In the late 1980s Levi Strauss and company was involved in a scandal concerning Tan Holdings Corporation, a subcontractor in the Marianas, an American protectorate. Even though the company claimed no knowledge of the conditions under which the employees labored which involved seven day work weeks, twelve hour shifts, merger wages and poor living conditions, they were fined $9 million – the largest fine ever in the US labor history to that point. The company instituted fair labor practices policies and has been a model citizen ever since. It now has inspection practices for all offshore facilities.
The company has been embroiled in protests and hunger strikes when it closed plants in San Antonio in January 1990 and an activist group called Fuerza Unida formed to fight the policies.
The company took on multi-billion dollar debt in February 1996 to help finance a series of leveraged stock buyouts among family members. Shares in Levi Strauss stock are not publicly traded; the firm is today owned almost entirely by indirect descendants and relatives of Levi Strauss, whose four nephews inherited the San Francisco dry goods firm after their uncle's death in 1902. The corporation's bonds are traded publicly, as are shares of the company's Japanese affiliate, Levi Strauss Japan K.K. In June 1996, the company offered to pay its workers an unusual dividend of up to $750 million in six years' time, having halted an employee stock plan at the time of the internal family buyout. However, the company failed to make cash flow targets, and no worker dividends were paid.
According to the New York Times Levi Strauss leads the apparel industry in trademark infringement cases, filing nearly 100 lawsuits against competitors since 2001. Most cases center on the alleged imitation of Levi's back pocket double arc stitching pattern (U.S. trademark #1,139,254). Levi's has sued Guess?, Esprit Holdings, Zegma Zumiez and Lucky Brand Jeans among other companies.
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