Not even shilling for Jack Abrahamoff's cruel, inhumane buddies in Saipan....
Tom DeLay, DEFENDER OF SWEATSHOPS
Yes, they're for "family values", except for our business buddies.
http://www.salon.com/news/1999/02/04news.html THE GOP WHIP THINKS THAT AMERICAN COMPANIES USING UNDERPAID GARMENT WORKERS IN DISTANT SAIPAN IS JUST FINE.
.... Now, however, comes the faint cry of virtual slave laborers far out in the Pacific Ocean, as unlikely a threat as the nasty-tongued Republican could have ever imagined. But the faceless, nameless sweatshop garment workers of Saipan suddenly have some legal muscle.
The story really begins back in June 1944, when 71,000 U.S. Marines took Saipan from the Japanese Army at a terrible cost in blood. Planting the American flag there turned out to be critical. Fourteen months later a B-29 took off from nearby Tinian carrying the atomic bombs that would abruptly end the war. For the next half century the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, as they would become known, generally enjoyed the benign neglect of Washington. In 1986, the 27,000 islanders were granted American citizenship.
It was around this time, however, that mandarins from Hong Kong and the People's Republic of China began setting up textile factories on Saipan and importing labor from the mainland, as well as from Bangladesh and the Philippines, to cut and stitch cloth for garment makers including JC Penney, the Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, Liz Clairborne, Jones New York, Abercrombie & Fitch, Levi Strauss, Nautica and many others -- a virtual Who's Who of designer labels. The idea was to slip under the radar of U.S. quotas and duties, which would cost the manufacturers millions more if the garments were made outside U.S. territory. Garments from Saipan are made from foreign cloth, assembled by foreign workers on U.S. soil and labeled "Made in the USA."
And they are made cheaply. Wages in the factories average about $3 per hour -- more than $2 less than the U.S. minimum wage of $5.15. No overtime is paid for a 70-hour work week. But that's hardly the worst of it. Far away from the swank beachside hotels, luxurious golf courses and the thousands of Japanese tourists snorkling around sunken U.S. Navy landing craft in the clear waters, some 31,000 textile workers live penned up like cattle by armed soldiers and barbed wire, and squeezed head to toe into filthy sleeping barracks, all of which was documented on film by U.S. investigators last year.
The unhappy workers cannot just walk away, either: Like Appalachian coal miners a generation ago, they owe their souls to the company store, starting with factory recruiters, who charge Chinese peasants as much as $4,000 to get them out of China and into a "good job" in "America." Their low salaries make it nearly impossible to buy back their freedom. And so they stay. The small print in their contracts forbids sex, drinking -- and dissent.
http://www.salon.com/news/1999/02/04news.html