Trying Times for Working Poor
L.A.’s Working Poor Surviving the Recession
With jobs getting scarce, garment district seamstress struggles to provide for her family.
By DAVID GREENBERG
Staff Reporter
Maria Emma Baeza considers herself lucky to have a job these days even if she spends much of the time waiting rather than working.
A single mother sewing at a local garment factory for the $6.75-an-hour minimum wage, Baeza arrives at work these days not knowing whether her 15-minute morning break will stretch into hours of waiting for the next garments to arrive at her workstation time for which she is not paid.
On a recent Monday, she waited her entire shift, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., without sewing a stitch.
Two recent pre-tax weekly paychecks were for $130 and $187, down from the $270 she earns for a full 40-hour week.
“Sometimes when I have very little work, I get depressed,” said Baeza, who speaks only Spanish. “I worry because for the next rent, I say, ‘What am I going to do?’ Another week without work I think I may not have another choice but to go to welfare. For me, it’s shameful because I can work but there isn’t work for me to do in the factory for me to earn that money with my own hands.”
As one of the county’s 1 million-plus working poor, Baeza’s story is a familiar one. Even when she works a 40-hour week, she says she barely has enough money to pay rent, the $300 monthly grocery bill and $75 for a phone and other utilities.
She and her two children all sleep in the same bed, which is wedged into the corner of a back room along with a couple of bureaus and a crib that serves as a makeshift shelf for dolls and bathroom accessories. The lamp on the nightstand shines on framed pictures of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, leaning against the wall.
A large container of spring water sits in the kitchen one of the few “luxuries” she affords her 6-year-old daughter Estrella and 4-year-old son Amour.
“Ever since my daughter was born, I’ve been buying water,” Baeza said. “The tap water smells like chlorine.”
Breadth of despair
The U.S. Department of Labor placed the 2001 poverty line for a family of three at $13,874 per year, just under the $14,040 that Baeza would make if she had 40 hours of work each week.
“The working poor are the hardest hit during a time of recession,” said Madeline Janis-Aparicio, executive director of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, a public policy institute addressing poverty issues. “Many working poor people are working full time, but they are still not making it. Others have had their hours cut since Sept. 11.”
Baeza feels fortunate to still have a job. Before Sept. 11, she was part of a 21-employee crew. Today, there are only eight or nine workers.
It’s reflective of an industry-wide downsizing that resulted in 4,000 L.A.-area apparel and textile jobs being cut last year, reducing the local industry workforce to 136,000, according to the Garment Worker Center, an L.A.-based advocacy group, which referred the Business Journal to Baeza.
Adding insult to injury, it is not unusual for those laid-off workers to end up getting stiffed for hours they had put in before being let go.
Baeza is one of 19 former employees who have a pending wage claim filed with the California Labor Commission against Nov Fashion, an L.A. garment factory that shut its doors last May.
According to documents filed on behalf of the workers by the Garment Worker Center, Baeza is owed $7,773 in regular and overtime pay for work performed Jan. 24, 2000 to May 18, 2001, as well as $2,344 in penalties for non-payment of those wages.
Owner sought
State labor officials are looking for Nov Fashion’s owner, who allegedly failed to show up for an Oct. 17, 2001 informal settlement conference in L.A., according to Joann Lo, an organizer with the Garment Worker Center. The case has yet to be scheduled for a formal hearing. But even if the Labor Commission rules in Baeza’s favor, it will not assist her in collecting the money she is owed.
“It’s a very strong case. But the wage claim process takes a lot of time and after we win the hearing, then we have to collect the money and sometimes that’s the hardest part,” Lo said.
Baeza immigrated to the United States nine years ago from Michoacan, Mexico, where she worked low-skill restaurant jobs. She landed the first of her four garment factory jobs after a sympathetic supervisor showed patience while Baeza learned how to make perfect hemlines with a sewing machine.
“I sat down at the machine and, little by little, I started with eight pants a day from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.,” she said. “In one week, I took home $32. Now I hem 500 to 600 pairs a day, or 500 zippers.”
Baeza has considered looking for another factory that might offer her more hours, but there’s no guarantee that she would be working 40 hours. And she does not want to disrupt her daily schedule that involves dropping her children off at school in the morning, working until 4:30 p.m., picking up Amour at his school and Estrella at a subsidized child care center by 5 p.m.
“Sometimes I’m very tired, but I know I have to make my money,” she said. “I want there to be a lot of work so I won’t have to think about anything else. I want (the children) to know that I earned that money, so that they will dedicate themselves to studying and get a career.”
