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--:-- Host (Noelle): Hey, it's Noelle here. Today Explained is taking a break today so Sean can watch women's tennis. But we have an episode from our friends and my former colleagues at NPR's Planet Money. It's called Made in America.
--:-- Host (Noelle): Okay, so Made in America is a good thing, right? Jobs for American workers, better pay, a higher standard of working conditions than in, say, you know, a foreign sweatshop. Eek, you guys, it's not quite that simple.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: This is Planet Money from NPR. Maria doesn't speak any English. No, casi no. Not a word, she says. No, no, no, nada, nada, nada. But she does know some. Like sizes. She knows sizes. She knows label, ticket, all words related to her job. Manager. Okay, the boss. You just call him Mr. The boss is a girl. It's a missus. Missus over here. Missus over there, she says. You got to call. Your boss is Mr. or Mrs., she says. And I'm like, this is all English, Maria.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: Oh, Mr., Mrs. Mrs. Maria is a garment worker in the U.S., one of not that many left. She's originally from Puebla, Mexico. Puebla, Camotera. Sweet potato city, she says, proud, nodding her head and making a little fist to herself when she says it.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: Maria is only 73 years old, but she has the presence of both a much older, comforting grandma, and somehow also like this easily delighted kid. She has those little grandma sandals on and a little white flower tucked behind her ear. Whenever Maria sees a flower, she picks it up, puts it in her hair. Desde niña, desde chiquita. You've been doing this since you're a little girl? Me da alegría. Una flor. Makes her happy. A little flower in her hair.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: Maria has been in the U.S. almost 30 years, and she has done the exact same job the entire time. She's a trimmer at a garment factory in Los Angeles. Half of what is left of the garment manufacturing industry in the U.S. is in Los Angeles.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: And when I ask Maria what a trimmer does in a U.S. garment factory, Maria reaches for my shirt. She tucks her hand under the bottom of my shirt, at the hem, the back of her warm fingers on my bare stomach, the way only a grandma can do.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: That was so cute. She taps all the places on my top where a piece of thread would be left behind when a hem or a seam or a stitch ends. The side of my stomach at the side seam, my shoulder where a sleeve was sewn on, the back of my neck where the tag was sewn on.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: And when she's tapping me like this, it feels like something my grandma's sister would do, actually. Like this blessing. And when I tell Maria, she looks at me like, I understand.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: Maria's job is to cut off all the leftover thread. That's what a trimmer does all day, crouched over. Just snip, snip, snip, snip, snipping loose threads.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: And as we're talking, Maria notices a little spot at the hem of my shirt where a tiny piece of thread was left over. Like half a centimeter. And she goes, I guess the trimmer working on this was in a rush. But then again, they're all in a rush.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Sarah Gonzalez. The shirt I'm wearing this day with Maria, made in Vietnam. My pants, made in Bangladesh. My bra, made in China. But the clothes that Maria works on are made in the U.S., in Los Angeles, California.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: And a lot of people love the idea of making things like clothes in America. One of the Trump administration's goals is to bring manufacturing in general back to the U.S. But what people might picture when they think of a made-in-America future might be different from the made-in-America we have now.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: Today on the show, why does a garment industry in the U.S. even exist still? What does it look like and can it grow? Is this a job that people want or even know how to do?
--:-- Maria: When you start out as a garment worker, you often start out as a trimmer, like me. Then you might get trained on a sewing machine. But I never moved on to a machine. I like being a trimmer. But really, I just like having a job. I've liked every job I've ever had, I say. Because you get money, yeah.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: When Maria started out trimming, she was not the best. She'd nick the clothes, leave a little hole, but she'd show up with a little needle and thread set, hand sew it real quick. You couldn't even tell the hole was there, she says.
--:-- Maria: All right. And her boss loved that she could patch things up, actually. So much intelligence, he told her.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: But what the garment industry really prizes is speed. Speed more than anything else. And in the beginning, Maria was not so fast. She didn't know how to move the scissors, she says. So she'd do like 100 pieces of clothing a day. Muy poquito, pero el mister, pues, no más lo único que te decía, amiga, rápido. Amiga, rápido. El mister.
