Garment workers, students and community members gathered
Saturday afternoon in Santa Monica to protest clothing retailer
Forever 21’s alleged unfair labor practices and urged
shoppers to boycott the store popular among college students.
The workers allege they are owed thousands of dollars in minimum
wage and overtime pay by the retail store, and say they were
exposed to unsafe and unsanitary working conditions.
The one-hour demonstration, part of a two-year long boycott
effort, took place on the busy intersection of Broadway Avenue and
Third Street. About 45 people formed the protest, made up mostly of
former and current garment workers and a handful of UCLA
students.
Kimi Lee, director of the Garment Worker Center, a nonprofit
group focused on organizing garment workers, said the protest
revolved around Forever 21’s alleged complicity with
subcontractors to deny garment workers their wages and
state-mandated breaks.
On Dec. 25, 2003, negotiations between the garment workers and
Forever 21 broke down, prompting the protest.
According to the Garment Worker Center’s Web site, the
garment workers announced an official boycott of Forever 21 stores
on Nov. 17, 2001 and filed a lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges Forever
21 engaged in unfair labor practices by systematically outsourcing
work to suspected sweatshops.
The demonstrators are also demanding Forever 21 assume
responsibility for the wages and working conditions of its garment
factories. Lee said the retail store holds a “position of
power” to change the alleged sweatshop conditions.
Ann Song, manager of the Forever 21 store in Santa Monica,
declined to comment on the protest or the demonstrators’
concerns.
According to an article published in the Los Angeles Times,
retail store representatives have said the garment workers are not
directly employed by Forever 21, and therefore, the retailer should
not be held financially responsible.
Economically disadvantaged but politically active, several of
the garment workers have participated in a number of outreach
efforts to university students and community groups to build
support.
Erika Aspericueta, a third-year political science and Chicana/o
studies student, saw a presentation by former Forever 21 garment
workers in her Chicana/o studies labor transnational organization
class. She joined the garment worker’s e-mail network
afterward, and has begun to help their cause.
“Since then, I’ve stopped shopping (at Forever
21),” she said.
Erika’s sister, Vanessa, a first-year biology student,
said she attended the protest to support the immigrant
community.
Aspericueta said she was sympathetic to the workers’
difficult immigrant experience.
“I wanted to support (them), especially the immigrants.
Exploitation still happens,” she said.
One of the demonstrators, Zenaida Basavez, a 48-year-old Mexican
immigrant, said she worked for nine months in a garment shop
subcontracted by Forever 21 in 2000.
Basavez, who said she grew up without any schooling or
education, had to show a white sheet of paper with her name printed
on it to identify herself.
A separated mother of eight children with few employment
options, Basavez said she immigrated to the United States in 1999
to help her children.
Working 50-hour weeks, Basavez said she earned about $180 to
$200 a week, or $3.60 to $4 an hour.
“It’s not about money. It’s about dignity. We
get stepped on … over and over again. We just want to get treated
like human beings,” she said, speaking in Spanish.