Time to revisit Saipan

[Skeptic Ginger]

Saipan, Marianas Islands, USA Territory

If you recall, this is where Chinese and other poor women are being lured with the promise of a job in the US. Instead the women end up in sweat shops under the worst of conditions. All the while the sweatshop owners rake in the millions using the slave labor to produce clothing with the label, "Made in America".

Legislation to end this horrendous treatment of young women was thwarted by Tom Delay in 2000 and continued to be stopped by a few corrupt Republicans (compassionate conservatism my a$$) who raked in personal bribes from tens of thousands to a few million along the way.

Well here's an update. Your help writing your representatives and perhaps also bringing it to the attention of the local and national news media is needed.

Young aide's link to Abramoff sheds new light on Marianas bill

By RICHARD MAUER
Anchorage Daily News

Published: April 29, 2007

The guilty plea last week by a former senior committee aide to Rep. Don Young sheds new light on the circumstances surrounding Young’s success seven years ago in blocking reforms of the sweatshop industry on the Mariana Islands.


REFORM ON AGENDA

Now, with Abramoff in prison on fraud and bribery charges and Democrats in control of Congress, reform in the Northern Marianas has once again returned to the political agenda.

Last year, a new governor in Saipan demanded that Abramoff’s firms return all the money the government paid him over the years now that the commonwealth was getting nothing but bad publicity for having hired him. Abramoff lost his contract there in 2001.

And this year, Young’s longtime nemesis in House Resources, Democrat Rep. George Miller of California, inserted a provision in the Iraq spending bill that would extend the U.S. minimum wage to the commonwealth. The measure passed the House and Senate, but is expected to be vetoed by President Bush because of its deadline to withdraw troops from Iraq.

Miller, the new chairman of the ouse Labor & Education Committee, has been saying for years that failure to reform immigration and labor policy in the Marianas has not only enriched Abramoff and his clients, it’s caused real human suffering and threatened national security.

“The core corruption in the CNMI is the failure to apply our federal immigration laws to this part of the United States,” Miller said in a 1999 oversight hearing chaired by Young. “As a result, organized crime, communicable disease and human exploitation, directly attributable to the CNMI’s lax immigration laws, not only thrive in Saipan, but threaten every American. The time has long since passed to slam the door shut on these abuses and to restore federal law to the Marianas.”

With the Iraq War appropriations bill, there was a clause....

Saipan’s Chamber of Commerce says U.S. Congress ignores requests on feasibility study

Posted at 23:02 on 22 May, 2007 UTC

Saipan’s Chamber of Commerce says the U.S. Congress has ignored repeated requests to conduct a feasibility study on the impact of minimum wage rises in the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas.

Its President Juan Guerro says it feels like Congress is wanting to make changes to the minimum wage, without researching the impact of that on the economy.

He says the economy is already in crisis, and if passed the minimum wage bill would see the minimum wage in the Commonwealth rise from $3.05 to $7.25 over time, which would be detrimental to any economic recovery.

He says currently it feels like the bill is being pushed onto them, whether they like it or not.

“The right approach which is y’know sit down, talk about it, have all the different organisations sit down with the government legilstature, members of U.S Congress, members of the U.S. administration, to proceed with dialogue that’s more conclusive to achieve some sort of solution.”

Saipan’s Chamber of Commerce president, Juan Guerro.

Of course the first bill was vetoed but the min. wage clause was in the second one as well. Time will tell but with the new sheriffs in town there is hope at least.

The women need more than wages though. They need worker safety laws, the right to organize and so on. They are currently nothing more than slaves. So write a few emails please - to anyone and everyone. These women deserve the help of the people buying the clothes the women are making.



In looking for the current situation in Saipan, I also found this little jewel: prosecutors, who have already notched 11 convictions in the Abramoff scandal. Did I miss the news coverage of these 11 convictions?