1,800 Job Openings in LA

American Apparel, in downtown Los Angeles, is firing about 1,800 immigrant employees -- more than a quarter of its workforce -- after a federal investigation turned up irregularities in the identity documents they had presented at hiring (i.e., Social Security and/or immigration documents) — probably because the documents were fake.



So will American Apparel be able to replace those workers?  Are American citizens interested in working for a company that "has been lauded by city officials and business leaders for paying well above the garment industry standard, offering health benefits and not long ago giving $18 million in stock to its workers"?  The company also has masseuses and massage chairs on the factory floor, dispensing 20-minute massages to sewing staff who needed them.



The pay is decent, there are benefits and bonuses, and occasional perks.  But one soon-to-be-terminated employee -- a top supervisor, said, “I think the Americans think that garment sewing is demeaning work.”



Geez, I don't!  If it weren't 3,000 miles away, I'd definitely take a job there over one at Wal-Mart, Old Navy or Starbucks. Wouldn't you?  If Americans (born here or born elsewhere but citizens now) need work, and a good company needs workers, will they apply for work in a garment factory?  What would that be like?



It might go like this:  American company offers decent, skilled labor jobs, with training, to Americans.  More Americans work, more Americans experience the satisfaction of making, more Americans respect the skills, craftsmanship and time that go into making, more Americans are willing to pay a little more for well-made goods (American, hopefully), and more American factories are created.  More American jobs.  And perhaps a new, respectful era begins for American industry.

Sewing in America (Part 5) - RIP NYC Fashion Capital?

There is an incredibly relevant article in today's New York Times, regarding the decline of the garment industry in NYC.


New York’s garment center, once the heart of an industry that employed hundreds of thousands of workers and produced most of the clothing in the United States, is in danger of extinction.


For decades, cheaper foreign competitors and rising rents forced many of the sewing and cutting rooms and the button and zipper shops that once thrived on the side streets south of Times Square to close, shrink or move as mass production shifted to China, India and Latin America.


Owners say they are caught in a vise between declining retail sales and landlords eager to find better-paying tenants.



Some city officials and industry leaders worry that if manufacturing is wiped out, many of the designers who bring so much luster to New York will leave, along with the city’s claim to be a fashion capital rivaling Paris and Milan. The damage would be undeniable, given that the industry’s two big annual events — Fashion Week in September and February — attract enormous numbers of visitors and generate hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity.



“If you don’t have production in the garment center, there would be no reason for designers and suppliers to cluster in the district,” said Barbara Blair Randall, executive director of the Fashion Center Business Improvement District. “We’re down to 9,000 jobs.”



But city officials say the industry has shrunk to a point where it could be reasonably consolidated in a few buildings, rather than several blocks. “It’s not mass production,” Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey said of the garment center. “Clearly, what’s occurring is much smaller and more high-end compared with the actual production that used to exist..."



It's a Catch-22: the factories are smaller, so the output capacity is smaller, so the orders are smaller. The work in these Garment District shops tends to be more high-end, intricate upscale designer clothing requiring finer craftsmanship. It's hard to say whether that's a cause or a symptom of the district's decline.



"Orders are more likely to be 3,000 or 4,000 pieces, not the production runs of 100,000 pairs of jeans that are now typically sent to..."



(Want to guess?)


"...China."

Sewing in America (Part 2): That's Sew China

This is the second in a 5-part series on the state of sewing and manufacturing in America:


An incredible proportion of our goods (be they sewn, molded, assembled, etc.) are made in China. If you TRIED to avoid buying "Made in China" merchandise, you would have a very hard time indeed. Sara Bongiorni, a journalist in Baton Rouge, lived for a year avoiding the purchase of any products made in China. She wrote a book about it, "A Year Without Made in China: One Family's True Life Adventure in the Global Economy," where, according to Publisher's Weekly, she tells "often funny, occasionally humiliating stories centering around her difficulty procuring sneakers, sunglasses, DVD players and toys for two young children and a skeptical husband."





To get a sense of how these kabillion products are produced, take a look at these truly awesome photoscapes by Canadian artist Edward Burtynsky. I've been rendered speechless by natural sights like the Grand Canyon and man-made architectural wonders in Europe, but when I saw Burtynsky's "Manufactured Landscapes," my mind was truly, truly boggled. I could not even imagine, or believe how big these factories are.







The output from just ONE day or work would probably fill every shelf of your local big box store. Imagine hundreds of megafactory complexes, operating 365 days a year.



What does this have to do with sewing?



That'll be covered in the next post. Have a great weekend, everybody.