Two Nice Guys
Did you read the excerpts from Rebecca Clarren’s article about near-slave labour in the Mariana islands and the sterling work Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff did to block all legislative attempts to reform the situation? That’s the far right for you, revealed in all its squalid glory – peel away all the heavy breathing about culture of life and family values and Christian nation, and what you find is the reality: destitute Asian women worked practically to death for execrable wages and in execrable conditions while fat prosperous happy safe white men collect huge payments to bribe each other and take each other on junkets all in aid of preventing those overworked underpaid Asian women from being paid the minimum wage. It’s bottomlessly disgusting.
30,000 “guest workers” — predominately women — from China, the Philippines and Thailand sew clothing for top-name American brands, which are then allowed to label them “Made in USA” because the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) is a U.S. territory. But workers in these factories are not covered by U.S. minimum-wage and immigration laws. Coming from rural villages and the big-city slums of poor Asian countries, these garment workers arrive in Saipan with a huge financial debt, having borrowed money (at interest rates as high as 20 percent) to pay recruiters as much as $7,000 for a one-year contract job. In a situation akin to indentured servitude, workers cannot earn back their recruitment fee and pay for housing and food without working tremendous hours of overtime…Abramoff and his team brought in nearly $11 million in fees from the Northern Marianas government and Saipan garment manufacturers to block congressional efforts to raise the minimum wage and eliminate the islands’ exemptions from U.S. immigration laws. His efforts focused on the House Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction over U.S. territories. And he also cultivated powerful allies in the House leadership — notably Tom DeLay, who, as Majority Whip at the time, could keep a bill off the House floor even if the Resources Committee voted in its favor.
Could, and did. And then apparently slept well at night. A pretty picture, is it not? Powerful rich men keeping powerless poor women in wretched grinding poverty, because they’ve been paid to do so.
Update: Terri Gross interviewed Rebecca Clarren, the reporter who wrote the story, and Katherine Spillar, the editor who commissioned it, on Fresh Air last Tuesday. They say more about DeLay’s work to block legislation than appears in the extracts at Alternet and TomPaine. I’d link to the full article but it appears not to be online. The interview is pretty gripping.
[Libertarian Crank Hat “On”] This is the free market at work! Praise be the Holy Market! I’m impressed by the fortitude of these women in taking advantage of the glorious capitalist system to advance themselves. Maybe after 45 years of 80 hour workweeks in dank, windowless sweatshops, they will advance to their very own hovel! We just need to extend this system to the continental United States. Why rely on foreign slum laborers when we can create our own? [Libertarian Crank Hat Off]
That is actually what those bastards said when asked – they babbled about the Marianas as capitalism at its finest.
I remember reading a comment by Milton Friedman that minimum-wage laws were counterproductive since low wages give the workers an incentive to try to improve their lot – get an education or vocational training in order to move up to higher-paying jobs. I wonder whether these woman in these sweatshops have A) the time or B) the opportunity, as provided by the Marianas government, to achieve these worthy goals. Uncle Miltie (as Martin Gardner calls him) is truly out there with his fundamentalist faith in the free market.
As an aside, Gardner has a couple of interesting articles on economics in his collection “The Night is Large” – “Why I am not a Smithian” and “The Laffer Curve” (which should be The Laugher Curve).
I count my blessings–and wonder how long I’ll get to keep ’em.
Low wages needful to keep people ambitious? Last time I looked, the well-paid were trying to move farther up the ladder too. And plenty of us peons who did try to improve our lot, by going to school or what have you, still find ourselves stuck in crappy jobs not making what we deserve. We work harder just like we’re supposed to, incentivized as could be, and our ship never comes in. I wonder if Friedman ever worked in a minimum-wage job?
It sounds like DeLay, Abramoff and co. ought to be dropped into the Marianas Trench.
And each of these women actually paid $7,000 to escape from where they were to take these jobs because it was so much better than they were used to. Shame!
Seems to me the article i(from Ms. Magazine of all places) s a hatchet job. The problem the author describes stems from the fact that the employees paid $7000 to the “recruiters” .
It’s sad but unfortunately this sort of thing goes on fairly often as people try to leave countries without a strong capitalist tradition.
Also Abramoff isn’t a Republican politician. He’s a lobbyist who is also thick with the Dems. Wonder why that wasn’t brought out in the article.
And what is it exactly that DeLay is suposed to have done to cause this problem, besides visit the island?
Sorry, but I think the author’s attempt to tie anything DeLay did for the industry to this problem doesn’t hold water.
The money paid to the recruiters is certainly part of the problem, but the fact that the women are paid $3.25 an hour is also part; the Marianas’ exemption from US minimum wage law and other labour law is part; bad working conditions, grueling hours, vulnerability to instant deportation is part.
“It’s sad but unfortunately this sort of thing goes on fairly often as people try to leave countries without a strong capitalist tradition.”
Yes, and then they get to places run by countries with a strong capitalist tradition, and get screwed nine ways from Sunday.
You bet; Abramoff is a lobbyist. He’s not so much “thick with” the Dems as happy to pay them huge bribes too when they’re in power. The Dems are very nearly as bad about this stuff as the Republicans; I wouldn’t dream of denying it.
What DeLay did to cause this problem is block bills that were drafted and had more than enough votes to pass, and prevent them from getting to a vote. Repeatedly.
Also, he didn’t just “visit” the island, he went on trips there paid for by Abramoff.
I quoted the relevant bit in the N&C.
“And he also cultivated powerful allies in the House leadership — notably Tom DeLay, who, as Majority Whip at the time, could keep a bill off the House floor even if the Resources Committee voted in its favor.”
He blocked the bills, that’s what he did. It’s a simple point.
That’s simply untrue about Abramoff. He skewed to the Republican party and was known to skew to the republican party. Whenever an organization took him on that contributed to the Dems and the Republicans, that organization started contributing much more heavily to the Republicans.
It may well be that, overall, Dems are a pack of bribeable and corrupt pols, too. But the generalization isn’t served by sacrificing the particular truth, which is: Abramoff was part of the K street project; his connections with Ney and Delay’s staffers are well known and deep; and his tendency to try to shift the majority of contributions in any organization that retained him to Republicans can’t be explained away by the fact that he did not totally eliminate legacy Democratic party links. The pretense of equal opportunity corruption, here, is laughable.
Quite right, roger. Mea culpa. I get very exasperated with the Dems for not denouncing this stuff with every breath they take, but that’s no reason to forget to mention little items like the K Street project.
And poor people also don’t have large wads of cash to give to people like Abramoff and DeLay. So naturally people like Abramoff and DeLay aren’t going to pay attention to what poor people need, are they – they’re going to pay attention to what people with large wads of cash to give to people like Abramoff and DeLay need. Thus everything works out for the best for people with large wads of cash, so that’s splendid.
Would the women be better off working back on the farms they left in China? Or back in Chinese factories that pay better than the farms but less than General Motors?
Yes. They’re worse off in the Marianas, but they don’t know that until they get there.