Labor officials to target garment industry: new appointees aim for low-wage sectors.

A state agency designed to enforce labor laws in low-wage industries is stepping up efforts to punish violators, particularly in the garment industry where Los Angeles County will be the primary target.

The California Labor and Workforce Development Agency has decided to combine its resources with the state and federal labor departments, as well as interest groups that track abuses of immigrant garment workers.

The 175 staff members working in the agency's bureau of field enforcement will no longer be assigned to a specific industry, but rather will investigate any type of business under the office's legal umbrella to ensure that resources are positioned where they are most needed.

No staffing increases have been funded yet and the penalties for violators--confiscation of their merchandise, stiff fines and possible jail sentences--are no more stringent in the past.

What has changed, according to agency officials, is the level of efficiency, which means that lawbreakers stand a better chance of getting caught.

"We're increasing our enforcement activities on a number of industries," said the agency's deputy secretary, Jose Millan. "Garment is more out of compliance than other low-wage industries. We're going to use every tool that's available to us."

Last February, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed former labor commissioner Victoria Bradshaw as the agency's secretary, and Millan, another former commissioner, as deputy secretary, adding muscle to the organization that former Gov. Gray Davis created in 2002.

The agency's many duties include monitoring minimum-wage and overtime violations, ensuring that workers are given proper lunch breaks and rest periods, and monitoring classification of low-wage workers as independent contractors avoid payroll taxes.

Millan said the state's Labor and Workforce Development Agency will ramp up its information-sharing with the California Department of Labor, the U.S. Department of Labor and worker advocate groups such as the L.A.-based Sweatshop Watch and the Garment Workers Center.

Though the apparel enforcement program is statewide, L.A. and Orange counties account for approximately 75 percent of the state's registered garment contractors.

The counties also have the highest number of unregistered operations that often pay sweatshop wages under inadequate working conditions, although no one knows how many of these operations exist.

Brand name manufacturers, retailers and the trade groups representing them want the agency to focus on these unregistered businesses instead of going after the big names to generate publicity.

Locally, activists have criticized numerous companies with local production or headquarters, including Wet Seal Inc., Hot Topic Inc., Pacific Sunwear of California Inc., Forever 21 Inc., Charlotte Russe Holding Inc. and Charming Shoppes Inc., owner of Fashion Bug stores.

The activists claim the crux of the problem is that registered operations often use non-registered factories and turn a blind eye to the abuses.

A common practice is for brand labels to hire manufacturers that act as middlemen to the factories in which the clothes are actually made, said Kimi Lee, executive director of the Garment Workers Center.

But Ilse Metchek, executive director of the California Fashion Association, said the enforcement locus should be on factories that are not registered, not working for a known or branded manufacturer, or without a strategic partner that can handle the joint liability.

"These are the factories where you are going to find the illegal operations," Metchek said. "The labels are not the major problem at all."

While Metchek didn't deny that namebrand labels use clothes makers that periodically break labor laws, she said the problems are easily resolved.

Most large retailers hire compliance monitoring firms, she said, while unregistered shops often fail to pay overtime, create unsafe working environments and make non-label clothes that cannot be easily traced.

Nevertheless, it's the name brands that get the most attention. Last month, the Labor and Workforce Development Agency negotiated back wage payments totaling nearly $725,000 from three labels whose regional contractors broke labor laws.

Sara Lee Corp.'s Champion athletic clothes division paid $514,468: Wet Seal paid $181,150 and Textile Unlimited Corp. paid $28,984, according to agency records.

"We are not targeting the industry," said Rick Rice, an assistant secretary at the agency. "We are targeting the bad guys within the industry because they are the ones that are undercutting the legitimate competition. (But) everyone has to be very careful about whom they contract with."