social Research), 1969...
...product-line (dresses, suits, shirts, etc...
...From insignificant levels in the pre-war period, apparel imports rose slowly in the 1950's and rapidly throughout the 1960's and '70's...
...cit., p. 27...
...Meanwhile, the sewing and finishing stages of production, involving 95% of the total work force, can be located in far-flung regions or countries...
...Today, apparel pays lower wages than any other major industry group in the United States...
...Not all firms engage in all stages of production and, hence, not all require the same capital outlays...
...Finally, the vast majority of workers were newly arrived immigrants, thus additionally divided by different languages and customs...
...8. Forbes, December 1, 1976...
...The jobber has a showroom and usually a cutting room, but sends the pieces to "outside shops," or contractors, to be sewn...
...For the industry as a whole, mechanization is proceeding at a slow and irregular pace...
...WOMEN'S WORK More than 80 percent of all apparel workers today are women...
...For the great majority, their wage is their only source of income, and 56 per cent of these women support families...
...ILGWU testimony, op...
...Apparel was predominantly a craft industry, reliant upon experienced workers that had mastered all the intricate operations involved in8 producing a single garment...
...The industry's simple technology makes it easy and inexpensive to set up shop in virtually any part of the world...
...It should be noted that many establishments employ more than one mode of operation...
...The other union was the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), founded in 1900 in the newly developing women's wear industry...
...Furthermore, the separation of entrepreneurial functions from production tasks, under the jobber-contracting system, facilitates the export of certain stages of production abroad, while maintaining close ties to the domestic market...
...Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Washington, D.C...
...Between 1961 and 1975, imports measured in square yards required for manufacture rose by 555 per cent, and by 736 per cent measured in dollar value...
...Employment has risen substantially in the post-war period, from 819,000 in 1940 to approximately 1.2 million in 1974.16 Employment is highly seasonal, however, involving temporary lay-offs or part-time schedules for many workers during the slow seasons...
...Far less skill and training is required to learn one operation and do it repeatedly, under the section system, than to master the production of an entire garment...
...cit., p. 30...
...cit., p. 82...
...6 Clearly, giants do exist within the industry...
...Today, assembly operations are spread over 36 countries...
...Contracting: The functional separation of production from entrepreneurial tasks allows for their geographic separation as well...
...1, "Critical Issues...
...In New York City, for example, non-white workers made up 49.7 per cent of the work force in 1969.'9 That percentage has risen still higher in the past few years...
...Not all types of garments can be broken down to the same extent...
...The industrial character and viability of the organization was clearly set, but it took a general strike of 60,000 cloakmakers in the following year for the union to finally win recognition from the manufacturers...
...Government Printing Office), 1969, p. 35...
...Automation of apparel production remains a capitalist's dream, while presentday shops continue to operate on the basis of simple technology and labor-intensive methods...
...Lightweight and small, even 500 sewing machines can be transported more easily than a steel furnace or an auto-assembly line...
...Workers in the industry average only 40 weeks of work per year...
...The work force must be rendered homogeneous and unskilled...
...Machinery tends to disassociate the labor process from the particular skills of the workers-to the extreme of requiring merely the pushing of a button or turning of a switch...
...Hence, the dynamic of capitalism is to continuously reduce the skill requirements of the work force and thereby cheapen the worker...
...Labor in the Textile and Apparel Industries, op...
...Irving Howe, The World of Our Fathers, (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), 1976, p. 300...
...Justice, (ILGWU), Vol...
...1 ' Today, one of every four garments sold in the United States is imported, up from one in twenty just a decade ago...
...In particular, Item 807.00, added to the Tariff Schedules of the United States (TSUS) in 1963, provides that American-made articles may be assembled abroad in whole or in part, and returned to the United States with duty paid solely on the value-added by foreign labor...
...In the cutting room, advanced production techniques have been borrowed from sheetmetal and boiler-shop techniques: die-cutting to replace hand-cutting, and pattern-grading equipment to produce different size copies of a master pattern.' Laser beams, suspended above the cutting table, follow a computer program and make it possible to cut many hundreds of layers of fabric in a very short period of time...
