That for all my deep criticisms of Jon Bowe's ideas about globalisation, the journalism of his book is very interesting, and much worth reading. We shouldn't forget who makes our clothes or grows our food, and how they live, even if that doesn't suggest any immediate solution to their problems.
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I should say
28 Nov 2007 10:25 am
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"Until recently the garment workers were prohibited from leaving their barracks after work hours, essentially held captive on the factory grounds. One young Chinese woman was assaulted and beaten by a factory manager and actually had the temerity to assert her right not to be beaten. Her story was reported in Time Magazine (see February 12, 1998 issue) when the Saipan garment industry abuses first came to light in the late 1990’s. She was granted the right to leave the factory and to apply for work elsewhere. Luckily, she found a good lawyer willing to represent her against the factory and her case was later settled for an undisclosed amount.
The reason the garment industry is allowed to flourish in Saipan is that U.S. minimum wage laws do not apply and there are no U.S. import tariffs for goods manufactured in the American territory. Many high-priced American clothing companies (e.g., the Gap, Polo, Abercrombie & Fitch) have contracts with Saipan garment factories. They charge as much as $100 for a garment purchased from a Saipan factory for eight dollars.
Two champions of the Saipan garment manufacturing industry are U.S. Congressman Tom DeLay (Cockroach, Sugar Land) and his long-time cohort Jack Abramoff (Scumbag, District of Columbia), now under grand jury and U.S. congressional investigation. In exchange for millions of dollars of CNMI money (read, U.S. taxpayer money), Abramoff hooked DeLay up with Willie Tan, the principal Saipan garment manufacturer. A 1999 segment on the TV news magazine 20/20 revealed Tan’s own impression of the importance of his relationship with DeLay when Tan was shown on tape boasting to the undercover investigator posing as a potential investor that there would be “no problem” with Saipan maintaining its favorable relationship with the U.S. because of DeLay’s protection. That protection included preserving the $3.05 minimum wage and local control over immigration, which permit Saipan to import Asian garment workers and pay them what are essentially slave wages. And because the CNMI is an American territory, manufactured goods could be imported to the Mainland with “Made in the United States” tags, thus (mis)leading American consumers to believe they were actually buying items made in the U.S. and, in theory, subject to U.S. wage and labor laws. Notwithstanding the efforts of California Congressman George Miller and others to resolve the abuses blatantly being carried out on U.S. soil, DeLay had assured Tan and Abramoff that any such odious legislation would never see the light of day.
It hasn’t.
For more on DeLay (Cockroach, Sugar Land) and Saipan, take a look at the following web site, published on May 15, 2005 . . http://dailykos.com/story/2005/5/15/11429/0369
http://www.saipansucks.com/about.htm
this abuse of Saipan, replete with their (former) Made in the U.S.A. labels, has been going on for a long time...
Slavery may be the wrong word to describe it, but we should really wonder why this hasn't received more attention that it has..
Yes, we should send thank you cards. ::sigh::
Well Justin, at least it's an acknowledgement that there is a problem. That may be all we're going to get.
Well Justin, at least it's an acknowledgement that there is a problem. That may be all we're going to get.
Her point was that the abuses exist, but the prescriptions in the book are almost entirely wrong and would make the lives of the worst off worse, not better.
Her way is certainly better than the perhaps well-meaning suggestions of you and the other commenters here who recommend policies that would make them even poorer. The abuses in Saipan are horrific. However, they're also horrific abuses that the workers, according to your own reports, are paying $2000 to $7000 to get into, not least because it's difficult to get a visa. That at the least should tell you that their other alternatives are worse, and that cutting off these jobs will hardly make them better. Stop trying to make their already hard lives harder. Wishing the situation away by passing laws that will only make the lives of the poor worse is no substitute for actual meaningful reforms.
I especially hardly see how the proper response to immigrants being fleeced because of how difficult it is to get a visa in order to better themselves is to make it even more difficult for them to get a visa, but that appears to be the suggestion of some.
this: "Many high-priced American clothing companies (e.g., the Gap, Polo, Abercrombie & Fitch) have contracts with Saipan garment factories.."
