TONIGHT ABC's 20/20 will be airing a scathing expose of labor abuses in
Saipan (see today's Washington Post story below for more details of these
abuses) at 8pm on channel 7.
Join us TONIGHT to watch this report in front of Gap Chairman Donald
Fisher's Pacific Heights home, 3456 Washington at Laurel St at 8PM. We
will be leafleting at the Gap store at 7th Ave and Geary from 7-7:30, and
then we will move on to watch the 20/20 investigation in front of Fisher's
house at 7:45. Meet at Global Exchange at 6:45 for a ride. Dress warmly!
Help us tell Donald Fisher to OPEN HIS EYES and STOP ABUSING GARMENT
WORKERS IN SAIPAN!!!
Thanks,
Juliette
Global Exchange
================================
Human Rights Group Urges Action on Saipan
Report Details Abuse of Minimum-Wage Garment
Workers on U.S.-Affiliated
Island
By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 24, 1999; Page A06
Human rights and labor groups are urging the
Justice Department to crack down on the
trafficking and abuse of foreign workers on a U.S.
island in the western Pacific.
The plea, in a letter to Attorney General Janet
Reno, accompanies the release today of a report
on an eight-month undercover investigation by a
Washington-based human rights group,
Global Survival Network, into conditions in the
Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana
Islands. The group found that the U.S.-affiliated
archipelago "has become a center of
international human trafficking operations"
involving Chinese and Japanese organized crime,
debt bondage, sexual slavery and the exploitation
of workers in garment sweatshops.
The letter to Reno, signed by a dozen organizations
including the American Bar Association's
East European Law Initiative, also asked her to
look into whether a leading congressional
friend of the commonwealth's $1 billion-a-year
garment industry, House Majority Whip Tom
DeLay (R-Tex.), "improperly" used his position to
block reform legislation.
,3 A spokesman for DeLay said Delay's actions are
aboveboard and that DeLay believes the
proposed legislation would mean "big government"
and destroy the islands' "free-market
economic growth."
Successive commonwealth governments have charged
that reports of human rights and labor
abuses on the islands are exaggerated and asserted
that local authorities are adequately dealing
with those that occasionally arise.
The Global Survival Network's report and the letter
to Reno represent the latest challenge to the
commonwealth and its garment industry, which have
been fighting greater federal controls,
private lawsuits and charges of health violations.
Class-action suits filed in January on behalf
of 50,000 current and former garment workers seek
to hold 18 major U.S. retailers responsible
for a "racketeering conspiracy" to produce clothing
in sweatshop conditions on the
commonwealth's main island, Saipan.
Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) proposed legislation
in February to impose federal immigration
and minimum wage laws on the commonwealth. Last
month, a bipartisan group including Sen.
Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.) and Rep. Bob Franks
(R-N.J.) introduced a bill to end the ability
of foreign-owned factories, using "ill-treated
indentured labor" and materials from China, to
put "Made in U.S.A." labels on their clothing and
avoid duties and quotas at an annual cost to
the United States of $200 million in revenue and
20,000 jobs.
Under a 1976 "covenant" with the United States, the
commonwealth sets its minimum wage --
now $3.05 an hour -- and is exempt from federal
immigration laws. That has allowed it to
bring in 38,000 foreign guest workers, mostly from
the Philippines and China. They do most
of the work in the private sector and outnumber the
27,000 native islanders and other U.S.
citizens, who have a 16 percent unemployment rate.
In carrying out the Global Survival Network's
investigation, the group's director, Steven R.
Galster, posed as a clothing buyer from New York
and used a hidden camera to videotape
visits to garment factories and meetings with
industry officials on Saipan.
The videotape shows Chinese women toiling at sewing
machines beside huge piles of clothing
on crowded factory floors in what Galster described
as unsafe working conditions. Factory
officials explain that, unlike in their homelands,
the workers cannot easily change jobs,
because that requires approval from the local
government, which usually refuses.
Workers are charged up to $10,000 each by
recruiters to get the jobs, which they are told pay
generous salaries "in the United States," Galster
said. The system has spawned gambling and
loan-sharking by Chinese organized crime on the
islands, and some of the female garment
workers have been diverted to a burgeoning sex
trade on Saipan that caters largely to Japanese
tourists, he said.
Among those interviewed with the hidden camera was
Willie Tan, a powerful Saipan garment
manufacturer who has been fined by the federal
government for labor law violations. He spoke
of his close relationship with DeLay, who he said
had promised to prevent any reform
legislation from advancing in the House.
"You know what Tom told me?" Tan said. "He said,
'Willie . . . I make the schedule of the
Congress. And I'm not going to put it on the
schedule. . . .' So Tom told me, 'Forget it,
Willie. No chance.' "
The letter asked Reno to investigate whether DeLay
"may have improperly promised the use of
his elective office to protect and defend criminal
enterprises on the island of Saipan."
DeLay's deputy chief of staff, Tony Rudy, said
DeLay "has made it publicly clear" he opposes
the bills in question and wants to prevent federal
bureaucrats from imposing "more red tape and
regulations" and "trying to govern the islands from
12,000 miles away." He said DeLay also
opposes the minimum wage in the United States.
"They're trying to kill economic growth on the
islands," Rudy said. "The whole campaign is
driven by labor unions that hope these jobs will
move from Saipan to Philadelphia. In reality,
they're going to move to the Philippines."
© Copyright 1999 The Washington
Post Company
