Life in the Liberty Apparel factory on 103 East Broadway

To make Liberty Apparel clothing, workers toiled for 14 hours a day, while making less than $3 an hour. In Liberty Apparel factories, pregnant women were forced to work up until the day of birth. They had to return to work only 2 weeks after birth or lose their job. Once when a worker tried to leave at 1 am, the foreman stood in front of the exit, blocking the door. He made her work until 2 am even though the next workday started at 9 am.

Liberty Apparel had representatives go to its factories regularly to make sure the clothes were made right. They even gave direct orders to the workers on how the garment must be made. But more importantly, the reps visited the factories to ensure that the clothes were made on time. It was the manufacturer that determined and enforced the brutal deadlines for each batch of clothing. The unreasonable deadlines translated directly into those horrible 14-hour workdays the garment workers are faced with.

Adding to the list of abuses is the fact that the garment workers did not even get paid at all. The subcontractors (the factory owners) payed them for one week of work and withheld the salary from the remaining three weeks. Their excuse: Liberty Apparel had not paid them yet. So workers then asked the Liberty reps about their salary. Their response: If the garment workers meet the deadline, then Liberty Apparel will bring the money and pay them.

The garment workers were faced with two choices. They could quit and look for a better job at another factory, forfeiting all those weeks of salary. Or they could keep working, in hopes of eventually getting the thousands of dollars owed to them by Liberty. Most stayed on, because the thousands of dollars was too much to give up. Besides, the workers already knew that these abuses happen all the time in other factories. Leaving and losing all those owed wages didn't mean that they won't face the same situation in another factory. One day they went to work and found out that the factory boss closed the shop the night before. That's when they decided that they'd had enough.

With the assistance of the Ain't I a Woman?! Campaign, the workers started fighting back. They sued Liberty Apparel and its subcontractor for all those months of withheld wages and the minimum wage and overtime violations. Many of the workers became very active in helping the DKNY workers and others to assert their rights as well. Yet the struggle continues, as Liberty Apparel uses the court proceedings to drag it out and to threaten the rights of all subcontracted workers.