The Official Dieworkwear Appreciation Thread

[double00]

I think that the point is that the vast majority of workers in the LA garment industry are Latino immigrants, which is objectively true. This is from 1999, but that's when I was in LA, and working with the fashion industry in LA:

Immigrant incorporation in the garment industry of Los Angeles - PubMed

Immigrant incorporation in the garment industry of Los Angeles

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

90% of workers in the garment industry are Latino. I am not sure if whether the study differentiates between native born and immigrant workers. However, I would expect that a lot of them are immigrants. I l learned Spanish not in small part to be able to communicate better with Latino garment industry workers in LA.

what in the world does an anecdote from los angeles in 1999 have to do with anything being discussed rn

 

[Spaghettimatt]

in the sense that the premise of native born americans refusing to run a sewing machine simply isn't true

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I&#39;m unsure what&#39;s the contestation is here. <br><br>Someone said that we should cut immigration, and I said that these jobs are mostly taken by immigrants who learned how to sew back home and have fewer economic prospects in the US. Thus, they take these jobs. <br><br>Native-born Americans…</p>&mdash; derek guy (@dieworkwear) <a href="">October 28, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

That seems like a pretty reasonable take to me. I think the issue is less that native-born Americans "refuse to run a sewing machine" and more that they generally have better economic opportunities than the immigrant laborers who work in garment factories that pay very poorly.

Edit: I clearly don't know how to embed a tweet, but you get the point.

 

[LA Guy]

what in the world does los angeles in 1999 have to do with anything being discussed rn

Huh? It's an academic article about the garment industry and the demographic breakdown of the workforce in different roles in the garment industry. The ethnic breakdown is similar today, with maybe more women from the poorer parts of Asia. The vast majority of workers in that low paying, grueling occupaton are immigrants. The same can be said about orchard workers, farm laborers, etc...

Derek's point was that immigrants are vital to the certain sectors of the US economy. How is this *not* relevant to the present discussion?

 

[double00]

Huh? It's an academic article about the garment industry and the demographic breakdown of the workforce in different roles in the garment industry. The ethnic breakdown is similar today, with maybe more women from the poorer parts of Asia. The vast majority of workers in that low paying, grueling occupaton are immigrants. The same can be said about orchard workers, farm laborers, etc...

Derek's point was that immigrants are vital to the certain sectors of the US economy. How is this *not* relevant to the present discussion?

ok well los angeles is 50% latino as it is ( we could of course delve into the population of downtown la where the garment district is located but why bother ? ) i'm not sure why representation in the textile trades would be a surprise . but we're not talking about latino identity we're talking about native born / immigration status .

and while we're at it i'll go ahead and say there is quite a lot of agricultural work that is done by native born workers and to ignore that work is frankly wrong

 

[double00]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I&#39;m unsure what&#39;s the contestation is here. <br><br>Someone said that we should cut immigration, and I said that these jobs are mostly taken by immigrants who learned how to sew back home and have fewer economic prospects in the US. Thus, they take these jobs. <br><br>Native-born Americans…</p>&mdash; derek guy (@dieworkwear) <a href="">October 28, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

That seems like a pretty reasonable take to me. I think the issue is less that native-born Americans "refuse to run a sewing machine" and more that they generally have better economic opportunities than the immigrant laborers who work in garment factories that pay very poorly.

Edit: I clearly don't know how to embed a tweet, but you get the point.

ever see a union tag in a garment ? i have . do you remember nafta ? i do . this really doesn't have to be the conversation

 

[Spaghettimatt]

ever see a union tag in a garment ? i have . do you remember nafta ? i do . this really doesn't have to be the conversation

Oh yes. You're speaking my language. I try to buy union-made garments as much as possible, and would love to be able to buy more.

But I took his tweet to be more of an empirical statement of fact about the way things are today and less a normative statement about the way things should be. Like theoretically limiting immigration such that there are fewer individuals willing to take these low-paying jobs might mean that the employers would raise wages to attract folks who have better opportunities ("native-born Americans") but the more likely scenario is that they will offshore that labor to factories overseas.

