HISTORY
Levi Strauss & Co. (LS&CO) is a privately held clothing company known worldwide for its Levi's brand of denim jeans. It was founded in 1853 when Levi Strauss came to San Francisco, California to open a west coast branch of his brothers' New York dry goods business. Although the company began producing denim overalls in the 1870s, modern jeans were not produced until the 1920s. The company briefly experimented (in the 1970s) with employee ownership and a public stock listing, but remains owned and controlled by descendants and relatives of Levi Strauss' four nephewsOne of Levi's customers was Jacob Davis, a tailor who frequently purchased bolts of cloth from Levi Strauss & Co.'s wholesale house. After one of Jacob's costumers kept purchasing cloth to reinforce torn pants, he had an idea to use copper rivets to reinforce the points of strain, such as on the pocket corners and at the base of the button fly. Jacobs did not have the required money to purchase a patent, so he wrote to Levi suggesting that they both go into business together. After Levi accepted Jacobs' offer, on May 20, 1873, the two men received patent #139,121 from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The "patented rivet" would later be incorporated into the company's jean design (and into later advertising lore). Contrary to an advertising campaign suggesting that Levi Strauss sold his first jeans to gold miners during the California Gold Rush (which peaked in 1849), manufacture of denim overall only began in the 1870s. Modern jeans began to appear in the 1920s.
LABOR ISSUES
By the 1990s, the brand was facing competition from other brands and cheaper products from overseas, and began accelerating the pace of its U.S. factory closures and its use of offshore subcontracting agreements. In 1991, Levi Strauss was embarrassed by a scandal involving six subsidiary factories on the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth, where some 3% of Levi's jeans sold annually with the "Made in the U.S.A." label were shown to have been made by imported Chinese laborers under what the U.S. Department of Labor called "slavelike" conditions. Cited for sub-minimal wages, seven-day work week schedules with twelve-hour shifts, poor living conditions and other indignities, the Tan family, Levi Strauss' Marianas subcontractor, would pay what were then the largest fines in U.S. labor history, distributing more than $9 million in restitution to some 1200 employees. (See also Tan Holdings Corporation.) Levi Strauss claimed no knowledge of the offenses, severed ties to the Tan family, and instituted labor reforms and inspection practices in its offshore facilities.
A domestic protest group, Fuerza Unida ("United Force"), was formed following the January 1990 closure of a plant in San Antonio, Texas, in which 1,150 seamstresses (primarily Latina), some of whom had worked for Levi Strauss for decades, saw their jobs exported to Costa Rica. During the mid- and late-1990s, Fuerza Unida picketed Levi Strauss headquarters in San Francisco and staged hunger strikes and sit-ins in protest of the company's labor policies.]
Levi Strauss & Co. (LS&CO) is a privately held clothing company known worldwide for its Levi's brand of denim jeans. It was founded in 1853 when Levi Strauss came to San Francisco, California to open a west coast branch of his brothers' New York dry goods business. Although the company began producing denim overalls in the 1870s, modern jeans were not produced until the 1920s. The company briefly experimented (in the 1970s) with employee ownership and a public stock listing, but remains owned and controlled by descendants and relatives of Levi Strauss' four nephewsOne of Levi's customers was Jacob Davis, a tailor who frequently purchased bolts of cloth from Levi Strauss & Co.'s wholesale house. After one of Jacob's costumers kept purchasing cloth to reinforce torn pants, he had an idea to use copper rivets to reinforce the points of strain, such as on the pocket corners and at the base of the button fly. Jacobs did not have the required money to purchase a patent, so he wrote to Levi suggesting that they both go into business together. After Levi accepted Jacobs' offer, on May 20, 1873, the two men received patent #139,121 from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The "patented rivet" would later be incorporated into the company's jean design (and into later advertising lore). Contrary to an advertising campaign suggesting that Levi Strauss sold his first jeans to gold miners during the California Gold Rush (which peaked in 1849), manufacture of denim overall only began in the 1870s. Modern jeans began to appear in the 1920s.
LABOR ISSUES
By the 1990s, the brand was facing competition from other brands and cheaper products from overseas, and began accelerating the pace of its U.S. factory closures and its use of offshore subcontracting agreements. In 1991, Levi Strauss was embarrassed by a scandal involving six subsidiary factories on the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth, where some 3% of Levi's jeans sold annually with the "Made in the U.S.A." label were shown to have been made by imported Chinese laborers under what the U.S. Department of Labor called "slavelike" conditions. Cited for sub-minimal wages, seven-day work week schedules with twelve-hour shifts, poor living conditions and other indignities, the Tan family, Levi Strauss' Marianas subcontractor, would pay what were then the largest fines in U.S. labor history, distributing more than $9 million in restitution to some 1200 employees. (See also Tan Holdings Corporation.) Levi Strauss claimed no knowledge of the offenses, severed ties to the Tan family, and instituted labor reforms and inspection practices in its offshore facilities.
A domestic protest group, Fuerza Unida ("United Force"), was formed following the January 1990 closure of a plant in San Antonio, Texas, in which 1,150 seamstresses (primarily Latina), some of whom had worked for Levi Strauss for decades, saw their jobs exported to Costa Rica. During the mid- and late-1990s, Fuerza Unida picketed Levi Strauss headquarters in San Francisco and staged hunger strikes and sit-ins in protest of the company's labor policies.]
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