American Apparel's Healthy Business
Los Angeles–based blank T-shirt maker American Apparel is encouraging its 1,300 employees to be healthier while they work to be wealthier.
American Apparel executives are providing subsidized healthy lunches to the company’s workers, building an onsite health-andwellness facility and extending health benefits to their employees for $32 a month. Therapists visit the factories daily to give massages to the seamstresses and office workers at risk of getting repetitive stress syndrome. During the recent Los Angeles bus strike, American Apparel bought 45 bicycles and loaned them to its employees.
For its efforts, American Apparel was one of two Los Angeles companies that received the first California Fit Business awards on Jan. 21. The California Task Force on Youth and Workplace Wellness, established by the state legislature in 2001, presented the awards.
Dov Charney, co-owner of the $80 million company, accepted the award wearing a suit and red tennis shoes. “We’ve just gotten started,” Charney said, noting he has more healthy ideas to implement in the workplace.
He said he favors President George W. Bush’s plan to help immigrants get temporary work permits, which would help many of his workers take advantage of his company’s health benefits.
“We have health insurance for $8 a week, but one obstacle we’ve had in implementing this program is a lot of workers are falsely documented,” he said to the crowd of state officials and businesspeople gathered at American Apparel for the awards ceremony honoring seven companies. “The effort to bring the workers in and legitimize them is critically important.”
—Deborah Belgum