--:-- Maria: The boss would be like, friend, friend, faster, faster. And she did get fast. Ya me aventaba 600 piezas, 700 piezas, 800 piezas. Okay, so when you first started, you were doing like 100 pieces a day, and now you're 700, 800 pieces.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: ¿800 piezas en un día? Descansado. Descansado. 800 pieces a day is a lot. It's a lot.
--:-- Maria: Okay, mira, compré este. I brought Maria a garment that was made in the U.S. so we could talk about the work that goes into it. It's a purple sports bra from a fancy, pricey American brand. The nice, thick cardboard tag says, Made in the U.S.A. It sold for $62. And it's good quality, definitely. You can feel it in the fabric.
--:-- Maria: But all I see is the amount of loose threads that I would need to trim on a piece like this. No tiene mucho hilo. There not much she says Eso es muy bueno para las tremeadoras porque r sale Oh okay so you want something like this This is an easy job for you Oh, this is like potato chips? Like a piece of cake, you know? You can really make money doing the trimming on a bra like this, she says.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: If you want to earn money, you have to do it fast. Why? Why does she have to work fast to get money? Maria gets paid by the piece, meaning the faster she works, the more pieces she does, the more money she makes. It's called piece rate pay, and it is very common in this industry.
--:-- Maria: This is why Maria likes a nice, simple garment. Jeans? No. Oh, you don't like working on jeans? No, eso no. A button-up shirt? Oh, the worst. El botón sí te costaba mucho porque hay que tremear el botón también. The buttons, the buttons take a while. You have to trim all the leftover thread. You don't make much money when there's buttons involved.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: Leftover button thread just really slows you down. You get paid by the quantity you produce, right? The number of garments you get through. And the pay? Well, when Maria started out as a trimmer in 1994, the pay was... Three cents to five cents. Three to five cents per piece. That's the pay she started at.
--:-- Maria: Maria would do 100 pieces a day, make $5, and she'd walk out happy, she says, feeling great about her $5 a day. Today? Ahorita ya lo pagan a 15 centavos y a 16 centavos. Ahorita, 15 cents today? Today, Maria makes 15 to 16 cents per piece. And that can be okay pay if she gets a nice, easy sports bra. But if she gets, I don't know, a jacket, a jacket with buttons, working as fast as you possibly can, sometimes you do not get close to making minimum wage.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: Many times in her career, Maria has taken bundles of garments home, stayed up till 2, 3 in the morning, just trimming, trimming, trimming more and more pieces, trying to earn enough money to pay her bills.
--:-- Lynn Bureti: I gave the data to the people. I gave the data to the—
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: We're blaming you, Lynn. We're blaming you. I know. I feel so terrible now. But, you know, this is just something that you're taught. This is one of the main ways the garment industry in the U.S. and globally has always paid pennies on the piece. This is a longstanding tradition, at least since the Industrial Revolution.
--:-- Lynn Bureti: P-Street pay was meant to incentivize workers to work harder. So the people working harder and producing more would make more money than the people who were working slower. And everyone thought, that's a fair system, right?
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: But Lynn has some regrets about this now. And she says P-Street pay means workers often wreck their bodies working as fast as they can.
--:-- Lynn Bureti: When you sew, you have one foot on a pedal, and so your weight tends to be on your other leg. Doing that for eight hours a day, 40 hours a week, perhaps, or more, that can cause issues. We spoke to workers who have gotten burned, scarred, need surgery on their shoulder. Doing the same arm repetitions every single day.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: Okay, wait, let me show you. So this is my garment that I bought. Okay. I show Lynn the purple sports bra. There's like a little keyhole right here. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. Let me see the shoulders.
--:-- Lynn Bureti: When I showed this garment to Maria, she could really only tell me about the part she does, the trimming. But I can tell us how many people worked on a garment like this and how much they each got paid. Okay. So you've got a front and a back. You've got the band along the bottom. And then you've got the piping pieces on the armhole and the neckline. It's a very basic bra. This is not a structured bra. There are no cups, no liner pads, no holes for the liners, no wire, nothing like that.
