It’s Labor Day. What does it mean to you? The last day of summer vacation? A day off from work? A day to take advantage of the big sales? Most Americans don’t generally recognize Labor Day as a day to celebrate the social and economic contributions of the American workers.
When my family lived on the island of Rota in the CNMI we began to observe Labor Day as a day to show appreciation to the foreign contract workers who were the threads that held the island’s economy and social fabric together. We joined Filipino groups to sponsor several Labor Day concerts and celebrations to honor the guest workers.
I’m asking you to please remember the guest workers in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands on this Labor Day. Who are they? Why should you care? Please read on to find out…
I spent several weeks this summer in the CNMI documenting the status of the guest workers. Even though the islands are thousands of miles from the U.S. mainland, you should know what is happening there on U.S. soil. There are tens of thousands of guest workers from the Philippines, China, Bangladesh, Nepal, Vietnam, India, Sri Lanka, Russia, Pakistan, Thailand, and other Asian countries who went to the CNMI thinking it was the USA; looking to fill the American dream. Too many found a nightmare. Workers have fallen victim to labor and human rights abuses including unpaid wages, indentured servitude, housing violations, contract violations, and discrimination. They suffered from criminal acts such as rape, torture, false imprisonment, assault and battery, murder, and non-prosecuted criminal cases. They fell victim to human rights abuses such as forced abortion, human trafficking, and forced prostitution.
The CNMI maintains local control of labor and immigration. The current CNMI government policies make a mockery of democracy where the majority should be represented. In the CNMI the guest workers pay taxes, but they cannot vote. They are victims of crimes and can be arrested, but they cannot serve on juries. They are the voiceless majority of indentured servants on U.S. soil. They have no political rights or voice in the community that they helped to build. The last time guest workers with no voting privileges or political rights outnumbered citizens on U.S. soil it was called slavery.
I want to tell you about some of the guest workers. I have been fighting for them for 18 years, and their faces and stories are burned in my heart. There are hundreds of stories I could tell you. Here are three.
Mang Arthur
One Filipino guest worker, Mang Arthur, came to seek my help at the hotel where I stayed in July. We sat at a small table in the quiet garden. Mang Arthur began his story by presenting me with papers from his employer, and medical records that documented what he would tell me. He calmly told his story with sad eyes and a soft voice like a whisper. He had been employed as a gardener for a golf resort for 20 years. When he became ill his employer sent him to the Commonwealth Heath Center. He was examined by a physician and told that he was fine. In 2006, he received vacation time and went to the Philippines where it was discovered that he had colon cancer. His employer placed him on leave until February 2006 under the Family and Medical Leave Act. He underwent surgery and returned to his employer in the CNMI where he was placed on light duty. In July 2007 he received notification that he was not to be renewed because of “worsening business and economic conditions in the CNMI.” However, his position was filled by a new guest worker. His former employer also hired two others after he was released.
Mang Arthur came to me to ask for help in receiving treatment, and keeping his job. He lifted his shirt to show me his colonoscopy bag that he said needed to be removed. I advised him to file an EEOC complaint and seek the assistance of an attorney. Even as I was saying the words I knew he didn’t have money to pay for an attorney, and there were far too few attorneys on Saipan who could afford to take even one more pro bono case. I received an email last week from a leader of a guest worker group. He said:
" I saw Mang Arthur the old man sick working in Resort you have interviewed, he will be going to Phil, but he filed his case in EEOC THRU the Fed. Ombudsman Office.
Maam please continue helping us we will not
forget you!, PLEASE TAKE CARE AND GODBLESS!
bEST WISHES,
j______ AND CO."
It will take more than my help to get justice for the guest workers in the CNMI. We need your help too. Please read on...
Pabitra Dhimal
This is a photo I took of Pabitra Dhimal, a beautiful, young Nepalese guest worker. I met her on three occasions and interviewed her twice. She spoke of the injustices inflicted upon her father, Buddhi Lal Dhimal.
From the CNMI Status Report I wrote in July 2007:
We saw the tragic consequence of what can happen when a guest worker learns that there will be no back wages paid and deportation has been ordered. In April this year, Buddhi Lal Dhimal was told he must leave the CNMI even though he was owed thousands of dollars from his former employer and an illegal recruiter. An Administrative Order issued by the CNMI Department of Labor ordered Asia Pacific Recruiting Company, J’s Ent. Inc., and John C. DL Guerrero dba J’s Construction Ent. to pay Buddhi L. Dhimal $1,988.00 for work not provided including liquidated damages, and $5,172.00 for fees improperly paid or deducted in the Commonwealth. Like too many of the Administrative Orders, it was a judgment that was merely a paper judgment and would not be enforced.
When Mr. Dhimal was told that he could not remain in the CNMI to continue to try to collect the unpaid award, the desperate Nepalese poured gasoline upon himself and set himself on fire outside the CNMI Department of Labor Office.
