With DeLay Gone, Marianas Workers Rights Bill Introduced Without Delay
House Democrats last week introduced legislation to extend U.S. labor and immigration laws to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, renewing an effort that was blocked for years by convicted former lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas)...:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, who led the move to reintroduce the legislation, said DeLay and Abramoff formed a corrupt partnership to protect garment manufacturers in the Northern Marianas, a U.S. territory 3,500 miles off the coast of Hawaii, midway between the Aloha State and the Philippines. The island chain has been under U.S. sovereignty since 1976, but it is exempt from most U.S. immigration and labor laws.
According to The Washington Post, Abramoff enlisted DeLay and other Republican leaders in a battle against the Clinton administration, human rights groups, labor unions and a bipartisan group of lawmakers to preserve local control over immigration and the minimum wage.
In a 2001 letter obtained by The Post, Abramoff boasted to the then-governor of the commonwealth that his lobbying team had worked with DeLay and other congressional leaders to bottle up reform legislation, stymieing the efforts of Republican critics such as former Sen. Frank Murkowski of Alaska.
DeLay, who stepped down as majority leader following an indictment charging he misused campaign funds, resigned from the House June 9. DeLay had close ties to Abramoff, who pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion. Abramoff begins a six-year jail sentence later this year.
Miller who called DeLay and Abramoffs actions a protection racket for the Northern Marianas, told a press conference there finally just might be an opening for Congress to properly consider this issue that has been callously pushed aside for so long.
Millers bill, the U.S.-Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Human Dignity Act, (H.R. 5550), would gradually impose the U.S. minimum wage, apply U.S. immigration law, allow U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents to board ships in the islands and require studies by the Interior and Homeland Security departments on labor and human rights violations and security and immigration vulnerabilities.
It would stipulate that no products could leave the Northern Marianas with a Made in the U.S.A. designation, and no goods could be shipped to the United States free of duties or quotas, unless the minimum wage was paid to the workers, all labor laws were obeyed and no indentured servitude was allowed.
Workers on the Northern Marianas, predominantely women from China, Bangladesh and surrounding islands, sew clothing for top-name American brands, and then label them Made in USA because the commonwealth is a U.S. territory. But workers in these factories are not covered by U.S. minimum-wage and immigration laws.
The Northern Marianas is a hub for garment manufacturers, which can avoid quotas and customs duties when exporting their products into the United States, according to Miller. At its peak, the factories in the Northern Marianas exported garments worth $2 billion retail annually to the United States.
In 1999, the AFL-CIO Convention condemned the scam of producing goods under sweatshop conditions on Saipan, one of the Northern Marianas islands, and labeled them as Made in the U.S.A. The delegates called for passage of legislation to extend U.S. labor laws to Saipans workers. The delegates called for passage of legislation to extend U.S. labor laws to Saipans workers.
The same year, UNITE (which is no longer affiliated with the AFL-CIO), Sweatshop Watch, the Global Exchange and the Asian Law Caucus filed a class-action lawsuit against some of the worlds largest apparel companies to clean up alleged rampant sweatshop abuses in Saipan.
After a four-year legal battle and public campaign, the lawsuit ended in a landmark $20 million settlement, which went toward establishing a workers fund and independent monitoring program. The lawsuit claimed thousands of foreign workers labor in the territorys tourist and garment industries, often as indentured servants, and are abused and forced to work in sweatshop conditions.
Last year, Miller called for an investigation of trips to the territory paid for by Abramoff for DeLay and other lawmakers. Miller also said he believes Abramoff who represented the government of the Northern Marianas and a garment manufacturers association there, may have unlawfully influenced local elections in the territory.
In an article in Ms. magazine this year, Rebecca Clarren says conditions have gotten worse for workers since the lawsuit:
In Saipan, the main island in the Northern Marianas chain, 30,000 guest workers coming from rural villages and the big-city slums of poor Asian countries, arrive in Saipan with a huge financial debt, having borrowed
money (at interest rates as high as 20 percent) to pay recruiters as much as $7,000 for a one-year contract job.
In a situation akin to indentured servitude, workers cannot earn back their recruitment fee and pay for housing and food without working tremendous hours of overtime. Before being able to save her first dollar, a worker who owes, say, $5,000 to her recruiter has to work nearly 2,500 hours at Saipans current minimum wage, which equals six more 40-hour workweeks than exist in a year.
And thats assuming the worker gets paid. Increasingly, workers are filing formal complaints because they have not received their wages. Some women live without paychecks for more than five months. Still, workers at most ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Saipan garment factories labor six days a week, sometimes up to 20 hours a day. If workers complain about conditions, not only can they be terminated at the whim of their employer, they can be summarily deported because theyre exempt from U.S. immigration law.
Clarren also writes that managers and bosses have raped Chinese women workers and forced them to have abortions and/or be deported. Now, she reports, some manufacturers are beginning to leave Saipan, seeking cheaper labor in other countries. Many desperate unemployed garment workers are taking up prostitution to earn a living.
In 1995 and again in 2000, the U.S. Senate voted unanimously for wage and immigration reforms in the Northern Marianas, only to have the bills die in the House Resources Committee, which DeLay controlled, Clarren says.
In a notorious video shown on ABCs 20/20, DeLay lavishly praised the governor of the Northern Marianas at a New Years Eve dinner on Saipan in 1998:
You are a shining light for what is happening in the Republican Party, and you represent everything that is good about what were trying to do in America in leading the world in the free-market system.