October 19, 1999

San Francisco Chronicle op-ed piece ignores real conditions and active garment factory monitoring on Saipan

Saipan Garment Manufacturers Association Executive Director Richard A. Pierce has protested an opinion piece by human rights activist Medea Benjamin which described Saipan as part of the world’s "global sweatshops."

But Pierce praised the author, the director of the San Francisco-based Global Exchange, for focusing on improving factory conditions rather than boycotting products, noting that PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) is just starting its monitoring of SGMA member factories for exactly that purpose.

Pierce said PWC supplements the present efforts of the US Departments of Labor, Justice and Interior, the CNMI’s Department of Labor and Immigration and inspections carried out by garment retailers who buy products made on Saipan. In a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, in which the piece appeared, Pierce said, "Ms. Benjamin wisely recognizes the futility of product boycotts, which are only likely to eliminate many workers’ livelihood, and emphasizes instead the need to improve factory conditions."

Pierce said that’s the point of the elaborate Code of Conduct adopted by SGMA members and the numerous monitoring inspections being carried out by many different parties and more promised to come with this Code’s baseline monitoring scheduled for late November of this year.

"The U.S. Department of Labor says it can’t deal with alleged abuses (on a 13 mile long island!) unless the federal government also controls our immigration," Pierce said in his letter to the Chronicle. "It seems to us, though, that this has become a handy political way for U.S mainland garment industry unions to eliminate at least one overseas competitor."

And Pierce stressed the point that while alleged bad conditions and concern for the welfare of workers have been used as a justification for a federal takeover of CNMI labor and immigration controls, those who are presented as the victims are actually likely to suffer more if it comes to pass. "Just remember, if the activists and the Clinton administration have their way, we’ll be forced to close up shop and Chinese workers here will be sent home to exactly those conditions Ms. Benjamin and her colleagues deplore."