The protectionist plea

Most of our legislative leaders are in Washington, D.C. at the moment. Many of them are slated to meet with various conservative groups. This is a mistake.

Our leaders should meet with liberal groups as well. They should meet with George Miller, Patsy Mink, Ferdinand Aranza, the labor union leaders, as well as other liberal Democrats and assorted protectionists.

The CNMI needs to join the protectionists. We need to tell these people that we basically agree with them. We need to say that we deplore human rights and labor abuses. Indeed, we want to stop it from taking place.

And that’s precisely why, like them, we would also not be in favor of eliminating garment tariffs and quotas around the world. You see, we really have a great deal in common with our detractors–and we need to let them know that we wholeheartedly agree with them.

We care about the plight of workers. We sure do not want them to ever be abused. And that is precisely why we want to keep our garment workers on U.S. soil, here in the CNMI, where they can be best protected under the watchful eye of the F.B.I., the US Justice Department, and federal OSHA inspectors.

Unlike textile workers in China, Indonesia or Guatemala, garment workers are safe in the CNMI. There are far too many eager trial lawyers desperately searching for the slightest opportunity to sue for a worker to ever be abused. Of course, the attorneys are not out to make money for themselves; they just want to better protect the rights of our foreign contract workers.

Do our detractors want to raise the wages of our garment factory workers? This, too, can be quickly remedied–by the US government.

As our detractors surely know, our Chinese garment factory workers are being robbed by the US federal government–in the form of Social Security payments they will never enjoy in old age retirement. The US Congress must stop penalizing our Chinese workers with unjustified Social Security taxes, which tend to oppress them. (Perhaps Millberg Weiss should sue the Federal government for the unfair Social Security payments our Chinese workers are forced to pay.)

As it is, our garment factory workers already enjoy more benefits than virtually any other textile producing territory including Malaysia, Mexico, Los Angeles, and New York.

What’s more, our garment workers, directly or indirectly, contribute to the employment–and overall standard of living–of more than 15,000 CNMI-based US citizens. Hey, if they will only leave us alone, we can contribute to US Democratic political campaigns, too.