‘Survival of garment industry will benefit its workers’

The survival of the local apparel industry will benefit not only the Commonwealth, but also the garment workers, according to the Garment Oversight Board.

GOB, a garment monitoring group comprising former or current judges or justices, said that garment workers would be better off in the CNMI where the garment industry is strictly regulated than in many other textile producing countries.

“We intend to emphasize to the retailers that one of the major advantages of doing business with the garment industry in the CNMI is that a non-government organization looks over the shoulders of the certified manufacturers. Something that not many other garment manufacturing jurisdictions can say,” GOB chair Timothy Bellas said in a recent letter to Gov. Benigno R. Fitial.

“We believe that the continued viability of the garment industry is not only important to the CNMI and the [manufacturers] but also to the workers who continue to want to work in the Saipan garment industry,” he added.

Quoting a recent New York Times article, Bellas noted that working conditions in Jordan, for instance, are drastically worse than in the CNMI. Workers there reportedly receive a regular salary of $120 per month and the worker interviewed stated that he was actually paid only $50 a month.

Jordan is one of the countries to whom the U.S. government has granted major trade concessions that rival those of General Headnote 3(a).

In addition, Bellas said the board supports the administration’s lobbying efforts in the U.S. Congress to get Headnote 3(a) amended. The amendment would allow local garment manufacturers to increase the value of imported raw materials from 50 percent to 70 percent. It would allow the option for manufacturers to have the fabric cut elsewhere and have the cut fabric pieces shipped to Saipan to be sewn into clothing and qualify for export to the United States.

“We respectfully suggest that the U.S. Congress has to realize that the jobs lost here will not be transferred to California or some other textile producing mainland state. The alternative will simply be more jobs created in places like Jordan. We fail to see how such an outcome is better for the workers; to receive $50-$200 per month and no prospect for better working conditions,” Bellas said.

The Garment Oversight Board was created pursuant to the May 2003 settlement agreement between Saipan garment manufacturers, retailers that purchase garments from Saipan, and the foreign workers employed in the industry.

The GOB consists of former California Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso, former Washington State Supreme Court Chief Justice Richard P. Guy, and Bellas.