Harassment lawsuit vs. garment industry

We have learned that a certain law firm from the US mainland (East Coast) would be filing a lawsuit against major buyers and retailers of garments produced in the CNMI. Buyers targeted by the lawsuit include Gap Inc., J.C. Penny, Sears, Crew Nordstrom, Oshkosh B`Gosh, among others.

The planned lawsuit seems oblivious to all the reform efforts in recent years to rectify both federal and local concerns. Therefore, it is at best, frivolous and two years behind in this matter. It seems it doesn’t have any inkling that local factories are “state of the art” and even OSHA officials acknowledge the tremendous improvements and attention the industry has placed in the living conditions of its non-resident workers or that safety throughout the industry is up to standard.

It seems obvious too that the US Department of Interior’s Office of Insular Affairs is bent to bring down the garment industry here. It failed to do so through the front door, now it heads to the back door with the same ruinous agenda to permanently cripple an industry that generates and sustains substantial economic activity when our primary tourism industry is crumbling all over from the ravaging effects of the Asian crisis.

Now, if the law firm is out to get sweatshops in New York and California, then it must focus its charges against factories that have violated specific labor laws. It can’t toy with the lives of the indigenous people by forcing a cart blanche class action suit against the entire garment industry here. In short, one can’t punish an innocent bystander for offenses committed by someone else. We sincerely hope that our legal system would throw out such frivolous lawsuit in that it is unconscionable, pure injustice and would permanently ruin a major industry that now supports a cash-strapped local government.

How strange that in the middle of a crippling economic crisis, the lead federal agency finds pleasure in killing the only goose today that lays the golden eggs. Perhaps local leadership ought to insist upon Interior’s OIA for a back-up plan for both current economic doldrums and the Marianas-wide bankruptcy it would have created under the lawsuit it now pushes in the dark shadows of self-destruction.

Good wages, federal or otherwise, is, in the words of a renown economist “only good for as long as it lasts”. It isn’t the NMI’s fault that the US mainland textile industry wasn’t prepared for the relocation of major industries to Mexico nor should the NMI be blamed for their being ill-prepared for stiff competition at the market place. Various industry relocation was triggered solely by cheap labor in foreign countries. For instance, a US mainland factory that produces surgical gloves relocated to Asia because while it pays its US employees $18 an hour, it found out it still can produce the same quality surgical gloves for $8 a day. Do you blame the factory and host country or isn’t time that soul-searching reassessment be done by US mainland industries to find out how can they stay competitive?

The lawsuit is damaging for both buyers, suppliers and the welfare of the NMI. The bottom line that must never be overlooked is the consequence it would wreak on the local economy to which Interior’s OIA isn’t equipped nor does it have the experience to provide concrete back-up plans other than to dance happily to please US labor unions. The industry is our livelihood in every sense of the word. We’re sure the industry as a whole will prevail in a lawsuit of this sort based on the many positive improvements that have been made.

Finally, the planned lawsuit’s devastating effect would be to scare away our good and well-intentioned buyers as well as siphon funds from the industry and individual factories for a long and protracted legal battle to the point of insolvency. Incidentally, these funds–which could benefit the CNMI community–is a very unconscionable act and a very tragic thing to see happen in the history of the CNMI’s growth. We hope the courts would dismiss it as quickly as it is filed. Si Yuus Maase`!