Notes from the Underground

By Charles Alexander

Millions of illegal workers will not be celebrating Labor Day

The dressmakers' workroom is a small L-shaped area on the fourth floor of a dilapidated building in downtown Los Angeles. Tattered sheets drape the dirt-streaked windows. Seven seamstresses, ages 18 to 45 and all from Latin America, sit in a tight row, huddled over their humming machines, monitored by a stocky Hispanic woman with a shock of bright orange-red hair. On a nearby desk rests a broken time clock. The workers were not paid last week; they may not be paid this week. The boss will pay them when she has the money. Manana. Perhaps tomorrow.

For most Americans, Labor Day is a time to relax and reflect upon the hard-won rights gained by workers in decades past: the 40-hour week, paid vacations and sick leave, to name a few. But while millions pause next Monday to enjoy backyard barbecues or walks on the beach, a silent, almost invisible labor force will toil on without a break. In steamy sweatshops, scorched fields and cramped kitchens across the U.S., these underground workers will labor long hours for low pay under conditions that seem out of the pages of Charles Dickens.

The force that drives the underground workplace is the free flow of illegal immigrants across U.S. borders. Sometimes illiterate, always frightened, the aliens form a vast pool of easily exploitable labor. Century-old Manhattan lofts that are dangerous firetraps once again house garment industry sweatshops where Chinese, Koreans and Cubans make as little as $60 a week for 70 hours of work--less than a third of the U.S. minimum wage of $3.35 an hour. Polish refugees have been found cleaning out oil-storage tanks in New Jersey for $2 an hour or less. At a small factory in Chicago, shifts of Mexicans working twelve-hour days keep two tortilla-making machines going around the clock. The din is deafening, and the heat from the ovens almost unbearable. Says one employee, a 25-year-old mother of two: "It's like hell."

Federal officials estimate that up to 6 million illegal aliens now reside in the U.S. Last year alone as many as 1.5 million unauthorized immigrants eluded American border patrols. This swelling reservoir of willing workers makes it easy for unscrupulous businessmen to flout U.S. labor laws. A Labor Department survey completed last year found that 5% of U.S. businesses paid less than the minimum wage, and 21% failed to give time and a half for overtime hours.

The exploitation of alien labor has also led to the mistreatment of American workers. Says Craig Berrington, a Labor Department official who oversees investigations of wage law violations: "We cannot identify any particular job where there is only abuse of illegal aliens. We see them working side by side, illegal immigrants and U.S. citizens."

Labor union leaders and many politicians charge that the uninvited foreigners have taken jobs away from Americans and flattened wages at the lower end of the economic ladder. Says Harold Washington, a black Congressman from Chicago: "The mere presence of a large number of illegal aliens is depressing wages generally, and forcing unskilled blacks to take dirtier, lower-paying jobs." In most industries that employ large numbers of menial workers, labor law violations can be found. Some of the worst offenders:

RESTAURANTS. Despite the often daunting price of dining out, restaurant busboys and dishwashers are among the most underpaid and overworked American laborers. In the past three years, California state investigators have inspected 2,835 Los Angeles restaurants and found that 65% of them were breaking wage laws.

A Labor Department survey of 305 Chicago-area restaurants revealed that 91% were underpaying their workers. Two restaurants in Miami Beach, Newport Pub and Roney Pub, were ordered by a federal judge this summer to pay $250,000 in back wages to more than 900 past and present employees. A part-owner of both restaurants is Walter Kaplan, the vice mayor of Miami Beach.

AGRIBUSINESS. From the cucumber patches of Maryland through the orange groves of Florida to the tomato fields of California, thousands of farm workers live in squalid shacks with communal latrines and no running water. Fruit and vegetable growers assert that they pay the minimum wage, but the money is often funneled through labor contractors who actually hire the workers. In many cases, these so-called crew chiefs, who are usually immigrants themselves, deduct exorbitant amounts from worker salaries for food, rent and transportation.

A notorious employer of illegal farm laborers is Ukegawa Brothers Inc., a large tomato grower in northern San Diego County. Says Chris Hartmire, an assistant to the president of the United Farm Workers of America: "The Ukegawa workers are living on the ground, under trees, under shrubs, in makeshift huts. They're in a semi-slave situation." The workers bathe in irrigation canals and often drink contaminated water.

GARMENT INDUSTRY. Throughout New York City, the center of American garment manufacturing, the kind of horrid sweatshop common in the early 1900s is flourishing anew. In Chinatown lofts, Queens garages and South Bronx storefronts, workers toil from dawn until well past dark sewing pants, shirts and blouses for as little as 8-c- apiece. The rooms are often dimly lit and poorly ventilated. In many cases, huge rolls of cloth block fire exits. The workers range from the young to the very old. In a raid on Chinatown sweatshops last spring, federal investigators found one 90-year-old woman, who was working for $1 an hour, and an eleven-year-old child.

The sweatshop operators are usually immigrants who have graduated from labor to management. They take work orders from dozens of Manhattan manufacturers. The companies deny any knowledge that their garments are sewn in sweatshops, but the prices they pay--as little as $2.10 for a dress--make it obvious that the clothes were not made under legal labor conditions.

The garment industry and its sweatshops have spread over the years beyond New York. In Los Angeles, inspectors have uncovered more than 2,000 illegal workplaces using Hispanic labor. So many garment shops have popped up in Miami that one industry executive calls it "the Chinatown of the South."

Though government officials have raided hundreds of sweatshops in recent months, they admit that they are losing the battle. Businessmen simply move from one location to another. Says California Labor Investigator Joe Razo: "We may go into the same loft building five or six times in a month and find new occupants every time." Illegal aliens rarely report their bosses for fear of being arrested and deported. Even if the sweatshop operator is caught, the penalty he receives--usually just an order to pay the back wages owed his workers--does not stop him from setting up a new operation.

California has taken the lead among states in fighting the labor abuse in the garment industry. An antisweatshop law that went into effect last month requires all locations where clothing is made to be registered. If a manufacturer is found to be contracting out work to an unregistered shop, the goods can be confiscated. Labor experts believe that this kind of legislation, and even harsher penalties, should exist in all states.

The Reagan Administration has begun to confront the problem of poor labor conditions. The President plans to ask Congress to grant temporary legal status to all aliens who entered the U.S. before 1980 and give them the chance to become permanent residents after ten years if they learn English and fulfill other requirements. The Administration argues that legal foreign workers would not be as reluctant to report labor abuses.

Reagan also proposes new federal fines for employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens: up to $1,000 for each undocumented worker. Says Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan: "It is our apathy, our lack of concern that has allowed such an evil and unconscionable system to exist." Donovan faces a tough job in breaking through that apathy and cracking down on America's underground labor market.

--By Charles Alexander. Reported by Jay Branegan/Chicago and Jeff Melvoin/Los Angeles with other U.S. bureaus

With reporting by Jay Branegan/Chicago, Jeff Melvoin/Los Angeles

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