Next week the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources will hold a hearing on the current state of affairs on the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) a US territory roughly 40 miles north of Guam (I recently wrote about it).
This is a big deal for folks living on the CNMI and anyone who cares about extending justice and order to this run amok Territory.
By the time of the Hearing, the Senate will have voted on increasing the minimum wage. There are some tax breaks to work out in Committee with the House, but the CNMI will be included. Over the next four years, their minimum wage will go from $3.05 an hour to $7.25. It will be the first increases to the CNMI minimum wage since 1995. This is a good thing, but more on that later.
The Senate Hearing will focus on the current state of affairs on the CNMI. It will examine questions of immigration, international crime, labor violations and more.
I often hear defenders of the status quo admit there were problems in the past and then claim that everything is A-OK today. Not true.
Let’s take a look on the jump...
Now over the years, I have written a lot about the CNMI, the abuse and the connections between the Republican Party, Jack Abramoff and their patrons—the Hong Kong based Tan Family.
Twenty years of exploitation, corruption, and abuse have placed the CNMI on the verge of collapse and they need a need beginning. That is where we should focus our energy.
When the Northern Mariana Islands joined the US as a Commonwealth the rules of the road were established by a Covenant, a legal agreement between the Federal Government and the indigenous people living on this small chain of land masses in the vast Western Pacific.
At the time the Covenant included exemptions to US labor, immigration and custom laws. This was done to protect the Chamorros and Carolinians who made up the indigenous peoples of the CNMI. The hope was that local control would help these folks protect, maintain and preserve their cultures.
This has failed BIG TIME and in fact it has led to an influx of guest worker/immigrants who now outnumber the Chamorro/Carolinian populations.
The current population is officially pegged at 84,500, but may be well over 92,000 when illegal immigrants are factored in. Less than 25% are indigenous to the islands. Back in 1980 roughly 70% of the population was made up Chamorros and Carolinians (a minority population that descended from travelers who came to the CNMI in the 1800s from the Carolinian islands).
There are plenty of problems for both the guest workers and the indigenous population. Clinging to the status quo is not viable. The solution is a clean sweep of the failed past and new thinking about the future.
The labor, immigration and custom laws need to be federalized—they must be under control of US laws and US justice. That should not be open to negotiation.
What should be open to discuss is how to build the local economy without exploitation and how to help the indigenous people of the CNMI recover from the last twenty years of an economic system that hit their culture almost as hard as it hit the guest workers.
This brings me back to the minimum wage.
One of my pen pals wrote:
I support an increase in the minimum wage. [snip]
But I think raising it to the federal level is just nuts.
The island economy is small and fragile, and per capita income is less than half that of the US mainland. The main industry -- tourism – is labor-intensive. [snip]
You seem opposed to a gradual or partial increase. Why? I mean, other than punishing the "Pirates"?
Now there is a lot of fear on the CNMI that increasing the wage to $7.25 over the next four years will destroy the local economy. These folks are asking for exemptions, delays, more studies and—if all else fails—a wage review board to allow certain industries to pay less.
I am sympathetic to their fear, but not their solution. This is not about punishment. It is about justice and that is long over due. The minimum wage is being phased in over a four year period; if it really is proven that it is hurting the local economy that can be address if and when it happens. More likely is the fact that the harm to the economy is being done by maintaining a system of guest workers, low wages and exploitation that is not sustainable without subsidies from mainland US taxpayers.
Change is needed. And so is an embrace of reality. The cold and harsh truth is that the current system has already destroyed the economy.
Raising the minimum wage will not do anymore damage, but it will get everybody’s attention that the 110th Congress is serious about reform. Caving in to the appeals for a lower wage and/or exemptions will send the signal that nothing has to change. That will allow the Pirates of Saipan yet more years to exploit guest workers and extinguish the cultures of the indigenous people of the CNMI.
Without change the situation on the CNMI will only descend further and further into ruin and collapse.
The effort at local control of immigration, customs and labor laws has completely and absolutely failed.
They did not do it alone. We helped. Without the massive handouts and regulatory relief from US laws, the sweatshop/guest worker economy would have never been viable. The lack of oversight and intentional efforts to protect the system of abuse allowed it to flourish.
