Editorials
Saturday, March 31, 2001Hawaii should HUMAN RIGHTS and labor abuses uncovered on the Northern Marianas island of Saipan three years ago embarrassed U.S. garment manufacturers, resulting in lawsuits and federal legislation targeted for the islands north of Guam. Sweatshop conditions as bad if not worse in American Samoa have prompted criminal charges in federal court.
lead fight to end
abuse of workers
in U.S. territories
The issue: Allegations that Asian workers
were forced to work at an American Samoan
garment sweatshop under inhuman conditions
have resulted in federal charges here.The two cases suggest that U.S. territories in the Pacific have been vulnerable to such abuses far more than had been assumed. Reform legislation that failed in the last Congress should be rejuvenated and broadened to include all U.S. possessions.
About 14,000 workers, mostly young women, from China, the Philippines, Bangladesh and Thailand were lured by promises of good wages to pay fees of up to $10,000 to enter the labor force in the Northern Marianas. In 1998, federal lawsuits accused 32 contractors on Saipan of beatings, forced abortions and rat-infested quarters in essentially a prison environment surrounded by barbed-wire and armed guards.
Major clothing retailers in the United States that had bought garments sewn on Saipan settled lawsuits by agreeing to establish a $1.25 million fund to finance monitoring, compensate workers and create a public education program.
Senator Akaka last year won Senate approval of a bill to extend U.S. immigration and minimum-wage laws to the Marianas and allow "Made in the USA" labels only on garments on which more than half the work had been done by American citizens. The measure died in the House.
More recently, a Labor Department investigation has uncovered similar abuses in American Samoa, with work and living conditions so horrid that some garment workers, mostly women from Vietnam, looked like "walking skeletons."
Similar to the situation on Saipan, up to 250 workers had borrowed $2,000 to $7,000 each to acquire their jobs and fly from Vietnam or China to Saipan. Investigators found frequent violations of the Samoan minimum wage ($2.60 an hour) and numerous abuses, including the beating of workers and withholding of meals as a form of punishment.
Daewoosa, a Korean-owned clothing manufacturer that had made apparel for J.C. Penney Co., closed the plant in January. A judge in Samoa placed Daewoosa under receivership after it failed to pay $600,000 in back wages and fines resulting from the Labor Department investigation.
Penney had canceled contracts with the factory immediately after learning of the abuses. Daewoosa owner Kil Soo Lee now faces charges of involuntary servitude and forced labor in federal court in Honolulu.
While the semiautonomous status of U.S. territories in the Pacific may vary, the conditions that were found on Saipan and Samoa should be condoned on none of them. As leaders of the U.S. community in the Pacific, Hawaii's congressional delegation should promote legislation to end these human-rights abuses.
Published by Oahu Publications Inc., a subsidiary of Black Press.Don Kendall, President
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