Garment Industry

DHAKA, Bangladesh -- Three years ago, when Salma was 11, she worked in a Dhaka factory from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., six days a week. She was a runner, trimming thread and shuttling bundles of sewn cloth. She made $9 a month. Today, the soft-spoken teenager is learning to read and write. Her parents are unhappy that she isn't bringing home wages, but they let her attend school because her teacher promised to help her find work soon that pays more than she earned at the factory.

For the longest time, John Gregory had a denim dilemma. Gregory favors ultra-low-slung, dangerously tight, rock-glam jeans, but most men's brands are just too baggy or look too blah for the self-described "skinny dude." So at the suggestion of his wife, Brandie, the 32-year-old musician tried on a pair of women's jeans. He now regularly dons women's size-12 denims because, he says, such brands as Seven and Lucky work wonders on his lanky 6-foot physique.

As boys growing up in the '50s, the Marciano brothers shared a cot in the kitchen of the Marseille synagogue where their father was the rabbi. Like stock characters in the movies of their youth, they were street urchins with hearts of gold--savvy, intensely close, in a rush to succeed, but always home Friday nights for Sabbath dinner.

While we worry about the Asians having their children toil in the garment industry, ours are building bombs and toting guns--go figure! RUTH FRY Camarillo

Joel Kotkin's "Beyond Unions and Slave Labor" (Opinion, Sept. 3) ignores the root issue of equity and whether a vast number of garment industry workers should receive the mutual benefits attributed to manufacturers, designers and retailers. Workers are industry stake-holders disenfranchised by manipulative, exploitative and immoral labor practices that are prevalent in the industry. More than being effectively marketed, the garment industry in Los Angeles needs to be transformed.

I was dismayed to read in "Sweatshop Exhibit Has Nowhere to Go" [July 15] that the Smithsonian sweatshop exhibit will not be coming to Los Angeles because of garment industry pressure. It was an exhibit I was looking forward to since I can't afford to go to Washington, D.C., to see it. For Isle Metchek, executive director of the Los Angeles-based California Fashion Assn., to say that she feels vindicated is ridiculous. This is not the first time that atrocities have happened in the garment industry.

About 4,700 homes and businesses southeast of downtown Los Angeles were left without telephone service Tuesday after a Metro Rail construction crew severed two underground telephone cables at 6th and Hill streets late Monday, according to Pacific Bell officials. Hardest hit were small businesses in the garment industry and private homes. Service was not expected to be restored to all customers until tonight.

It's interesting how the animal activists are claiming responsibility for the slowdown of fur sales. Are they responsible for the overall slowdown of our economy? For the very visible slowdown in the whole garment industry? For the very publicized slowdown in car sales? For the standstill in real estate sales? For the layoffs in the aerospace industry? WANDA PRESS Beverly Hills