Sweatshops and Home Work in the Dress Industry 1938 The Women's Bureau

Sweatshops generally refers to a workplace where relatively unskilled employees work long hours for substandard pay in unhealthy and unsafe conditions. The term "sweatshop" was first used in the late 19th century to describe aspects of the tailoring trade, but sweatshop conditions exist in other industries as well. The forces that promote sweatshop production have always been varied. Some shops are the result of greed and opportunism; others stem from competitive pressures. Understanding why sweatshops persist today means exploring issues of global competition, government regulation, immigration, business practices, and racial, ethnic, and gender discrimination. Seamstresses were familiar figures in early 19th-century American cities, filling the needs of an expanding garment industry. Working at home, they stitched bundles of pre-cut fabric into clothing. They were poorly compensated for work that was both physically demanding and unpredictable. Paid by the piece, seamstresses worked 16 hours a day during the busiest seasons, but their income rarely exceeding bare subsistence. Making matters worse was, shop owners were notorious for finding fault with the finished garments and withholding payment. Consequently, seamstresses often relied on charity for their own and their families' survival. In many cities, recent immigrants converted small apartments into contract shops that doubled as living quarters. Fierce competition among contractors for work and immigrants desperate need for employment kept wages down and hours up. The U.S. Department of Labor Women's Bureau, established by Congress in 1920, is the only federal agency mandated to represent the needs of wage-earning women in the public policy process. For more on the past and current work of this valuable part of the US Department of Labor, visit their website at http://www.dol.gov/wb/welcome.html . This was clipped from the 1938 film, What's in a Dress?, made by the US Women's Bureau. The film is available at the US National Archive in College Park, Maryland.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Women
• woman
• work
• worker
• labor
• union
• hours
• wages
• conditions
• safety
• health
• Alice
• Hamilton
• United
• States
• Department
• Fair
• Labor
• Standards
• sweatshop
• home
• factory
• immigration
• garment
• dress
• clothing