El Monte Sweatshop Case, The Rosenberg Foundation

A. Strategy

• Litigation

B. Issue

• Immigrant rights

C. Organizational background

Founded in 1935, the Rosenberg Foundation makes grants to private, nonprofit organizations that are committed to promoting the well-being of the people of California, particularly those who are minority, low-income, or immigrant. The Rosenberg Foundation provides grants to support public policy change in two program areas:

1. Economic Security of Working Families - to strengthen the economic well-being of working families. The foundation supports projects that advance public policies to promote good jobs and wages.

2. Changing Population of California - to promote the full social, economic, and civic integration of immigrants and minorities into a pluralistic society. The foundation supports projects designed to achieve change in public social policy regarding immigrant integration through employment, language access, and immigration policy reform.

With a staff of four and an active board of directors of 11, the foundation has assets that total just under $60 million. In 2004, the Rosenberg Foundation made $2.7 million in grants. The foundation awards slightly more than the required five percent payout; from 1998 to 2002, the foundation's average annual payout was 5.6% of assets.

The foundation reviews the issues and strategies under each of its funding programs periodically, making adjustments as needed to accommodate changes in the public policy environment, community needs, and emerging opportunities for significant and lasting social improvement.

Throughout its history, the Rosenberg Foundation has supported public policy efforts in order to have a higher impact on its program areas. The foundation has supported major California policy reform through funding litigation, legislative and regulatory change, and community organizing. The foundation supported advocates' successful effort to undo California's Proposition 187, which denied public benefits to immigrants. The foundation also supported the overhaul of California's child support system that failed to provide adequate support payments to children and their parents. Rosenberg has also supported litigation to ensure language rights and access for California's many limited and non-English speaking residents. In 2003, Rosenberg Foundation was one of three foundations to receive the Paul Ylvisaker Award for Public Policy Engagement by the Council on Foundations for its long-term and sustained policy work on immigrant rights.

D. Project background

Since 1992, the Rosenberg Foundation has invested over $2 million in advocacy efforts aimed at eliminating the exploitation in California's garment industry. Litigation has been a critical tool among the foundation's strategies to protect low-wage, immigrant workers' rights to fair wages and decent working conditions. The foundation's support has enabled legal advocates to enforce labor laws in a climate of weak government enforcement and decreased unionization in California.

The Rosenberg Foundation's work in this area began in earnest with the El Monte case in 1995. That year, a sweatshop in El Monte, a small town outside Los Angeles, was raided by the Immigration and Naturalization Service and labor officials after workers escaped to report egregious conditions. The sweatshop was housed in a seven-unit apartment complex surrounded by razor-wire fences. Investigators found 72 illegal immigrants, mostly women, who had been kidnapped from Thailand to work under conditions of slavery. The workers were forced to work from 18 to 20 hours a day, seven days a week, for only 68 cents an hour. Workers lived in the complex, sleeping in cramped and filthy rooms. They were forbidden to leave and threatened with violence against their families if anyone alerted authorities. Workers' phone calls were supervised and their letters censored.

With support from Rosenberg, the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California (APALC), a legal and civil rights organization in Los Angeles, quickly got involved in the case to protect the rights of these workers. The Rosenberg Foundation quickly observed that this case as a strategic opportunity to win ground in the fight for sweatshop workers' rights. The case received wide coverage in the local and national media, in part because the labels produced there were sold or owned by large retailers such as Nordstrom, Sears, and Target. The El Monte case also provided an opportunity to set a legal precedent for joint liability to hold both the garment contractors and major retailers and manufacturers liable for labor law violations. This strategy is especially important in the garment industry, which heavily relies on subcontracting production.

The Rosenberg Foundation also supported litigation in response to advocates' observations about how the garment industry is organized. The practice of subcontracting had historically shielded many major well-known manufacturers and retailers from being held liable for their subcontractors' illegal and oppressive working conditions. Sweatshop owners are often the last link in a coordinated effort to produce cheap clothing at the expense of workers' rights. Although garment factory owners are the most visible participants in this process, often the manufacturers call the shots.