...Major group 23 includes "establishments producing clothing and fabricating products by cutting and sewing purchased woven or knit fabrics and related materials such as leather, rubberized fabrics, plastics and fur...
...Chinese women in Los Angeles, Latin and Chinese women in New York, Chicanas in the Southwest, black and poor white women in the South...
...Add up these traits-unskilled, female, non-white or poor-white-and you have the cheapest, most exploited pool of labor to be found in the United States...
...although the range of styles produced by a single shop may be very large...
...What are the social and economic relationships that govern both the production and circulation of its products...
...The sales of the industry's four largest companies account for only 5 per cent of total industry sales-compared to 80 percent for the four largest firms operating in the automotive industry...
...9-10, May 1-15, 1975, p. 10...
...Technology: Despite significant advances, the technology of apparel production is still relatively simple and investment in fixed capital is low compared to most other industries...
...5 LIMITS TO TECHNICAL CHANGE Much to the dismay of industry engineers, the basic raw materials of apparel production are difficult for humans to handle and even more problematic for machines...
...A large percentage of imports are produced by indigenous firms selling directly to U.S...
...Obstacles to organizing unions in the needle trades have always been very great...
...It is one of the richest unions in the country with total assets of slightly over $147 million...
...In fact, apparel is often referred to as the last enclave of "pure competition" in American industry...
...THE NEEDLE TRADES 1. Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press), 1974, p. 211...
...it curls and flaps and attracts static electricity...
...2 7 Considered on a yearly basis, earnings in the apparel industry are even lower, due to the seasonality of employment...
...TECHNOLOGY Technological developments in the 20th century have revolutionized production in many branches of industry...
...On the whole, each production unit tends to specialize in a particular S For statistical purposes, this study follows the Department of Commerce definition of the apparel industry, corresponding to the standard industrial classification (SIC) number 23...
...It should be borne in mind that although the products of the textile and apparel industries are related, they are no more the same industry than steel is the same as auto, and the forces at work are quite different...
...Handbook of Labor Statistics, 1975...
...Unlike a steel bar, it cannot preserve its own shape and must be guided carefully through successive operations...
...IX, No...
...Currently, the ILGWU claims to represent approximately 376,750 workers, 99% of whom are apparel workers...
...25 Cutting, marking and grading are operations that still require a great deal of skill and experience...
...Decentralization, still relatively characteristic of the industry today, historically meant that workers in the many scattered tenement shops were extremely isolated from each other...
...Suburban living, more leisure time and a more youthful population have fostered a huge leap in demand for casual, practical clothes, while the demand for formal apparel (suits, coats, dresses) has steadily declined.6 The most sophisticated sewing and cutting machines then are found in only the largest shops and generally in those producing volume products such as sportswear...
...With a combined membership of approximately 500,000, 31 the ACTWU is one of the fifteen largest unions in the country...
...market...
...INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION The competitive structure of apparel production is by no means limited to the domestic arena...
...The negotiations to settle this strike became historic, innovating a function for the union as the stabilizer in a chaotic industry and giving first expression to a strategy that both the ILGWU and the ACW were to pursue in the decades that followed...
...Whether silk, cotton or polyester, a piece of fabric is limp and stretchable...
...Government Printing Office), 1976, p. 196...
...20...
...industrial unionism and the question of organizing immigrant workers were at the breaking point...
...Although the strike did not win official union recognition, the shirtwaist local grew form 100 to 10,000 during the four-month strike period...
...An apparel plant can be dismantled and reassembled elsewhere in a very short time, leaving virtually no fixed capital behind...
...The post-war boom in demand for casual, more standardized products, and the concurrent decline in demand for formal apparel, permitted the expansion of section work and the employment of less skilled, industrially less experienced labor...
...5. Max Hall, ed., Made in New York (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press), 1959, p. 36...
...of % of Total Industry Group No...
...What many of these workers had on their side, however, was a militant, class-conscious, often explicitly socialist, tradition brought with them from Europe...