To John Thacker's post, my Q is: Why are we, as consumers of these products, and others, so incurious as to their means/methods of production?
Are we really at the stage that allows us, upon seeing GPS, ANF, and RL in our 401(k)s, to believe that ths kind of Financial maximizing makes for good Economics( as long as we can delude ourselves that we can outrun the effects of our actions/ remain willfully ignorant thereof)?
Mark E Hoffer,
"Why are we, as consumers of these products, and others, so incurious as to their means/methods of production?"
We are incurious because we are busy; and, because there is no possible way that we could spend the time to do such research on every product we buy. The companies we buy from are aware of the conditions under which these goods are manufactured. Presumably their contracts with the foreign manufacturers are legal.
If you believe the contracts should not be legal, based on the working conditions in the foreign manufacturers' facilities, the appropriate response is to lobby for a change in the law.
One reform I rarely or never see suggested is to try to eliminate or prosecute the brokers who take that $2000 to $7000 advance. This is an extremely common phenomenon that goes way beyond Saipan. In the industrial zones outside Hanoi where Canon, Panasonic and Yamaha have their factories, there are two tiers of employment: permanent and temporary. Permanent workers have higher minimum wages, social insurance, and various legal protections, so the company tries to keep as many "temporary" workers as it can. Recruitment companies have sprung up to help them meet this goal by recruiting workers in poor villages, whom the companies charge about $250 up front in exchange for help finding jobs that pay about $50 a month. (This was as of late 2005.) The companies then arrange for the workers to be laid off every 11 months for 1 month, ensuring that they remain "temporary".
The recruitment companies use personal connections, knowledge of the system, and threats to ensure that it's difficult to bypass them and apply directly to the companies.
I cannot see what social utility is provided by these recruitment companies. They are basically running a protection racket based on the margin between the legal minimum wage and the lowest amount a worker would be willing to accept. Minimum wages do create a gap between the lowest legal wage and the lowest amount which someone would be willing to work for, but without getting into the argument over whether minimum wages are a good idea (they are, but let's not get into that), there is certainly no social or economic utility to a system where the companies still have to pay the legal minimum wage, the workers get significantly less than the minimum wage, and a bunch of well-connected thugs take the difference. It sounds like the companies which procure visas for workers in Saipan are doing the same thing.
A beautiful recent documentary by a Vietnamese filmmaker, "Dreaming of Being a Worker" by Tran Phuong Thao, follows three women caught in this system. One of the related issues which Megan doesn't address but I'm sure Bowe's book does is that any system where workers pay a large amount up front and must work off debt creates vast opportunities for abuse and cruelty. That's why prostitution so often works this way. In Thao's film, one of the women complains that a factory manager has refused to let her go to the bathroom when she's sick. She says she told him, "We are all here working for the [Japanese] capitalists, but you're a Vietnamese person and I'm a Vietnamese person. Why are you exploiting another Vietnamese person?" I think this is a very mild example of the kind of anger Bowe is talking about, muted because it's in a country with strong social solidarity that is actually growing richer quite fast.
Ed,
with this: "We are incurious because we are busy", I really wonder how you define such..
And, it isn't necessary for each and every to do their own research, see Consumer Reports as a starting point/example..
And, this: "Presumably their contracts with the foreign manufacturers are legal."
I don't really care about the 'legality' of it, and I'm less interested in trying to legislate those business practices out of existence..
I'd think that if more people understood the realities around much of what they consume, they'd begin to do differently..
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I don't think your point of democracy not being in peril and lobbyists however powerful they are can't stand in the way of the will of people(if they're passionate about it) was lost on him. Immigration is the best example where though a majority support legalization even though some are uncomfortable about it, the vehement minority has been able to hold up any reform that may brown America - which is as it should be. Congress shouldn't be able to override the concerns of a passionate minority or people's faith in democracy would be lost. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened to the immigration debate if the religious nuts had had their way over the gang-of-14 during the supreme court nomination process last year and successfully nuked the filibuster provision - they would've been saddled with CIR bill that's even a worse nightmare for them than getting their guy in the court.
Posted by Sri | November 28, 2007 11:38 AM