Sewing for US sailors a booming business in East Boston
East Boston is known for Suffolk Downs, Logan Airport, and Italian restaurants.
Apparel manufacturing? Not so much.
Most folks have no clue that Eastie is home to one of the nation's biggest makers of authentic Navy peacoats, Sterlingwear of Boston Inc. The family-owned company has been in business since the 1960s, producing coats, dress jackets, and uniforms for the US military, as well as a fashion line of peacoats for civilian customers. Every article of Sterlingwear clothing is assembled in East Boston and bears the label "Made in the USA."
The walls in the main lobby of Sterlingwear's corporate offices and factory on Route 1A, less than a half-mile away from Logan Airport, are decorated with framed photographs of people wearing peacoats of various styles and colors. "All of the models are friends and relatives of our employees," said Jack Foster, director of marketing and sales for the company.
Inside Sterlingwear's 60,000-square-foot factory, the hum of machinery fills the air. It's warm, but fans provide a breeze. Huge bins are filled with bundles of fabric and zippers, and unfinished coats dangle from hangers attached to an overhead conveyor system, which moves them from one work station to another.
Sterlingwear's production system is computerized, but it still relies on human hands to craft each garment. Women sit at sewing machines, carefully stitching fabric together. Nearby, a young man dressed in an Adidas cap, T-shirt, and jogging pants listens to music on his headphones as he lays out patterns on a table.
Many of Sterlingwear's 250 employees are immigrants, hailing from places such as Morocco, Italy, and Southeast Asia. Some have worked at the company for more than 35 years.
Sterlingwear's employees belong to UNITE HERE, a union of textile, hotel, and restaurant workers. They get paid by the piece, and their benefits include health insurance and pension plans, according to Warren Pepicelli, the union's international vice president and coordinator of the New England Joint Board.
"Sewing is a lost art," said Foster. "Nowadays people don't come out of high school and say, I want to be a sewer and work in a factory."
Were that the case, they might have a hard time finding work, as many manufacturers have moved operations overseas.
According to data from the Massachusetts Division of Employment and Training, the number of jobs in the state's apparel industry declined from 39,957 in 1980 to 14,205 in 1997. State officials expect that apparel and textile manufacturing jobs will continue to disappear. According to their statistics, there were 5,610 sewing machine operators in Massachusetts in 2000, and they project that 21 percent of those positions - which equals 1,160 jobs - will be gone by 2010. The number of hand-sewing jobs is also expected to decline by 13 percent.
"There are no advantages in staying here," said Sterlingwear's CEO and president, Frank G. Fredella. "But for me, it seemed to be the right thing to do."
