S.B. 62 will make California the first state to require a minimum wage for garment workers, and it’s bringing a new level of responsibility to brands and designers.
California Just Passed a Landmark Bill to Protect Garment Workers—Here’s What It Means for the Entire Fashion Industry
After two years, thousands of phone calls, and a precarious recall election, California finally passed Senate Bill 62 on Monday. Known as the Garment Worker Protection Act, the new law makes California the first state to require hourly wages for garment workers; it will also prohibit piecework, a pervasive system in which workers are paid per garment (often resulting in less than $3 per hour), and it will penalize both manufacturers and brands for wage theft and illegal pay practices. For designers, the bill introduces a kind of accountability never seen before in the industry.
Los Angeles is the largest fashion manufacturing hub in the United States, and last year’s COVID-19 lockdowns put thousands of L.A. garment workers in economic and health crises. Outbreaks spread through factories with insufficient distancing measures in place, while many workers lost their jobs or were denied pay when brands canceled their orders. The severity of the human rights abuses made national headlines and renewed the urgency around S.B. 62 (then titled S.B. 1399). With support from the media and citizens, garment workers were galvanized to fight even harder for the bill. “This two-year battle has really been led by garment workers themselves, along with the incredible leadership of the Garment Worker Center,” explains Ayesha Barenblat, the CEO of Remake, which created a business coalition and led social media campaigns around S.B. 62. “It was galvanizing to see worker organizations, businesses, and citizens to come together on this. I think that’s really the power here.”
Newsom described the bill as “nation leading” and “momentous”; in the press release Remake sent today, they called it “life changing” for L.A.’s 45,000 garment workers and their families. Its significance cannot be overstated, particularly when it comes to brands that manufacture in L.A. Historically, fashion brands have not been responsible for the payment or treatment of garment workers; by hiring their factories as third-party contractors, they outsource the risk to them. That isn’t to say brands don’t care about garment workers; plenty of designers—both here in the U.S. and elsewhere—send detailed codes of conduct to their manufacturing partners and work closely with them to ensure their values are aligned. But unless you’re physically visiting your factories every day, nothing is guaranteed, and Barenblat pointed out that brands’ expectations haven’t always matched the prices they demanded. “Their commercial practices and the low prices they set directly resulted in wage theft,” she explains, because in order to produce clothes at a lower price, factories may be forced to cut corners with labor. “Now they can’t get away with that—there is multilateral accountability in the bill, which means if workers aren’t making their legal minimum wage, which is $14 an hour, manufacturers and brands will both be held responsible.”
It’s important to note that brands want this kind of responsibility. Zero fashion labels came out to oppose S.B. 62; in fact, Remake gathered signatures from 158 brands—including Reformation, Eileen Fisher, Mara Hoffman, Dôen, Another Tomorrow, and the denim mill Saitex—to illustrate the business case. “We wanted to show that this would be good for workers, but it’s also really good for business,” Barenblat says. “For the designers who want to do right by their workers, it’s leveling the playing field [by outlawing] the sweatshop conditions that have hurt the reputation of made in L.A.”
This story originally appeared on: Vogue - Author:Emily Farra