...9 The process of centralization, or the absorption of many small capitals by a few large capitals, is considerably slower in the apparel industry than in most other branches of production...
...Changes in U.S...
...It is no coincidence then that the most intense efforts at mechanization are related to precisely these tasks...
...Nonetheless, certain generalizations can be made concerning the technology of apparel production, its organizational structure, markets and labor force, that are valid for the industry as a whole...
...cit., p. 27...
...Often, even less is needed since machines can be leased or paid for in installments...
...The fact that garments must conform to the curves of the human body multiplies these operations and renders them more complex...
...Wall Street Journal, October 18, 1976...
...21 Within the industry, women are invariably found in the sewing room, as operatives, handsewers or finishers, while the higher-paid cutters, graders, markers and hand pressers are predominantly male...
...Other unions have organized apparel workers in the smaller branches of production...
...ORGANIZED LABOR The organization of the labor force grew up mirroring the original basic division of the industry into men's and boys' wear, and women's and children's wear...
...cit., p. 10...
...In 1972, there were 24,438 establishments in the United States competing for a slice of the market for apparel goods...
...Wall Street Journal, October 18, 1976...
...Changes in the organization of production have played an equally important role in changing the industry's demand for labor, from skilled to predominantly unskilled...
...23 DE-SKILLING THE LABOR FORCE The composition of the apparel industry's work force has changed dramatically over the past few decades, in terms of sex, race and skill levels...
...In recent years distinctions between these product lines have blurred, with implications for labor which we will explore later...
...Specialized machines can now make button holes and sew on buttons automatically, in split seconds...
...Since the early decades of the industry's development, the jobber-contracting system has added flexibility to an industry where uncertainty reigns, by minimizing the unused plant capacity of all concerned.10 When orders rise, for example, the jobber can find additional contractors to fill them, without being left with idle machines when business is slow...
...Workers in the original sweatshops were typically recent European immigrants, highly skilled in the trade of tailoring...
...while most of the operations involved in cutting, sewing, pressing and packing are still performed on manually operated, single-purpose machines...
...12 TABLE 2 DISTRIBUTION OF PLANTS ACCORDING TO INDUSTRY GROUP, BY NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES, 1972 (%) SIC total # 1 - 19 20 - 99 100+ # of establ . employees employees employees 23 24,438 50.0% 35.7% 14.3% 231 856 33.4 28.4 38.2 232 2,787 28.2 31.9 39.8 233 9,526 41.2 48.6 10.2 234 1,002 32.4 36.5 31.0 235 496 64.9 28.2 6.9 236 1,061 31.8 48.2 20.0 237 797 94.0 5.9 .1 238 1,302 47.8 40.0 12.1 239 6,611 73.5 21.0 5.5 Source: U.S...
...October 18, 1976...
...Even when technical obstacles are overcome, conditions in the industry are not conducive to rapid mechanization...
...In virtually all sectors of the industry today, excluding high-fashion and highly-tailored clothing, the task of producing an entire garment has been broken down into many simplified operations, which are distributed among different workers...
...According to the ILGWU, "After elementary instruction in the handling of a sewing machine-and it requires very little time-the rest of the learning process consists of a progressive and relatively rapid acquisition of maximum operating speed...
...Contracting operations abroad may be owned by indigenous capitalists or by U.S...
...Bureau of the Census, Census of Manu- facturers, 1972, General Summary, MC 72(1)-1...
...As a rule, practical, less stylized garments lend themselves better to a greater subdivision of tasks...
...Many shops, for example, staked their fate on the Nehru jacket, Edsel of the needle trades, and many faced bankruptcy when it became just a passing fad...
...Lastly, the post-war rise in imports has sent the apparel industry scrambling for ways to maintain its share of the U.S...
...Mexico,* Central America and the Caribbean countries are favored sites-only a short jet flight from Miami, Dallas or Los Angeles, cities that have become major cutting centers for firms operating under 807.00 provisions...
...Hall, op...
...LVII, no...