The Rosenberg Foundation supported a range of APALC's activities throughout the lengthy and ultimately successful litigation process. The foundation also supported other efforts to protect garment workers' rights, including class action lawsuits against sweatshops, and the creation of the Garment Workers Center in Los Angeles.

E. Theory of change

The Rosenberg Foundation viewed the El Monte litigation as an opportunity to set a legal precedent that could benefit nearly 200,000 garment workers in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area (the workforce has since shrunk to approximately 80,000 workers due to outsourcing). The joint liability theory has been an invaluable tool in holding both factory owners and major retailers accountable for working conditions in garment factories.

After the El Monte case, the Rosenberg Foundation continued to support additional litigation led by APALC and the Asian Law Caucus to produce a critical mass of decisions that have changed the industry's practices. The goal of these cases has been both to secure workers' full page and rights and to deter future exploitation by other garment companies.

F. Outcomes (impacts)

The El Monte case resulted in the award of $4 million in back wages and punitive damages to the 72 workers. Several worker leaders from the El Monte case invested part of their settlements to create a garment cooperative that provided decent wages and working conditions in Los Angeles. The wide publicity of the El Monte case and subsequent successful litigation contributed to the enactment of California's landmark legislation in 1999, creating joint liability for garment contractors, retailers, and manufacturers. The Rosenberg Foundation supported several years of continued advocacy by the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, the Asian Law Caucus, Sweatshop Watch, and the Garment Workers Center, to ensure successful implementation of the new law.

Building on the success of the El Monte case, the Rosenberg Foundation has supported other advocates' use of the joint liability theory in other low-wage industries such as agricultural and janitorial work.

The Rosenberg Foundation evaluated its support of the El Monte case and subsequent cases in the larger context of its other garment-related grantmaking. The foundation assesses the level of collaboration among its sweatshop grantees working on a breadth of issues, including litigation, advocacy, public education, and worker organizing. The foundation also assesses grantees' strategic thinking and development. In particular, it pays attention to whether strategies have shifted in response to changes in the economic and political climate. For more information on the foundation's evaluation philosophy, please read the Rosenberg Foundation evaluation case study in the Assessing Public Policy Grantmaking section of the Toolkit.

G. Lessons learned

The El Monte case confirmed to the foundation the importance of strategic litigation that involves the injured parties in the strategy development. Litigation is not a cure-all. Rather, to address complex issues such as sweatshop abuses, it should be coupled with complementary advocacy efforts such as public education, regulatory and legislative change, and community organizing. Legal cases help advance advocacy efforts and vice versa. In addition, these types of legal battles can take years to win, and a committed foundation must stick with the effort for the long-term.

The practice of community, social justice lawyering was also an important complementary strategy in this case. Many El Monte workers received training about their legal rights from APALC, and, in turn, have trained other sweatshop workers to win back wages and fight for fair wages and decent working conditions. One of the unexpected results of this strategy was the development of a strong sense of community and solidarity among garment workers that crossed racial and ethnic lines and language barriers.

Often, winning one legal case is not enough to change public policy or industry behavior. Although the El Monte case was a landmark decision, the Rosenberg Foundation and its grantees felt that they needed to develop a critical mass of similar decisions to have a substantial impact on the garment industry. To leverage their success, in addition to monetary compensation for unpaid wages, these cases often request changes in corporate practices to improve worker conditions and commitments to retain local garment production in California.

Since the El Monte case, the Rosenberg Foundation has continued to support both class actions suits and individual cases against garment sweatshops brought by the Asian Pacific American Legal Center and the Asian Law Caucus. These cases complement other advocacy strategies such as public education, worker organizing, and increasing government enforcement of labor laws in the garment industry. Two workers centers, the Garment Worker Center, in Los Angeles, and the Chinese Progressive Association, in San Francisco, have been strong allies of the legal advocates. The foundation's strategy continues to evolve in response to increasing globalization and the loss of the U.S. garment industry.

From http://www.ncg.org/toolkit/html/diggingdeeper/casestudies/rosenberg/print_rosenberg.html