Patrick, first off, I apologize for suggesting you might be an outrage junkie. That was rude of me.
That said: would it be too much to ask for an update to your original post? Things have changed in the Marianas, and for the better.
I lived in the islands for seven years, and I was literally in the room when some of this stuff went down. Smack DeLay around all you like, I got no problem with it. But I do think it's important that people understand that the islanders weren't evil for dealing with DeLay -- just desperate. As evidence of which, they've managed to improve conditions in the industry quite a lot in the last few years.
I'm not trying to score a point here. Rather, I'm concerned that some day, when the Democrats regain control of the legislature or the executive, they'll punish the "bad" islanders for having done business with DeLay and Co. And all the reforms we worked so long and hard for, all the good we tried to do, will go right out the window, baby with the bathwater.
That's an immensely frustrating prospect: that you can spend years of your life trying to make something better, move it from horrible to bad to okay... then have someone come along and say screw it, they're all evil, burn the whole thing down.
So if that prospect made me too sharp, again, I apologize.
But I would ask that you give a fair shake to the good people of the Marianas Islands -- not for my sake, but for theirs. As I said, I spent seven years there, so I am still somewhat partisan on their behalf.
Doug M.
Who is Doug M., and why is he slagging me off?
Hm. Patrick, have you forgotten me already? I used to be almost a regular here.
You and I had a similar go-round on this thread a couple of years back. Though that time, it ended in more-or-less amicable agreement (scroll to bottom).
More in a bit, after we feed the kids lunch.
Doug M.
Doug, you've certainly shed some considerable light about this subject that has really given me pause to think about whether we're becoming just as guilty of witch hunting as "the other side."
Well, thank you.
Again, I hold no brief for Tom DeLay, and there's no question that horrible stuff happened in the NMI in the '90s.
But the NMI resorted to an alliance with DeLay out of desperation -- not wanting to be turned back into Chuuk -- and meanwhile, things have gotten a lot better there. Largely because of boring, non-sexy grunt work by people at the level of local government, with help from the federal courts.
This post really does make me feel like we're just looking for an excuse to get outraged again.
Compare and contrast: Hilzoy over at Obsidian Wings posted on this exact same issue. I made much the same points in the comments threads, providing links as I have here.
Hilzoy posted an update noting that things had indeed improved in the NMI, and that her outrage was directed at DeLay's defense of sweatshop conditions back in the '90s.
Somehow, I don't think that's going to happen over here.
There are people on both sides of the aisle who've become outrage junkies. Saying "it's more complicated than that" to those people -- on either side -- just annoys them; they don't want things to be complicated, they want their hit of indignation and rage.
Doug M.
You don't call in people like Abramoff and DeLay to clean up. They were there to stop any cleanup from happening.
The problem here is that Congress wasn't proposing a "cleanup". The proposed solution was to cure the disease by shooting the patient.
If the locals really wanted to get things cleaned up, they could have made their case to the Justice Department, Congress and the media in a straightforward way,
This was tried. As I said, there were strong built-in disincentives for federal bureacracies to get deeply involved in Saipan.
Also, the folks trying to bring the Feds in did not have deep pockets. The folks willing to pay Jack Abramoff did.
As for whatever reforms that have occurred, I'm inclined to give at least some of the credit to the anti-sweatshop movement in the US, putting pressure on the manufacturers.
Some. But the key reforms were accomplished either in court, or by agremeent between the NMI government and the feds.
Here's a court case that was a major milestone in the reform effort. Brought in 1999 IMS, but not resolved until 2002.
If they can clean up operations in South-East Asia, they can do so in US territory.
Work in progress. Here's some testimony before the House of Representatives from 2004.
Key grafs:
In the years since the height of the controversy, the CNMI government, the Federal Government and the garment industry itself have all taken major steps to improve labor conditions in the CNMI and to protect the rights of workers. The CNMI government has enacted several reforms since the mid-1990s and has, especially in recent years, established a very good working relationship with Federal authorities. Last September I was pleased to sign, along with Governor Juan Babauta, an historic agreement whereby the CNMI agreed to cooperate with Federal authorities to combat human trafficking and to establish asylum procedures to protect foreign workers.
The garment industry has also made very substantial improvements. In 2000, the Saipan Garment Manufacturers Association entered into a partnership with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to improve working conditions in the garment industry. OSHA’s Regional Administrator recently reported to me the following: “We believe through our joint efforts with the industry, there has been a marked improvement in the safety and health and living conditions of the workers in Saipan..."
