11,000 Employees Uninsured by S. California Garment Factories
Check the tags on your clothes. Depending on where they were made, you might very well be wearing the bitter fruit of a law-breaking business, one which was investigated by both federal and state labor offices for, among other sins, failing to obtain a workers’ compensation policy for its employees.
10 garment factories in Southern California have been investigated, revealing some 11,000 workers pulling 10-12 hour shifts making garments without workers’ compensation coverage. Can you imagine the cumulative trauma, psyche injury, and laundry-list of claims that could be generated by 11,000 workers spending exactly half of each day hunched over a table working?
There are many employers that do not get workers’ compensation insurance for their employees. Sometimes, these are small operations or family businesses that don’t know about the law, or are under the mistaken impression that their employee is actually a contractor.
Although you have cases such as this one where the employer knowingly doesn’t get insurance. This provides an unfair competitive advantage when it comes to lower prices, and drives the law-abiding businesses into the red.