...to the internationalization of relationships described earlier between domestic manufacturers or jobbers, and outside contracting shops...
...women's and children's wear was characterized by smaller shops and less industry stability, due in part to greater changes in style...
...tariff legislation in the 1960's have led to the rapid proliferation of contracting operations abroad, i.e...
...In Section III of this Report we will explore how this strategy developed, its current formulation, and its implications for the working class...
...7 Large conglomerates, such as Gulf and Western, General Mills and Consolidated Foods, have been "picking up pieces of the rag trade" to diversify their holdings 8 . Our major point, however, is that small, garage-size shops exist alongside large-scale enterprises in each and every branch of the industry (see Table 2...
...In 1971, capital invested per worker amounted to little over $9,000-- about half the ratio for textile production and less than one-quarter the ratio for all manufacturing...
...The shift to predominantly unskilled workers has ended the industry's dependence on a dwindling supply of skilled labor in the Northeast...
...Employ...
...Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Industry Wage Survey: Men's and Boys' Shirts (Except work shirts) and Nightwear, October, 1971 (Bulletin 1794), (Washington, D.C.: U.S...
...Technical improvements on the sewing machine, special attachments and specialized machines have simplified many tasks...
...At the UGW convention in 1914, the split finally came when many of the militant delegates representing the new work force were not allowed to be seated...
...In 1909 a walkout of women workers sparked a general strike in the shirtwaist industry...
...The UGW still exists although it now is perhaps more significant as a convenient peddler of a union label than as an organizer of workers...
...In 1974, it was estimated that a beginning capital of $50,000 would suffice to set up shop in the apparel industry...
...Employment Total Group: Apparel and other finished 23 1,369,000 100% products made from fabrics and similar materials Sub-Divisions: Men's, youths' and boys' 231 125,000 9.1 suits, coats and overcoats Men's, youths' and boys' 232 363,000 26.5 furnishings, work clothing and allied garments Women's, misses' & juniors' 233 433,000 31.6 outerwear Women's, misses', children's 234 105,000 7.7 & infants' undergarments Hats, caps and millinery 235 15,000 1.1 Girls', children's and 236 75,000 5.5 infants' outerwear Fur goods 237 5,000 0.4 Miscellaneous apparel 238 62,000 4.5 and accessories Miscellaneous fabricated 239 186,000 13.4 textile products Source: U.S...
...It still maintains jurisdictional cloudiness with the ACWA, but its present membership is quite small (less than 25,000),32 mostly employed in the work clothes industry...
...Steel in the needle trades...
...Major sub-divisions of the apparel industry and their relative size in terms of employment are listed in Table 1 below...
...Rather, the industry is divided into three types of establishments, each performing a different set of functions...
...LeviStrauss, for example, the largest producer of jeans and work clothing, operates over 100 plants in the United States and abroad, and recorded sales of over $1 billion in 1975...
...How is it produced and by whom...
...According to its own historians, "In its first decade the ILG made little difference...
...Without frequent shifts in fashion, the apparel industry would contract significantly...
...The answer to the first question already reveals the complex nature of the industry under study...
...The need to compete with foreign producers has been a major element in the geographic redistribution of capital within the industry...
...But the pace and scope of changes in the means of production have been much less dramatic than in most other industries...
...Operatives make up 80 per cent of employment, compared to 45 per cent for manufacturing as a whole...
...office, October, 1976...
...Indeed, it was no coincidence that New York City-port of entry for successive waves of immigrants-became the original center of apparel production in the United States...
...Handbook of Labor Statistics, 1975...
...New York City Planning Commission...
...Inasmuch as we are interested in seeing the union's role in organizing and representing apparel workers and the fact that the merger is so recent, we will refer to the union as the ACWA unless otherwise noted...
...Second perhaps only to baseballs, apparel requires the most labor-intensive process of production...
...Short production runs and a high rate of business failure in the apparel industry make mechanization a risky and often uneconomical endeavor...
...Reliance on the availability of skilled craft labor, however, is expensive and risky for the capitalist...
