SEPTEMBER 1999 · VOLUME 20 · NUMBER 9

At a September press conference on Capitol Hill called by Charles Kernaghan and the National Labor Committee, Kathie Lee's husband, Frank Gifford, took public offense at the accusations launched by Kernaghan against Kathie Lee.

Gifford said that his wife was working hard to improve conditions at the factories, that he was unhappy the group released its findings before discussing them with her, and that his children are sometimes driven to tears by people who criticize their mother for permitting workers to toil in sweatshop conditions.

But Charles Kernaghan, head of the National Labor Committee, says that Gifford and Kathie Lee's discomfort cannot be compared to the plight of the sweatshop workers who earn as little as 50 cents an hour.

"It is nothing in comparison to the lives of the hundreds of thousands of young women locked in factories throughout the world, behind barbed wire and armed guards, who are stripped of their rights and paid starvation wages and who go home to one-room hovels without running water and raise their children on coffee because they can't afford milk," Kernaghan said after the news conference. "That is a real problem."

The two workers who appeared with Kernaghan at the press conference, Loren Del Carmen Hernandez and Blanca Ruth Palacios, were both fired from Kathie Lee's factories after attempting to defend their rights.

Del Carmen Hernandez was fired immediately after a meeting with a National Labor Committee delegation last August. Factory management detained her against her will for two hours, interrogated her about union activities, offered her bribes, questioned her about her children, and forced her to sign a blank piece of paper.

Palacios was illegally fired from her factory job at Caribbean Apparel after being elected general secretary of the union, one week before the delegation arrived in El Salvador.

"I have a signed agreement by Kathie Lee stating that she would never again tolerate sweatshop conditions and that she would open them up for inspection by local religious and human rights leaders," Kernaghan says. "None of these promises have been kept."

Workers at Caribbean Apparel make 60 cents an hour and work six days a week, eleven hours a day.

Production lines in the factory produce 2,000 pieces of Kathie Lee garments every day. Workers get no sick pay and their bathroom visits are restricted and monitored.

Every new employee must pay for a mandatory pregnancy test, and if the results are positive, they are fired immediately, Kernaghan says.

"As a celebrity, Kathie Lee has reaped millions from the sweat and toil of women in Third World countries around the globe," Kernaghan says.

"They can afford these workers the dignity of at least hearing their complaints. We know from past experience that Kathie Lee will do little about abusive factory conditions, but at least hearing these workers out is within her control."

A group of university students also attended the Capitol Hill press conference and predicted that the findings from El Salvador will fuel a new round of activism on campuses around the U.S.

"The question on campuses this fall is whether our universities will really commit to empowering these workers to have a voice and make sustainable changes in the industry, or whether they will run for cover," says Jessica Champagne, a student at Yale University and a member of United Students Against Sweatshops.

"We have listened to these workers and we will take action in line with their interests and the changes they say need to be made."

The day after the press conference, Kathie Lee went on her television show, "Live with Regis and Kathie Lee," to defend herself from the sweatshop allegations.

She said that she has been subject to "vicious personal attacks, which I think don't further the cause a bit - all it does is sell newspapers."

She said it is extremely difficult to monitor all the subcontractors who manufacture her apparel line, which is sold exclusively at Wal-Mart.