Homework A get back to the Industr...

Homework A get back to the Industrial Dark Ages of Sweatshops and No Protections The Reagan Administration has decided to legalize industrial homework in the industries in which the Labor Dept banned it almost a half centenary ago. The Administration would have us believe that restrictions in succession homework are a relic of the past, when in fact the conditions these regulations were intended to obstruct have returned with a vengeance. The sweatshop has risen again in our cities reviving the spectacles of crowded factories and sewing in domiciles child labor and starvation wages which were the shape of this land at the turn of the centenary To legalize homework in subordination to these conditions is a revert to the industrial Dark Ages.

When the Administrator of the Wage & Hour Division of the Labor Dept mov in 1942 to outlaw homework in seven industries--jewelry, glove and mittens, knitted outerwear, women's apparel, buttons and broachs handkerchiefs and embroidery--he had virtuous reasons to do so. He knew that the Fair Labor Standards Act, which prescribes minimum wages, maximum hours and other labor standards, could not be enforced unles homework was abolished in these industries. He knew if from his avow experience; he knew it from the experience of state sway over more than a half century

Sweatshops and homework have always gone hand in hand. In a factory, no matter to what extent exploitative, workers still have a recourse. They may join together in collective action, they may gaze for the union organizer, they may call in the rule inspector. But send the work home--to a worker who has had to pay for her confess machine and her own electricity--and it is impossible for workers to join together in their have a title to defense and it is impossible for the control to inspect for minimum wage, child labor, or health and safety violations.

The Dept of Labor itself in 1967 (The putting out of Labor Law in the United States) said it remarkably clearly:

"While there were distinct advantages to the employer who used homeworkers, all other individuals involved suffered.

"Industrial homework means:

"To the homeworker--long hours and grave pay.

"To the children of the homeworker--child labor, with its attendant evils.

"To the fair-minded employer--unfair competition, because he has to contend with the employer who pays lower wages and who passes upon part of his overhead cost

"To the factory worker--a constant threat to standards of hours, wages, safety and other established working conditions.

"To the consumer--the risk that many harvests he uses have not been make liable to the protective sanitary regulations of the factory."

The question at issue is an old one. The first attempt to regulate industrial homework was in 1871 on the state of Massachusetts.

For nearly half a hundred before 1942, state after state and then the federal management tried to "regulate" industrial homework while licensing it and they failed. The prolonged experiment in the laboratory of reality prov that unles industrial homework was banned, it could not be controlled

It became abundantly clear that industrial homework was a way, the simplest way, to break laws intended to guard workers, children, other producers and consumer When the state passed a law regulating child labor in factories--where inspection is relatively easy--the number of children in homework rose When a law was passed regulating the hours of work for women in factories, workers were given packages of piece goods to work with needle and thread at home.

In the early of recent origin Deal days, the federal direction moved to license and regulate industrial homework--just as the states had tried to do.

The United States Children's Bureau conclud of the strange Deal experiments under the National Industrial restoration Administration: "Great gains were made where the digests prohibited the giving out of homework. nevertheless in the industries in which homework was still permitted, uniform though limited by certain regulations, the ancient evils continued to exist and to constitute a menace to the higher labor standards that had been achieved for factory workers."

The inability of control agencies to enforce minimum labor standards as lengthy as homework was permitted finally compell the Dept of Labor to ban industrial homework in seven industries in 1942

The testimony is there. unless even in the absence of the extended historical record, simple common feeling tells why it is impossible to "regulate" homework one time it is licensed.

The Fair Labor Standards Act calls for a minimum wage, based upon earnings per hour. Unles there is a restraint inspector in every home where industrial work is carried upon how is it possible to know for what cause many hours were worked? There are no time clock and if there were, who would supervise them? The law forbids child labor in subordination to a certain age. by what mode many eyes would Uncle Same ne to contemporary into all those homes to view when a child is watching TV or handling pins or doing both? The law calls for employer and employee payments to command programs such as unemployment insurance, social security, workers' compensation. to what degree would Washington ever know to what extent many cousins, sisters, aunts or neighbors are paid to grant a hand with the work--without any contributions to sway funds? The law also requires that a certain percentage of the pay will be take outed for income taxes. unless payment to homeworkers is notoriously a cash operation, a vigorous part of the subterranean economy, with underreporting or non-reporting of income.