And then there were the Chinese entrepreneurs, like Tan Family who arrived on the CNMI as the Covenant ink was still wet and exploited the situation for their profits and the economic expansion of their home country—China.
We have to go back to square one.
Defenders of the abuse, like John Doolittle (CA-4) like to claim that the abuse never happened or that it was way in the past. It is not true. (No surprise to the folks who follow the adventures of Dishonest John and his faithful sidekick Julie).
Why take this Marianas Variety article from January 30, 2007 (emphasis added):
The U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has another question regarding CNMI immigration — it wants information on specific violations of labor and immigration laws in the commonwealth. [snip]
The panel now wants Interior to provide copies of any letters, reports or other communications made since 2000 from the federal labor ombudsman’s office to any federal or CNMI labor, immigration or law enforcement agencies regarding possible labor and immigration violations. [snip]
Federal Labor Ombudsman Jim Benedetto yesterday said his office has been compiling "thousands of pages of letters and communications" regarding specific labor and immigration violations since 2000.
Human trafficking, minors dancing in strip clubs, illegal recruitment, illegal sponsorships, and failure to provide work to recruited alien workers, according to Benedetto, are some of the labor and immigration issues his office has brought to the attention of local agencies in the past years.
This February 8th Hearing could get pretty interesting and through the decades, the Tan Family has been at the forefront of the abuse and a business empire built on exploitation.
For example, take this July 18, 1993 report from the NYTs (emphasis added):
Among the garment industry employers, no one here had been more successful than Mr. Tan, whose family controls clothing factories that employ hundreds of foreign workers and ship millions of dollars worth of clothing each year to the mainland United States.
But Mr. Tan's luck appeared to run out last year, when he agreed to pay $9 million in back wages and damages to more than 1,000 factory workers to settle the Labor Department charges. The department's investigators said that workers in Mr. Tan's factories put in as many as 90 hours a week without overtime and were routinely paid as little as $1.65 an hour.
Separately, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced last year that its investigation had found "appalling living and working conditions" in Saipan garment factories and barracks, including those controlled by Mr. Tan.
Although Federal regulations require that workers receive a minimum of 100 square feet of space per person to cook and sleep, six of Mr. Tan's workers were found living in one room of 190 square feet. Toilet facilities were primitive. [snip]
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration dropped the charges after the Tan companies made $1.3 million in repairs to the factories and barracks and agreed to pay $76,000 in penalties.
His lawyer, Robert J. O'Connor, said that Mr. Tan agreed to pay the back wages only because the Labor Department was harassing some of the factories' clients.
"The Labor Department was putting pressure on our buyers by putting out press releases implying that they were linked to slave labor," he said. ""We were coerced into the settlement."
Mr. O'Connor said that the wages had been withheld not by Mr. Tan's companies, but by Chinese Government supervisors under a longstanding agreement with the workers. [snip]
"When they are here," he said of the Chinese laborers, "they learn about free enterprise, democracy -- they become good-will ambassadors of our precepts of democracy."
That is not borne out by the scores of affidavits gathered by the Labor Department from the Chinese workers. The company "makes use of all kinds of illegal methods to steal our blood money," said Hu Li Yue, a factory mender in one of Mr. Tan's factories.
Now that was the state of abuse that HW Bush took real action to end. It was the abuse that fueled a bi-partisan reform effort in 1994. And it was the abuse the Republican Party chose to embrace and protect when Mr. Abramoff, Mr. Tan, Mr. DeLay and the CNMI government hooked up in 1995.
Since then there have been some cosmetic changes. Some factories got air conditioning, some were inspected and Tan Family corporations, like Luen Thai adopted the rhetoric of social responsibility and an ethical work place. I have no doubts there were improvements. After all, conditions in their factories were so vile and extreme that any effort to green/blue-wash the joint had to improve some conditions.
Still, they found new ways to abuse their workers and extract profits out of their hides. The February 2, 2007 Marianas Variety has some fresh details:
CONCORDE Garment Manufacturing Corp. and L&T Group of Companies fraudulently induced 48 of its 1,406 former employees to sign contracts by hiring them even though the companies knew they were going to close the factory, according to the Department of Labor.