Re: unionization – yes I'm sure that would raise wages, but consumers have to be willing to pay more for the garment to support those wages. I think part of the point he is making is that consumers are so conditioned to paying very little for garments that they simply won't bear the cost of those higher wages, and will shift to consuming cheaper alternatives produced elsewhere. So then the factory shuts down. I'm not an economist but I assume the only way around that is protectionist tariffs.

 

[LA Guy]

ok well los angeles is 50% latino as it is ( we could of course delve into the population of downtown la where the garment district is located but why bother ? ) i'm not sure why representation in the textile trades would be a surprise . but we're not talking about latino identity we're talking about native born / immigration status .

and while we're at it i'll go ahead and say there is quite a lot of agricultural work that is done by native born workers and to ignore that work is frankly wrong.

omg.

Immigrant incorporation in the garment industry of Los Angeles - PubMed

Immigrant incorporation in the garment industry of Los Angeles

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

"93% of garment workers in 1990 were immigrants"

the fraction is roughly the same today.

 

[double00]

omg.

Immigrant incorporation in the garment industry of Los Angeles - PubMed

Immigrant incorporation in the garment industry of Los Angeles

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

"93% of garment workers in 1990 were immigrants"

the fraction is roughly the same today.

in . los . angeles . what is wrong with you

 

[barutanseijin]

imho an incredibly stupid , bigoted viewpoint from dww

What are your kids going to do now? Go to college and get white collar jobs? The suffering! The insult! The injustice!

 

[double00]

What are your kids going to do now? Go to college and get white collar jobs? The suffering! The insult! The injustice!

my kiddo is 8 and goes to school on a farm , he also speaks 3 languages and just gave a dance recital . he'll do whatever the **** he wants

 

[Spaghettimatt]

in . los . angeles . what is wrong with you

I don't understand what your position is.

As a factual matter, do you actually doubt that the majority of individuals working in garment factories in the United States are immigrants? Do you actually doubt that most of these factories pay very low wages that are unattractive to people with more/better economic opportunities?

As a normative matter, how do you want garment manufacturing in the United States to look? Unionization + higher wages? I would like that too, but if that's the case how do you propose getting the average American consumer to actually pay the higher price of a garment produced with those higher costs?

 

[double00]

Oh yes. You're speaking my language. I try to buy union-made garments as much as possible, and would love to be able to buy more.

But I took his tweet to be more of an empirical statement of fact about the way things are today and less a normative statement about the way things should be. Like theoretically limiting immigration such that there are fewer individuals willing to take these low-paying jobs might mean that the employers would raise wages to attract folks who have better opportunities ("native-born Americans") but the more likely scenario is that they will offshore that labor to factories overseas.

Re: unionization – yes I'm sure that would raise wages, but consumers have to be willing to pay more for the garment to support those wages. I think part of the point he is making is that consumers are so conditioned to paying very little for garments that they simply won't bear the cost of those higher wages, and will shift to consuming cheaper alternatives produced elsewhere. So then the factory shuts down. I'm not an economist but I assume the only way around that is protectionist tariffs.

first i'll say i appreciate you and i will make my case in response to this post and also explain the issue i have with the previous framing

 

[LA Guy]

in . los . angeles . what is wrong with you

"Native-born Americans are not going to sew clothes in these garment factories. When I interviewed an LA-based garment worker yesterday about whether she's ever seen a white native-born American work as a sewer in these factories, she straight up laughed."

Literally about Los Angeles.

 

[double00]

no it's literally about native born americans

 

[LA Guy]

no it's literally about native born americans

The point is that the US needs immigration, especially in certain sectors. The tweet was in reply to a dumb tweet (most of them are, but this was was both succinct and succinctly stupid: "Cut immigration."

In LA, the workforce in the garment industry is overwhelmingly immigrant. Nationwide, the fraction of sewers who are immigrants is about 55%, including both documented and undocumented immigrants. The unemployment rate in the US is under 4%, a number that is a bit of a lowball, since it does not count those who have stopped looking for work. However, I think that you can see that the garment industry would straight up shut down if the labor supply from immigration stopped.

The highest fraction of immigrant workers is in the personal appearance category though, something around 63%. Work in food processing and sorting is next, at around 60%.

This is in stark contrast to the overall fraction of the population that is comprised of immigrants (documented and undocumented, which is estimated at 13.6%).

I mean, not much of a surprising finding, and hardly unique the US. But you go off, king.