Low-paid Costa Ricans make toll takers' shirts

©Associated Press

© St. Petersburg Times,
published August 2, 2001

The popular tropical-themed shirts worn by the state's toll collectors are made in Costa Rica by workers paid as little as $1.20 an hour, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

The shirts sell for $39.99 at turnpike service plazas. But the people who make the shirts in Costa Rica see far less than that.

The shirts, with their postcard images of sugary beaches, pink flamingos and lush palms, are assembled in Costa Rica, the Orlando Sentinel reported in Wednesday's editions.

Labor activists say that although $1.20 an hour is higher than the wages in some Central American countries, it borders on subsistence pay.

The rate -- about $10 a day -- is about 26 percent lower than the average manufacturing pay in Costa Rica, according to the International Labor Organization.

"It's definitely not a living wage," said Bruce Fieldman, a labor organizer who has lived and worked in Central America for a decade.

The turnpike shirts are made in a factory owned by Angelica Corp., a St. Louis-based uniform manufacturer. The company's clients include the Hard Rock Cafe, Universal Studios and The Walt Disney Co.

Angelica has five factories in the United States, but, like other garment manufacturers, it makes some shirts in developing nations because labor costs are lower there.

A manager at the plant in Costa Rica told the Sentinel that about 15 percent to 20 percent of the workers make the minimum wage allowed by law, about $1.20 an hour. Other workers make more, but he would not say what the average pay is.

Turnpike workers have worn the shirts since 1999. The state has bought more than 17,000 shirts and spent at least $400,000.

Prompted by requests from motorists, the state agreed to sell the shirts beginning last month.

Since then, almost 2,000 shirts have been sold. For each sale, the state gets $1 that goes to a charity fund.

When the state negotiated a deal with Angelica, no one asked whether the company would be shipping the work out of the country, said Deborah Stemle, director of the state Office of Toll Operations.

The state also didn't find out how much it cost Angelica to make and import a shirt, but Florida law, officials said, doesn't require state agencies to consider where products are made or what they cost to produce.

"Our business goes to Angelica," said Stemle. "Who their subcontractors are is their business."

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