Labor also found other violations of labor laws and rules by Concorde and L&T, including their conditional renewal of contracts upon workers’ payment of recruitment fees of up to 3,800 Chinese RMB or some $489. [snip]
The separate case, filed through attorney Joe Hill, is for Concorde’s failure to pay wages and overtime rates, breach of contract, deductions and kickbacks, recruitment and management fees, and for unlawful termination and retaliation by employer.
The 13-page amended labor complaint dated Jan. 22 also alleges that Concorde’s daily unreasonable and unlawful body searches constituted "a pattern and practice of daily assault and battery, invasion of privacy, and search and seizure upon and to the person of each complainant, that they were coerced and compelled to endure fear of being terminated or not renewed if they complained." [snip]
The Department of Labor, in its amended determination, said prior to the initial Jan. 3 transfer hearing, several former Concorde and L&T employees raised various complaints related to the garment factory closure and terms and conditions of their employment. [snip]
A labor investigation found that as early as Sept. 26, 2006, the respondents’ corporate management in Hong Kong decided to implement a significant reduction in force of its Saipan operations, effective January 2007, and this was conveyed to senior management in Saipan in early Oct. 2006.
The decision to close Concorde garment factory was made on or about Nov. 18, 2006, said Labor. [snip]
The second major finding by Labor is the renewal of contracts upon payment of Concorde and L&T workers’ payment of recruitment fees. [snip]
Labor said insofar as Concorde and L&T took any portion of the fee either directly from the employee or as a kickback from the recruiter, it should be treated as a deduction from the first paycheck of the renewal contract.
"And as such, would likely reduce the employees’ wages to a rate that is less than the minimum wage," Labor said.
The two companies, Concorde and L&T, may sound familiar to those who have followed the Abramoff scandal. In the fall of 2002 they were two of three Tan Family Companies to give $75,000 to the Republican Party:
CONCORDE GARMENT MANUFACTURING 10/3/2002
$25,000 NRCC/Non-Federal
GLOBAL MANUFACTURING 10/4/2002
$25,000 NRSC/Non-Federal
L & T GROUP OF COMPANIES 10/4/2002
$25,000 NRSC/Non-Federal
I’d say any Republican who ran for the Senate or the House in 2002 had a little help from Jack and his sweatshop pals, but that’s a tale for another day.
For the next week, the focus is on reform and the CNMI. The old guard is sending a delegation to DC to plea for more time and exemptions to US labor, immigration and custom laws. I hope the backbone of the Democrats in the 110th Congress remains firm and they pass these long overdue changes.
I also hope they listen to new voices from the CNMI and not just the same old Pirates who created the mess. Once the laws have been Federalized we will need to work together to reform and rebuild the social and economic systems on the CNMI. But changes to these laws must be done. Otherwise reforms will be put off until tomorrow and that means valuing the fear of the temporary costs of moving away from a failed and corrupt economic system more than you value the long-term cost of injustice that is paid for with ruined individual lives and the darkening of our National soul.
As I told David Cohen, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior Department for Insular Affairs, we all want the same thing:
It is my hope that we are ultimately on the same side. It is my hope that we both want justice for the people on the CNMI—both natives and guest workers. I hope we both want a functional sustainable economy that works for the people and the environment. And that we both want the CNMI to be a full part of America living under our laws and with representation in the US Congress.
Embracing a corrupt system out of fear will not get us there. Only dialogue and reform will do it. This will call for new thinking—here in Washington and on the CNMI. It will call for open hearts and open minds. I’m ready to engage, but we all have to demonstrate a real commitment to justice and ending the abuse to begin the rebirth of the CNMI.
And the only way to do that after twenty years of failure and corruption is to clean house. That can only start with the extension of US labor, immigration and custom laws to the CNMI.
And that includes the minimum wage.
In the scheme of things the problems of the CNMI are small. I mean, we can’t seem to do the big things like Iraq, New Orleans, the Climate Crisis, the economy, etc., so my quest to call attention to the troubles of this far away place is quixotic. And yet, I hope that we will pay attention. I hope that we will bring a new dawn to the CNMI and a future built on a just and sustainable economy that works for all. I hope a victory here will inspire new victories on the mainland.
There are massive problems and we have a Country to take back and a planet to save (literally, the Climate Crisis is real).
2007 is now. Let’s get to work.
Cheers.