--:-- Lynn Bureti: And still, I say, it could have taken 13 different people to make it, each doing a different step. Just to sew the bra. I'm not talking about any of the prep work, like laying out the fabric, cutting out the fabric, bundling the pieces.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: Would like a generous estimate be like every single person who touched this piece got no more than 30 cents for what they did? or 40 cents. 40 cents is probably too high. 40 cents is too high. Okay. So we'll go with 30 cents.
--:-- Lynn Bureti: Oh, 30 cents times 13 people would mean that potentially, theoretically, workers were paid $3.90 to make this bra. Yeah. Which was selling for $62. Correct. And this is like made in America. Mm-hmm. So this is like as good as it gets. Yeah. This is as good as it gets? Well, in terms of people actually being paid. Yeah. Basically, as good as it gets in terms of pay.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: Now, some countries like Canada, Japan, Belgium actually do pay garment workers more than the U.S. does. But generally, in countries that make most of our clothes, workers would make way, way less than $3.90 total to make a bra like this. Oh, pennies. It could be 50 cents in other countries.
--:-- Aisha Berenblatt: So why don't they do it somewhere else? Is it because they want to be a brand that says we use American labor? That's worth money. Absolutely.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: Do you think that your average consumer of this product thinks oh wait that what American labor is It like someone getting paid 18 cents to 30 cents to work on this No absolutely not I think we have the image of a well factory that air where people get nice breaks and go home to their families at night. And it's just not that.
--:-- Aisha Berenblatt: I've seen worse factories in America than I have seen overseas. Most of the garment factories left in the U.S., over 76% of them, are small operations with fewer than 10 workers. You'd walk by some of these and never even know there was a garment factory there.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: In New York City, a factory could be on top of a restaurant in Little Italy. In Los Angeles, it could be on a residential street, looking like any other single-story house on the block. There aren't that many factories or that many domestic garment workers.
--:-- Aisha Berenblatt: In 1990, there were like 900,000 apparel manufacturing jobs in the U.S. Today, there are 82,000. The U.S. lost most of its garment industry in the 90s when brands and retailers started sourcing more and more products overseas and paying other countries to make more and more clothes.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: And when that happened, the U.S. kind of stopped investing in the factories that were left, stopped innovating. So walking into some of these factories today can feel like going back in time. It's tiny, subcontracted, overcrowded factories with these juki machines.
--:-- Aisha Berenblatt: Come look at the factories in South Asia, not just in China, in Cambodia, in Bangladesh. Some of these are state-of-the-art facilities, innovative, you know, with robotics and AI and using clean technology. We don't have that. We have some. Not many.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: The governments in a lot of the countries where our clothes are made today actually subsidize those state-of-the-art fancy factories. And unless the U.S. were to do the same, Aisha says she cannot imagine that there would be the right incentives for anyone to invest in more U.S. factories.
--:-- Aisha Berenblatt: This is an aging workforce. You know, who is going to do the skill development that's needed without investment in workforce, without investment in R&D, in technology, in actual factory development and patients? It's not as though these jobs are just going to come back.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: Can I just say that? These jobs are not going to we're not going to make iPhones in America and we're not going to make all our clothes. We don't know how to. Like, let's just put that out there.
--:-- Aisha Berenblatt: Yeah, the U.S. outsourced a lot of its garment-making expertise a long time ago. Other countries got really good at making clothes. Not just sewing clothes, but like the pattern-making, fitting, making a bra. Not a simple sports bra like our purple bra, but like a legit structured support bra with cups in the whole thing.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: Aisha says, the U.S. doesn't really know how to make those bras. No, look in your closet and see where most of your bras come from. Sri Lanka. Probably. It's hard. You know, it's a technical garment. I mean, the wire, the clasp, the sizing, the different kind of material. Yeah, there's like a whole like rounded, molded part. Yeah. Different countries have become experts at different things.