...According to a Labor Department study, "the apparel industry is seasonal in nature and subject to cyclical swings, and women provide a flexible source of labor supply...
...Forty per cent of men's sport coats were imported in 1975 and 36.8 per cent of men's trousers...
...The fact that capital requirements are low crowds the industry with a very large number of producers, both small and large, and keeps competition fierce...
...Some manufacturers accept contract work when production in their plants is slow, or contract out work when there's more than they can handle...
...EASY ENTRY In the case of auto production, steel or chemicals, one would be hard put to name more than a handful of major American producers...
...In the shirt industry, for example, where nine out of 10 workers are female, women earned 42 cents an hour less than male workers in 1971...
...Significantly, sportswear production has enjoyed the highest growth rate in the industry since World War II...
...It was out of this tradition, and the conditions of intense exploitation, that a series of long and violent strikes occurred in the beginning of the century-strikes that exposed the myth that women and immigrants could not be organized...
...Many more men were employed by the industry than is currently the case...
...Furthermore, these styles change frequently and abruptly, since what consumers will buy is extremely unpredictable...
...firms...
...Roughly half the plants in the industry employed fewer than 20 workers, while only 14 per cent employed 100 or more...
...While average hourly earnings in manufacturing as a whole were $4.40 in 1974, they were a meager $2.99 in the apparel sector...
...4 The development and introduction of new techniques has been severely inhibited by the nature of the production process, the materials worked on, and the demand for the apparel industry's products...
...ILGWU, 1975 Financial Report, p. 15...
...3 While important differences exist between branches of the industry, apparel production on the whole is a highly labor-intensive process...
...The Needed Repeal of Item 807.00 of the Tariff Schedules of the United States (mimeo: March 25, 1976), p. 2. 12...
...One out of every 5 women employed in manufacturing belong to the apparel work force, and four out of every five apparel workers are women.' 8 (3) Apparel is a major employer of minority workers and particularly non-white women...
...Government Printing Office), 1976, p. 2. 24...
...Wall Street Journal...
...In any industry, large investments in fixed capital can return their cost only when applied to a large volume of production...
...It was initially neither strong nor large enough to even be recognized by employers...
...retailers...
...2. U.S...
...Washington, D.C.: U.S...
...Runaway Shops on the Mexican Border (Vol...
...Today, one worker may do nothing but sew straight seams, another sew in zippers, another sleeves, etc...
...Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Industry Wage Survey: Men's and Boys' Separate Trousers, June, 1974 (Bulletin 1906), (U.S...
...3. Research Department, Fashion Institute ofTechnology, Maximizing the Fashion Industry's Use of Technology, 1976...
...unpublished manuscript), p. 74...
...The contractor, in turn, is not dependent upon orders from any one jobber...
...Other regions, however, and particularly Latin America and the Caribbean, are rapidly expanding their output...
...Certain functions performed by the jobber require skilled labor (designers, pattern makers, cutters, etc...
...apparel imports: from 0.3 per cent in 1965 to 10.2 per cent in 1975.15 In 1965, 807.00 imports came from only nine countries...
...Vicious conditions of exploitation in both the tenements and the newer factories provided little opportunity for9 developing organization, although contributing to an urgent sense of need for it...
...22 A study of shops producing trousers showed that women averaged $2.59 an hour in 1974, while men averaged $2.95...
...Payment by piece-rate also distinguishes apparel from most other branches of industry...
...Only the "inside shops," or manufacturers, perform the full range of production functions: designing, purchasing fabric, cutting, sewing and selling the finished product...
...Plan for New York City, Vol...
...In response, more than two-thirds of the UGW members left to form the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA), a union committed to industrial organization, which soon eclipsed its predecessor...
...However, major changes were in the offing...
...An equally important source, however, is the growing number of U.S...
...24 In most industries, homogenization of the labor force goes hand in hand with the introduction of new technology...
...A variety of attachments have been introduced-needle positioners, automatic threat cutters, pleaters, hemmers-that reduce working time and simplify many tasks...
Vol. 11 • March 1977 • No. 3
