PROTECT L.A.'S GARMENT JOBS

Los Angeles is the nation’s garment production capital and the city’s largest manufacturing sector. Over 45,000 workers cut, sew and finish garments locally, a workforce comprised primarily of Latino/a and Asian immigrants. The Los Angeles garment industry is notorious for operating within a complex, multi-layered system of fierce competition, in which thousands of small factories compete to obtain contracts with manufacturers by providing high volume and quick turnaround. To do so, contract owners “sweat” work out of their employees while garment manufacturers and retailers reap tremendous profits and routinely deny responsibility for the conditions in which their garments were produced.

THE FABRIC ACT

The Fashioning Accountability and Building Real Institutional Change (FABRIC Act / S.4312), introduced in the Senate by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) and in the House of Representatives by Carolyn Maloney (NY), would protect nearly 100,000 American garment workers and revitalize the garment industry in the United States by investing in domestic apparel production, improving working conditions, and reforming the piece-rate pay scale.

The FABRIC Act reweaves American garment manufacturing in 5 central pillars:

1) Creating a $40 million domestic garment manufacturing grant program aimed at revitalizing the industry.
2) Enforcing minimum wage standards and eliminating wage theft in US garment factories.
3) Increasing accountability on brands and retailers to combat workplace violations.
4) Increasing transparency.
5) Incentivizing reshoring with tax credits.

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