They powered Montreal's garment industry. One woman is trying to honour them

4 immigrant women share their stories of stitching a foundation for their families

Sandra Lorusso found work at the Underwear Millsfactory within a couple months of moving to Montreal from Italy in May 1967 after being referred by her sister-in-law. She's friends with Mosesso — though that happened later in life playing bocce — and also participated in the Women of Steel project. 

Lorusso talks about her work at the factory with pride. She retired four years ago at age 69, saying that was mainly to keep her retired husband company at home. 

"I liked what I did for work. I was good there. I can't say I was unhappy," she said. 

Sandra Lorusso sewing away

Before her retirement, she was still able to add a top stitch up to 1,000 pairs of men's underwear a day. 

"When you're there [in the factory] you don't think about it. But slowly when it comes into your mind you think, 'My God 42 years of my life — I spent almost all of it there than with my family,'" she said. 

"We're immigrants but we did a lot for Canada. And in the end we weren't really appreciated for what we gave."

Morsella saw that first-hand working as a cutter's assistant when she was 16. The experience was cut short when she was mistakenly handed her male colleague's pay stub and found out he was getting paid more than her for the same job.

"It kind of like, you know, awoke me," said Morsella, who quit and later went on to form the CFSE's first committee along with six others to help Italian immigrants navigate living and working in Quebec. 

Now a practising lawyer, she credits her mother's 30 years in the garment industry for the opportunity to do something else with her life. 

"Their work is taken for granted," she said. "It's so symbolic of how women are always taken for granted."

Decline of the industry

When Josefina Hernandez started working at Montreal's Peerless Clothingfactory in 1984, the garment industry was already sharply declining. She had just moved to Montreal from the Dominican Republic and was soon joined by her four children.

"You could see people's desperation because it wasn't easy having an income for who knows how many years and all of a sudden the company leaves to Mexico, China and who knows where else," said Hernandez. "It was sad."

With the globalization of trade, hundreds of companies were struggling to stay afloat competing with cheaper imports while mitigating the recession of the early '80s, explained Leavitt.

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Like Mosesso, Hernandez's body bears scars from her time at the factory — in the shape of a "little worm" along her wrist just under her thumb.

It's the aftermath of surgery to treat calcific tendinitis from sewing buttons on hundreds of suit sleeve pairs per day, five days a week. That's what Quebec's Commission des lésions professionnelles found after Hernandez filed a workplace injury complaint in 1998.

"The more production you did, the better your cheque," she said. 

As a single mother of four, Hernandez often ate lunch at her desk to maximize her pay, since she was paid around $3.50 to $4 hourly. 

Hernandez changed jobs from sewing buttons to steam pressing shoulder pads when her wrist became too uncomfortable, but then developed asthma.