Clothed in Integrity: Weaving Just Cultural Relations and the Garment Industry

1. Present Conditions of Garment Homeworking in Toronto: The Microeconomics of a Low-Wage Strategy

1 Present Conditions of Garment Homeworking in Toronto: The Microeconomics of a Low-Wage Strategy Spiders eating spinning weaving waiting While women’s need to earn an income has increased within double- and single-parent families, public workplace jobs in Ontario in all sectors have decreased. Even service jobs are suffering loss because of the North American Free Trade Agreement.1 Homeworking is being promoted as a key, corporate , flexible, lowest-wage-possible strategy. It is portrayed as a solution to multiple problems. Three distinctively different categories of homeworkers exist: home-based employees; self-employed, home-based business owners; and unprotected labourers. Keeping them clear in our minds is extremely important if we are to sort out advantages and problems of each fairly. The home-based employee on a company payroll works in Notes to chapter 1 are on pp. 12-16. 3 both the home and the office. A self-employed, home-based business owner actually is an independent contractor, consultant or proprietor. A third, more ambiguous, category is the unprotected labourer, one without a formal contract or benefits, expected to perform with limited control and autonomy, and without adequate compensation.2 According to the Employment Standards Act, homeworkers are defined as employees and ‘‘Homework means doing any work in the manufacture, preparation, improvement, repair, alteration, assembly, or completion of any article or thing or any part thereof in premises occupied primarily as living accommodation.’’3 Homeworkers depend on contractors to supply work and to pay them fair wages. Homeworkers do not sell the goods or services directly to the market, do not keep the profits and do not control work schedules. It is with workers in the third category, the unprotected employees, that my research is concerned. Meeting and hearing the stories of homeworkers, unemployed garment factory workers and those currently employed in factories but fearing loss of their jobs have jolted my understanding of garment production. It made me wonder about the source of some of the societal myths that support extensive malpractice. A Story of Exploitation Ming-Zhen sews a woman’s jacket in one hour and earns $4.15. She receives no compensation for training time when new styles arrive. She must teach herself the new design. The jacket is sold at Eaton’s for $275 to $375.4 Poi-Yee makes $5 for sewing a dress in one hour, but she has had to buy the sewing machine and cover all operating costs such as hydro and heat. The dress is sold for $150 to $200 at a high-end retail boutique. A contractor often delivers work on Friday to Yen, who must complete it by Monday morning. She must care for her children while she sews at least ten hours a day all weekend. She is paid $3 to $3.25 for the forty minutes required to complete skirts which sell for $150 to $200 at the Hudson’s Bay Company. In contrast to the inside factory worker with regular wages, benefits and overtime pay for overtime hours, homeworkers received none of these in the early 1990s. Their story and the story of legislative changes gained through a public campaign follows in chapter 4. The examples cited involved Alfred Sung products which were sold at Eaton’s, Hudson’s Bay Company, Holt Renfrew and other popular retailers in Toronto. The Sung label was owned by ETAC Sales Ltd., which made over $2 million profits in 1991. Their revenues increased 4 Clothed in Integrity by 36 per cent from 1991 to 1993. Like many large manufacturers, they sent much of their actual production work out to subcontractors who then sent it to homeworkers.5 The current situation of homework in the garment industry in Canada has been described as ‘‘a story of exploitation.’’6 This history is long in Canada, since homework has been used by garment manufacturers to depress wages and block unionization. But this technique has expanded. After the recession of 1981-82, there was rapid growth in subcontracting in the women’s garment industry. This meant that employers used the cheap, unprotected labour of women in their homes to compete with producers in Thailand, the Philippines, Honduras, El Salvador and more recently with those in Poland, Hungary and the Czech and Slovak Republics.7 Employers have adopted a lowest-possible-wage strategy domestically to deal with cheap labour competition. But, as Alexandra Dagg, Manager, Ontario District of the International...