Another factor contributing to the improvement of labor conditions in the CNMI is the increased Federal presence in the islands, initiated largely by Congress through the CNMI Initiative on Immigration, Labor and Law Enforcement. That initiative provided the initial funding for several key Federal agencies, such as OSHA, the Department of Justice and the Department of Labor, to establish a presence in the CNMI, where they work cooperatively with the CNMI government and the business community to address problems. Prior to receiving funding under the initiative, none of these agencies had a major presence in the CNMI... The CNMI Initiative has also funded the Federal Ombudsman, a Federal employee who works with Federal and local authorities to ensure that the rights of foreign workers are protected...
We are heartened by the progress that the CNMI has made in recent years.
-- I note in passing that the "CNMI Initiative" has the NMI paying for federal personnel to come out to the islands. The implicit bargain here was, "Fine -- we'll send some people to Siberia, but don't expect us to find a line in our department's budget. You want the help, you find the money."
Doug M.
Niall, good question. The NMI garment industry swears up and down that, yes, the US minimum wage would kill it. The garment industry lies a lot, but in this case they might have a point. The US minimum wage is $5.15; in the NMI, it's $3.05.
Is the US the right comparandum? Most of the garment workers are coming from countries where $2 per hour is a good wage for a skilled workman. And while the NMI is prosperous by Micronesian standards -- it's Switzerland compared to Chuuk -- it's still poorer than the poorest US state.
I got no problem with extending US Labor laws to the NMI. Should have been done years ago. The minimum wage, I'm a lot less sure about. When I was living there, I supported gradual small increases. This was one of those moderate compromises that everyone hated... the industry thought the workers were already getting plenty ("So much more than they could make back in China!") while people like Murkowski wouldn't accept anything short of the US minimum ("It it's labelled made in the US, it should be made with the US minimum wage!").
FWIW, my opinion is that the wage issue is secondary. There are millions of Chinese and Filipinoworkers who'd love to get $3 an hour. Let them... but make sure their rights are protected.
Doug M.
Patrick, it's a bit more complicated than that.
The Northern Marianas Islands (NMI) are a a US Commonwealth, like Puerto Rico. The people there are US citizens, but they control their own immigration and local laws, including the minimum wage.
It's also one of the few parts of Micronesia that isn't a Third World hellhole. Life expectancy in the Northern Marianas is 71 years, per capita income is around $10,000, and infant mortality is about 5 per 1000. By way of comparison, on the island of Chuuk -- part of independent Micronesia, and just next door by Pacific standards -- life expectancy is 50 years, and infant mortality is 18 per 1000.
Part of the reason for this is the garment industry. It provides about a third of the Northern Marianas' GDP, and is their only export of any significance.
To be clear: there were real abuses in the industry in the 1990s, and some of them were horrific. Most of the garment workers are indeed guest workers (not immigrants... temporary workers, usually staying for between one and three years.) However, by the late 1990s the NMI had embarked on a serious effort to clean up the industry. Reform was halting and piecemeal, but it was happening.
Then the US garment industry decided that the NMI was unfair competition. The NMI sets its own minimum wage, and in the 1990s it was around $2.40 an hour. In a labor-intensive industry, this gave them a significant advantage. So, garment industry lobbyists began asking Congress to shut the NMI industry down. The (very real) human rights violations were a convenient club to beat the NMI with.
I know about this because I lived in the NMI in the 1990s. And we were asking Washington for help. "Help us clean up our act. It's hard to do with local actors alone, because the islands are small, the talent pool is limited, and too many people are deeply in hock to the dominant industry. Send us inspectors to train our inspectors; send us FBI agents and federal prosecutors to help bust offenders; give a firm federal backbone to our struggling reform efforts."
Answer came there none. No ambitious federal bureacrat wants to go to the Northern Marianas Islands; it's a dead-end posting, a trash barge, a Siberia. We had an FBI agent who had a gambling addiction. A federal prosecutor who liked sleeping until noon. And Congress was moving closer and closer to "we'll cure the disease by shooting the patient in the head... take away local control over immigration, send all the Chinese and Filipino guest workers home, and shut down the industry." The fact that this would have destroyed the islands' economy was simply ignored; the NMI has no vote in Congress, and who really cares about 50,000 US citizens twelve hours flight west of LA?
So, in desperation, we turned to Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay. It was an alliance of convenience; the alternative was having the islands' only industry shut down.
Unsurprisingly, once it was clear that DeLay and friends could defend the NMI, the impetus for local reform slowed way down. Today the NMI is a lot better than it was in the 1990s, but yeah, there are still abuses. It's really hard to run herd on a dominant local industry without outside help. Which it's the federal government's job to give... but that never happened, in the NMI.
But when the alternative was to turn the NMI back into Chuuk...
You can paint Tom DeLay as Satan, and I won't argue with you. But do remember that desperate people make deals with the devil for many reasons, not all of them bad.
Doug M.
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|---|---|
| 2005 | 7 |
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