House Majority Leader Tom DeLay says he found no victims of sweatshops, sex slavery or forced abortions on the Pacific island of Saipan in the mid-1990s. But Carmencita Abad says that’s because DeLay did not want to see them.
“My answer is, Mr. DeLay, I am that person,” Abad said in a telephone interview. “I am an example of an individual who can prove that the accounts of sweatshop labor and forced prostitution are not just allegations but true accounts of working conditions in the Marianas Islands when Mr. DeLay traveled there and turned a blind eye to our misery.”
Abad, a Filipino who worked in Saipan’s garment industry for six years, spoke at a press conference in Houston recently outside a business luncheon honoring the embattled DeLay.
The press conference was sponsored by the Campaign for a Clean Congress, a national organization, the Harris County AFL-CIO and Houston Interfaith Worker Justice.
It was called, in part, to counter claims DeLay made last month when he told The Daily News that there were no human rights violations taking place on Saipan in the 1990s.
As he entered Tuesday’s luncheon, DeLay was again asked about the allegations.
“The workers there were very well treated,” he said. “There may have existed some problems in certain instances, but not when I was there.”
DeLay’s involvement with Saipan, the capital of the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands, has come under renewed scrutiny after revelations that a lobbyist paid for two of DeLay’s senior aides to visit the U.S. territory in 1996 and 1997.
The lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, is now under investigation involving allegations that he defrauded Indian tribes of tens of millions of dollars. No charges have been filed in the case.
In the 1990s, Abramoff, a close associate of DeLay’s, was paid millions by the garment industry and the indebted Saipan government to keep the federal government from forcing the territory to adopt the federal minimum wage or U.S. immigration laws.
DeLay carried that fight to Capitol Hill — despite the fact that Republican Sen. Frank Murkowski was pushing reform legislation.
Manufacturers could import workers and duty-free cloth to Saipan. Once there, they could pay the workers $3.05 an hour to make clothes for major U.S. brands — and they could sew the “Made in the U.S.A.” label into them.
Congressional investigators, national news organizations and the U.S. Labor Department have all supported claims that, in the 1990s, workers on Saipan were forced to work 14-hour days, often without being paid for their overtime. In some cases, the workers were locked in their factories while working and in their barracks when they were not.
Abad, who made clothing for the Gap and other retailers while she worked for the Seko Corp., said that was true in her case.
“I used to live in a squalid barracks — thin roofs, thin walls, concrete floors and people slept in bunk beds with 14 people sharing one restroom — no hot water, no air conditioning,” she said.
The U.S. Justice Department has prosecuted cases in which Asian women paid thousands of dollars to recruiters who promised them jobs as restaurant workers on Saipan. The women emigrated there only to be forced into prostitution.
Abad said that some garment workers faced similar horrors.
“Women were fired for being pregnant,” she said. “And to keep her job, any pregnant woman would either go to an illegal abortionist or try to induce miscarriage by drinking herbal potions or falling down on purpose. Women who are fired from work have no way to support themselves aside from the sex trade. There’s no way to feed yourself aside from that.”
Abad said things have subsequently gotten better for workers in Saipan.
She was part of a class-action suit targeting working conditions there.
In 2002, 26 retailers settled, paying $23 million in back wages to garment workers. A garment workers’ oversight board was also created.
