AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s broaden our discussion here to include two more guests who are in our studios. We’re joined by Jeff Hermanson, who is the director of national organizing for UNITE. UNITE, again, the new union that is the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees. And we’re joined by Dan Yun Feng, who is director of the Campaign for Justice in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where there are hundreds of sweatshops that particularly employ Asian workers.

And we welcome you both to Democracy Now!

JEFF HERMANSON: Good morning.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, why don’t we begin with Jeff Hermanson? What is this national campaign that you’re organizing right now?

JEFF HERMANSON: Well, we’ve been fighting sweatshops for our entire history, 95 years, as the ILGWU and now as UNITE. We are going after the major retailers that profit from the labor of sweatshop workers across the country. Some people think that it’s the manufacturers and the owners of these little sweatshops that are responsible. But the truth is that the people that are really profiting from the sweatshop, and that are acting in a way to make it necessary for there to be sweatshops, are the major retailers where you buy your clothes every week.

AMY GOODMAN: Who are some of these companies? Who are these stores?

JEFF HERMANSON: The big ones, Macy’s, Sears, JCPenney, Walmart, Kmart. All of them really are engaged in pushing down the conditions of work and the wages of sweatshop workers in our urban centers across this land.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And when you say “sweatshop work,” are you talking — these are factories, totally unorganized, most of them illegal, or are some of them actually legal operations that just pay either below minimum wage or at minimum wage?

JEFF HERMANSON: Well, they’re basically illegal shops, because they all violate labor laws in significant ways, usually the minimum wage law, almost universally the overtime law. They don’t pay overtime, no matter how many hours you work, and many people work 70, 75 hours a week, seven days a week. And they violate health and safety laws. They’ve got locked fire exits. We’re sitting on a time bomb. There could be a Triangle fire disaster, and hundreds of workers could lose their lives any day.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: What are your estimates in terms of the numbers of people at this stage throughout the country that are working in sweatshops? Do you have any — or does anyone have any estimates?

JEFF HERMANSON: The Congressional General Accounting Office has made estimates that there are close to 100,000 workers toiling in sweatshops.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, some of those places are right here in the New York City area. And, Dan Yun Feng, you organize out in Brooklyn in Sunset Park. Can you describe the places that you’re going to and the workers that work there?

DAN YUN FENG: Yeah. I train in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. There are about 150 shops, the so-called sweatshops. Actually, you know, there are only a very few union shops in Sunset Park. The majority of the shops are not unionized. So a lot of shops are actually under very, very bad working conditions. The workers working in those shops, the majority of them are Asian women, and they have to work extremely long hours. For example, right now it’s like a busy season. Most of the workers work 10 to 14 hours a day and six to seven days a week without overtime pay. And the wage is very low. And a lot of workers actually not even make a minimum wage, and some some of them, especially the older workers, they’re making only a couple of cents per hour.

And also there are a lot of child laborers in those sweatshops. Just like yesterday, we had an organizer in the Sunset Park shops, and she saw a boy. He’s 11 years old, working in the shop. And also, he told our organizer, he said he has to work until 9:30 to 10:00 at night. And some shops also actually put a sign outside of the shop to hire teenage students.

And also, the working conditions are really bad. A lot of shops open in the basement or garage. And, you know, in the winter, the shops are very cold, because they don’t have enough heat. And in the summer, the shops are extremely hot. There are no air conditioning, and the employer don’t even let workers bring in their own fan to the shops. And also, there are not any kind of a protection for the workers for health and safety.

We had to deal with a case, a teenage girl. She actually is only 17 years old. Her eyes was injured by needles, and she lost the blood. But she was very scared, and, you know, we tried to encourage her to make a complaint, but she refused to make a complaint. She thought she was the person who evaded the law.

So, this is like a very serious problem, because a lot of workers working in those sweatshops are new immigrant workers. They don’t speak English very well, and they don’t have a knowledge about the law, the protection of the workers and the workers’ rights.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: What do these companies — Macy’s, Sears and JCPenney’s — when you confront them about these kinds of illegal conditions, what is their response?

JEFF HERMANSON: Their response is that they’re not responsible; they’re not the employer of these workers. But more and more, people are starting to realize that they are responsible, that they know exactly how much these garments cost to make, and they know exactly how much workers can be paid for making these garments. Therefore, they know. They’re profiting. They control the process by setting the price, by giving the designs out. They are responsible.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, the National Labor Committee, the research and advocacy arm of a number of unions here in the city, did this campaign against the Gap, where they went around the country and brought young women from Honduras and El Salvador up talking about the working conditions. And they succeeded in getting an agreement from the Gap around working conditions and allowing international monitors in. People really responded to this. Now, this was in another country. You guys are focusing on sweatshops in this country. And we see a lot of news reports on China, on — occasionally now more on other places. We don’t see them as much on this country. Is your message getting out into the media about what’s happening? What is your media strategy?