He died weeks later at a hospital in Manila, Philippines. When I met with his daughter in July, she told me that their family in Nepal was trying to recover from deep grief, and they are in dire straits without his income. Pabitra would like the employer or bond company to pay the money owed to her father so she can send it to her family in Nepal. Certainly this horrific case illustrates the urgent need for reform.
Please read on...
The Top Fashion garment factory closed down in May 2007 amid a flurry of controversy. The management knew that it would be closing, but still recruited numerous guest workers from China taking their recruitment fees and giving them the false hope of secure jobs. When the factory closed, the workers were upset and held a protest that was reported in the Saipan Tribune:
Scores of Top Fashion garment workers marched yesterday morning from the factory in Tanapag to the Horiguchi Building in Garapan where they held a peaceful protest.
The Chinese workers, mostly women, started the march along Middle Road at 8:45am. At least 10 persons, carrying a big white banner with the message “Do Justice To Me. Compensate For My Reasonable Loss” and another banner with the same message written in Chinese, led the marchers.
While approaching the Shell Gas Station in Puerto Rico, a white car slowed down, then a young male driver and his passenger laughed at the marchers and made rude finger signs at the women.
The guest workers also held a sit-in at the factory to protest. Some of the guest workers blocked the doors so they could prevent the managers from leaving. They wanted answers from them about having their recruitment fees returned; about receiving the pay that was owed to them. According to the Saipan Tribune, the police came and pepper sprayed the emotional women who were shouting in Chinese. A Marianas Variety article detailed the events:
About a hundred Top Fashion Corp. workers demanding reimbursement of the $3,000 to $4,000 in recruitment fees they paid held a sit-in protest on Monday which led to a hostage situation when workers prevented office employees from leaving the premises. Seven workers were arrested and some alleged police brutality as several injured workers were rushed to the hospital. Police officers used pepper spray and electric shock on the workers.
“They pulled us by the hair and threw us against the wall…. We were not fighting them. Our eyes were already hurt so we couldn’t see anymore but they kept on pushing us…One police officer stepped on my shoulder and my lower back. My eyes still hurt,” one of about a hundred workers told Variety in an interview after they walked from their Tanapag barracks to Puerto Rico yesterday afternoon to seek help from Federal Labor Ombudsman Jim Benedetto and his case workers.
Variety took photos of the bruises sustained mostly by female workers in the Monday incident at Top Fashion.
Department of Public Safety public information officer Lei Ogumoro said the case is under investigation, but did not comment on the workers’ allegations that they were victims of police brutality.
Here is the You Tube video link that shows the incident. One attorney on Saipan told me that the Chinese government gets a cut of recruitment fees when workers are sent to the CNMI, and all of the recruitment fees the workers spent would not be repaid. There were complaints filed that claimed police brutality, but in the end no investigation was conducted.
You can read about the plight of the guest workers in the July 2007 report that I wrote. You can hear from some of the guest workers and their U.S. citizen children in the video. Federalization of labor and immigration would help to ensure that the guest workers would receive fair treatment. Legislation has been introduced in the Senate, S.1634 and in the House, H. R. 3079. Both bills would provide improvement to the crisis in the CNMI. Yet some essential elements that effective federal immigration and labor legislation must include are lacking. They are:
• Granting an unobstructed pathway to U.S. citizenship through green cards to guest workers who had been working lawfully in the CNMI for at least five years as of January 1, 2007 and/or have been working lawfully in the CNMI for at least five years as of the date the legislation becomes law;
• Granting a pathway to citizenship for the immediate relatives of the guest workers who acquire U.S citizenship under this legislation;
• Granting immediate U.S. citizenship to parents of the U.S. citizen children in the CNMI on the date the legislation becomes law;
• Federalizing all CNMI labor, asylum, and immigration and visa programs;
• Requiring future foreign guest workers to complete exit interviews to ensure they have no unsettled labor and/or criminal cases; and
• Properly funding and staffing the U.S. Departments of Justice and Labor in the CNMI to ensure the safety and human rights of guest workers and the community.
You can help the guest workers!
Please contact key members of Congress, members of the House Natural Resources Committee, members of the House Subcommittee on Insular Affairs, and members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to ask them to amend the bills to include the essential elements listed above.
You can help the guest workers!
The Dekada Movement, Inc. is a nonprofit organization that was established by guest workers from the Philippines, China, Bangladesh, Nepal, and other Asian counties to support their campaign for improved immigration status for long-term alien residents of the CNMI, and to raise money for needed legal services for foreign contract workers in the CNMI. You can donate to Dekada by sending a check or money order to:
Dekada, Client Trust Account
Attorney Stephen C. Woodruff
P.O. Box 500770
Saipan, MP 96950
On behalf of all of the guest workers who lack resources for attorney’s fees, health care, food, security, and justice, thank you. And to the guest workers maala-ala kita and Happy Labor Day!