Sweatshop Oppression and the Jessica McClintock Boycott

By Ryan Masaaki Yokota

"Be fair, be true, Pay the workers what they're due!"

And thus continued the chanting of student and community activists as they picketed the Jessica McClintock boutique in Beverly Hills. Consisting of members of the Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates (KIWA), and UCLA student groups Korean American United Students for Action (KAUSES) and Concerned Asian Pacific Students for Action (CAPSA), picketers continued fighting in the boycott campaign launched in 1992 by Asian Immigrant Women's Advocates (AIWA).

This campaign finds its roots in a much larger socio-economic situation, the all too common exploitation, not only of women workers, but of immigrants as well. Faced with limited opportunities in a new country, due to a lack of a knowledge of English and a naiveté of socio-cultural standards in America, immigrants find themselves severely limited in their job options. Furthermore, racism and accent and language discrimination also add to their oppression until they find themselves relegated to the most menial of jobs, often earning minimal wages. Immigrant women, even find themselves additionally exploited, when their opportunities become constrained by gender-based labor divisions, which allow them to work only in clothing sweatshops or other such jobs traditionally defined as "women's work." Women of color immigrants, being predominantly Asian or Latina, must often work from ten to twelve hours a day, and must often work on weekends as well, under these dire sweatshop conditions.

The current campaign against Jessica McClintock, Inc. began when the subcontractor which the company had hired to provide its workers, Lucky Sewing Co., went bankrupt, leaving 12 Chinese women with $15,000 in back wages owed them as a result of bad checks. These women, finding no legal recourse in gaining reparations from the subcontractor, turned to AIWA in order to address their grievances, and they petitioned to Jessica McClintock, Inc. for payment.

The garment workers felt that McClintock, with its $145 million a year in gross sales, held a moral responsibility to pay the back wages owed them. Under the current system of subcontracting McClintock pays the workers by the piece, allocating them only $5 for dresses that retail for $175 in department stores. Yet despite the economic exploitation, California law states that manufacturers bear no legal responsibility for labor violations by garment industry subcontractors, despite the types of manufacturers obligations owed to workers in the building trades and in agriculture. The subcontracting system, set up largely through the efforts of the garment industries' powerful lobbying organizations, works by giving contracts to those subcontractors that offer the cheapest bids to the manufacturers. Sadly, however, these cheap contracts often come with instability, as subcontractors often go out of business and workers end up not getting paid, as in the case of these immigrant women.

Currently McClintock refuses to pay back wages to the Chinese workers, citing the fact that she had fulfilled her legal obligations by paying the subcontractors Yet AIWA has continued to press with the boycott against McClintock, and people from across the nation, from cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, Boston, Ithaca, and Minneapolis, have helped stage the national boycott in solidarity with the cause.

McClintock has even resorted to some very underhanded and calculated tactics to counter the boycott campaign. Recently, she hired a Chinese Public Relations firm to generate publicity to clear her of all responsibility, and even used a Chinese-speaking lawyer to trick 5 of the 12 women into receiving money in the form of a "charitable contribution" that came with the stipulation that McClintock wasn't responsible for the payment of back wages. The other women realized that the money offered constituted a bribe to buy their silence, and refused to sign the contract, realizing that the boycott consisted of a larger issue, the forcing of greater corporate responsibility for the betterment of all garment workers.

Even at the Los Angeles boycott site in Beverly Hills, McClintock has utilized every means available to her to work against the boycott. Utilizing her P.R. firm, she has hired Asian students from Cal State Northridge to pass out her propaganda, has attempted to provoke confrontations among protesters in order to discredit the boycott, and has even gone so far as to hire Asian women to work in her store and to use Asian models in clothing ads she has placed in the L.A. Times. Despite these efforts, sales at her LA store have dropped 30%, and will continue to do so under the boycott.

This boycott has become a powerful reminder of the strength and ability of Asian student and community activists. Through their willingness to participate in collective protest efforts, Asian people from across the nation have voiced their solidarity with the 12 immigrant Chinese women's cause. The protests continue and will continue to do so until justice is served.

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