JEFF HERMANSON: Well, the UNITE was a part of that campaign. Our strategy is to fight sweatshops at home and abroad, because it’s really the same problem. You know, it’s really the problem of these major retailers pushing the prices down and not caring about the conditions in the shops where these garments are made. But the American consumer does care. And our strategy is to let them know exactly what the conditions are in sweatshops at home and abroad. And I think it’s beginning to take hold. I think the exposure of the El Monte, California, sweatshop, where workers, Thai workers, were actually held in slavery for years at a time, got a lot of publicity and awakened the American public and the consumer to what’s going on in the shops where their clothes are being made.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I know, for instance, that Labor Secretary Reich has made some statements condemning the situation. But what is the Clinton administration doing in terms of being able to go after these sweatshops in a systematic way? Because if the government sends out the message that it’s not going to tolerate this continued flouting of the law, I think that you’ve got a better chance, don’t you, of eliminating the worst abuses?

JEFF HERMANSON: Absolutely. The government certainly has a role to play. And we’ve been working with the Department of Labor and with Secretary Reich and with Maria Echaveste, who’s head of the wages and hours enforcement division, to get better enforcement and to use the hot goods provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which says that goods that are made in violation of overtime, minimum wage and child labor laws can be seized by the federal government, cannot be shipped in interstate commerce. And that use by the Clinton administration of that provision has advanced the cause of fighting sweatshops a great deal, and we hope that it continues and is strengthened.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Do you have any idea how many seizures have been made?

JEFF HERMANSON: Well, it’s certainly several dozen, I would say. And many of these involve these large manufacturers. And these manufacturers have been forced to sign settlement agreements with the Department of Labor, assuming responsibility for the conditions in their shops. And this is a first. This is really a very important breakthrough, and we hope —

AMY GOODMAN: Who has done that?

JEFF HERMANSON: The first one to do it was Guess, but several other major manufacturers have done it.

AMY GOODMAN: Did this come out of the protests of women standing outside the manufacturers’ headquarters and embarrassing them, saying that — showing them their checks, etc.?

JEFF HERMANSON: Not only that, but also the action of the U.S. Department of Labor and the California Office of the U.S. Department of Labor to go after these violators when they found that every single shop that their garments were being made in was violating the Fair Labor Standards Act.

AMY GOODMAN: Dan Yun Feng, let me ask you something about this primary season. Immigrants are among the top issues, and immigrant bashing seems to be a favorite pastime of the candidates, whether you’re talking about Republican or often Democrats, as well, talking about the, quote, “problem” of immigrants. What does this do for people who are working in these sweatshops? Do they get more afraid?

DAN YUN FENG: Yes, actually. Just pretty recently, we heard a lot of target from immigration, and so a lot of workers are actually afraid. And in a lot of shops in Sunset Park, there are documented workers and nondocumented workers. And, you know, because of this kind of target from, like, INS, a lot of workers, you know, they’re more afraid. They don’t want to speak out for their rights. They’re afraid to be deported, or, you know, they’re afraid to lose their — actually, many people are afraid to be kicked out from the country, so that will be — really make the sweatshop situation worse.

JEFF HERMANSON: Right. We’re seeing, actually, what I consider to be a reign of terror in the New York City garment industry. The INS, it’s not just that they’re raiding factories, it’s the way in which they’re doing it. They’re walking in. These are warrantless raids. They have no warrant. They’re targeting Korean-owned shops in the Garment District right in the next building from where we’re sitting. And they’re walking into these shops, threatening the owner that if they don’t let them in, it will be tougher for them. And they’re hauling people away. They’re going through their purses and their pockets without any their permission. They’re not telling people of their right to counsel. And they’re taking them to jail in Pennsylvania, incommunicado, without notifying their families, mothers whose children are in daycare. I don’t know what happens to the children at night when the mother doesn’t show up. And this is a very serious problem. It’s taken workers’ minds off of organizing to improve their conditions. And we’re talking about not just illegal aliens, but also the legal residents that are working in the same shop next to the illegal aliens. They don’t think — are not thinking about exercising their rights. They’re thinking about protecting themselves from this reign of terror.

AMY GOODMAN: If people experience these kind of conditions or they know of factories where this is going on, who do they contact?

JEFF HERMANSON: They should contact UNITE.

AMY GOODMAN: And what is the contact number?

JEFF HERMANSON: 212-265-7000. And they should ask for the organization department.

AMY GOODMAN: And that’s 212-265-7000, if you know about these sweatshops anywhere in the country. We want to thank our two guests, Jeff Hermanson, director of national organizing, and Dan Yun Feng, director of the Campaign for Justice in Brooklyn, for joining us and helping to expose this issue. We’re going to catch up with you at different points during the year and find out how the campaign is going.

Well, Juan, it looks like we’ve come to another end of Democracy Now!, and you can go back to writing your book, Latinos in America.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes, and get back to doing my column again. I’ve been on vacation, finishing the book now for several weeks now.

AMY GOODMAN: And Juan González is a columnist with the Daily News here in New York, where the primary is taking place. And if you’d like to comment on anything you’ve heard today, you can write to us at our email address, and that is democracy@pacifica.org. That’s democracy@pacifica.org. You’ve been listening to Democracy Now!, Pacifica’s national grassroots election show. And if you have friends anywhere in the country that are not able to hear this, tell them to call their local community or public broadcasting station, their radio station, and ask them to run Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now! Democracy Now! is produced by Julie Drizin, with Pat Greenfield. Our engineer is Bernard White, with help from Dred Scott Keyes. Our director, Errol Maitland, with assistance from Sonya White. Special thanks to Paul Wonder. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Join me tomorrow for another edition of Pacifica Radio’s grassroots daily election show, Democracy Now! Tomorrow, it’s International Women’s Day.