Family-owned firms butt heads with factories

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/5563539.html

By TRACY WILKINSON
Los Angeles Times

P RATO, ITALY — The "Made in Italy" label conjures images of little old men and women in aprons and spectacles stooped over wooden tables, cutting leather and sewing by hand in workshops that dot the hills of Tuscany.

It certainly doesn't make you picture Chinese immigrants toiling long hours in ramshackle, poorly illuminated sheds and sleeping in small rooms behind thin plywood in the factories.


Andrea Calistri, whose family business has been making handbags for top designers, is concerned about having to compete with factories employing low-paid Chinese immigrants.
TRACY WILKINSON: LOS ANGELES TIMES


These days, the coveted Made in Italy label on those Prada bags and Gucci shoes, which can quadruple a price, may not mean what it used to.

Thousands of Tuscan factories that produce the region's fabled leather goods are now operated and staffed by Chinese workers.

Though in one of Italy's most picturesque and tourist-frequented regions, many of the factories are nothing more than sweatshops with deplorable conditions and virtually indentured laborers.

Chinese workers have become such an integral cog in the high-fashion wheel that large Chinatowns have sprung up here and in Florence.

FULL story at link.