--:-- Aisha Berenblatt: One country might be really great at making cheap pearl buttons for our clothes. Another great at working with silk. The U.S. is apparently not known for its silk work. You really want to go to where silk production originated for good silk work. So China.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: The U.S. got better at other things like services. And economists generally believe in this way of specialization that every country should leverage the resources available to them and only do the things that they are good at.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: But there is a garment manufacturing industry in the U.S., right? That's what Maria does. And if you're wondering why there is any industry left at all when clothes can be made cheaper, sometimes even better abroad, here's why. Some U.S. brands like to have factories nearby for things like prototyping and making samples. They just want a few pieces right away.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: And then there are clothes for the niche customer, like consumers who really want clothes that aren't shipped from across the world because they really care about emissions, for example. Specialized clothes for people with physical disabilities. The U.S. makes a decent amount of that.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: And here's another big reason. Basically, all of the clothes for the U.S. military have to, by law, under the Berry Amendment, be made in the U.S. The fabric, the fiber, top to bottom, made in the USA. because the U.S. military doesn't ever want to have to rely on a particular country in case we ever, like, go to war with that country or something.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: This is the part of the garment industry that the U.S. government does prop up. And there's a perception, right, that made in America must mean better labor conditions maybe, better pay, good for the environment even. Why do you think that, Sarah? That's not true. That's absolutely not true.
--:-- Aisha Berenblatt: Aisha's nonprofit does these reports where they basically grade brands on labor issues like pay and worker well-being and environmental issues like the raw materials brands use and where their clothes get discarded. There's this perception that somehow if I'm paying more or if it's a luxury item, then the workers are paid better.
--:-- Aisha Berenblatt: And, you know, time and time again, you know, there have been scandals with sweatshops in Italy and they have been high end brands, luxury brands. There's math out there, something like 20 cents for a $20 T-shirt. But the same holds true for a $120 T-shirt. A $20 t-shirt, a $120 t-shirt, the workers likely got 20 cents to work on it either way.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: Aisha says you generally cannot buy your way into better wages for workers. There has been an effort in California where Maria and half of all U.S. garment workers are to raise the pay. But the thing about making clothes is it has historically gone somewhere else where you can pay workers less.
--:-- Maria: Every day when I walk into work, I get bundles of clothes that need trimming sorted by size. And I keep track of the cut, the style, and the number of pieces in a notebook and then figure out my total pay at the end of the week. and the mister or missus will do the same accounting on their end.
--:-- Maria: And sometimes their math might be $5, $6 short, and I'll be like, no, no, no, check your math again. I do feel like I have to fight for every dollar I get. Working a regular, average day where the garments I'm working on is not so easy and not so hard, I might do like 500 pieces at 15 cents a piece. So $75 a day. ¿Y te pagan en cash? Sí, claro, en cash.
--:-- Maria: Working full time, I could make $375 a week, $1,500 a month. If I was making the minimum wage in California, though, I'd make $2,640 a month.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: When you convert piece rate pay to hourly wages, it can add up to much less than the minimum wage. According to a Department of Labor survey of garment workers in Southern California, some workers made as little as $1.58 an hour.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: And in California, the way that I am getting paid by the peace is actually not legal. It's wage theft. And I know it. I am a member of a group called the Garment Worker Center in Los Angeles. The center and also Aisha's nonprofit pushed for this law in California that prohibits peace rate pay in the garment industry. It passed four years ago.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: So now by law I am supposed to be getting paid hourly at minimum wage or better not by the piece but getting all the brands and factories to comply with the law is another story Sometimes garment workers are asked to clock in and clock out every day even though they are not paid by the hour Factories do this to try to avoid being caught by state investigators.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: They'll even coach workers on what color the paycheck would be if they got a paycheck, not cash, so that they can be more believable to investigators. Our purple sports bra, the one we bought, we spoke to a worker who says they worked on those bras. Paid by the piece. And the company that made it was actually fined for using factories in California that were committing wage theft and issuing fake checks.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: And listen, many brands have worked with factories that pay garment workers per piece. According to the Department of Labor, it's been contractors and manufacturers that make clothes for Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Lulu's, Dillard's. So it's not just the, you know, bad fast fashion brands doing this. It's luxury brands. It's good American brands that boast about being made with U.S. labor, like our sports bra.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: And if factories get wind that maybe someone is poking around on how they're paying workers, there's this thing that can happen. The factory can close up, relocate, change their name to avoid having to back pay workers. Lynn, Lynn who used to have the stopwatch timing workers sewing on seams, she says she saw factories do this all the time.
