And in another part of town, two women from China sew tickets and bar codes on the suits Pincus makes for Brooks Brothers, Bill Blass and other well-known labels. The women are among the fewer than 4,000 unionized garment industry workers left in Philadelphia, down from 26,000 during the heyday of the 1950s. But come May 4, they too will lose their jobs. That's when second-generation owner David Pincus starts contracting out the work, most of it overseas. You just can't manufacture in the United States.
Nobody cares anymore where it's made.
The long-shrinking garment industry in the United States now has 763,000 workers, a number that is expected to drop to under 600,000 over the next seven years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In Canada, the clothing and textiles industry employed 160,000 people on average in 2000, with roughly half of them working in Quebec. That figured declined from 187,000 in 1990, Statistics Canada said. Meanwhile, in the United States, the garment unions are seeing the impact of the change in the industry. She's 53 years old.