--:-- Lynn Bureti: If they were caught doing anything and the government came in, they would say, sorry, that company no longer exists. We're this owner. We're the new company now. But it would be the same owners? Of course. Just a different name? Yeah. Yep.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: And how can they do that? Oh, it's all illegal. It is the very definition of a sweatshop, but you have to catch them at it. Yeah, sweatshops. It's a term people toss out a lot, but the actual definition of a sweatshop is poor working conditions, low pay, long hours.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: And the problem with trying to make wages and conditions and hours better is that you can risk losing the industry altogether. For example, the law in California that prohibits piece rate pay in the garment industry, the California Chamber of Commerce labeled it a job killer. People said that if California is the only state in the country that bans piece rate pay, factories and brands will just make clothes one state over, where they can still pay workers by the piece.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: There has been a years-long push to eliminate piece rate pay nationally, but I mean, then the work could just go to another country. These jobs have already moved from China to Bangladesh and Vietnam, where the labor is cheaper.
--:-- Pacheco: Can you tell me in English what you do for work? What do you do for work? No, what do you do for work? Oh, what do I do for work? This is Pacheco. She is a sewer in L.A. who has made clothes for the U.S. military.
--:-- Pacheco: Ah, this is for the soldiers. Like camouflage? But even getting paid minimum wage, Pacheco says there is pressure to do things fast. You give everything you can physically, she says, and mentally. Because you have to do really good work. In some factories, at least.
--:-- Pacheco: And if you don't work fast, Pacheco says, sometimes they can just take the work away from you. They might say, oh, there's actually not going to be a lot of work the next few days. We'll call you when there's more. And you get the message, she says, to work faster next time.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: Pacheco says sometimes she actually made more money when she was paid by the piece. Now, we are not using Pacheco's full name because she fears workplace retaliation. This is also why we're not using Maria's full name or the names of their employers.
--:-- Sarah Gonzalez: But the Garment Worker Center, which fights labor violations, says this kind of thing happens all the time. And Pacheco has a lot of regrets about investing so much of her adult life in this industry. She says she has nothing to show for her work. No savings, no career advancements. She feels broken by it.
--:-- Pacheco: You've lost a lot of time? Si. Bueno, porque yo pienso que qué persona no quiere graduarse y tener un tipo de vida diferente. What person doesn't want to move up in work and life and have more, she says?
--:-- Maria: Pues no. Que sean algo en la vida. Maria says she wants them to be something in life. I tell her, you're something. ¿Tú eres algo en la vida? Sí, algo pues, porque... Yeah, I'm something, she says. But she raised her kids. Comimos y todo. They all ate. And she's proud of herself.
--:-- Maria: But she cannot imagine many Americans would want this job. Como un americano gringo. No, claro que no. Tú crees que va a estar agachado ahí, pero no. She's like, come on, you think they'd be crouched over all day? She can actually barely contain herself at the thought. Claro que no lo va a querer hacer.
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--:-- Host (Noelle): Today's show was edited by Marianne McCune and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, who also helped with research. It was produced by Willa Rubin with help from Emma Peasley and engineered by Robert Rodriguez. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer. Also, super, super extra special thanks to Shang Liu, who really helped us understand why the garment industry exists in the U.S. at all and what it looks like. I'm Sarah Gonzalez. This is NPR. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much to Sarah Gonzalez and the team at Planet Money. Today, Explained, we'll be back with you on Tuesday. Explain it to me. Our sister city is also off this week. Explain it to me. We'll be back next weekend.
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