$1.25M settlement threatens to distort public records – SGMA

The decision of four major retailers on the US mainland to settle out of the class action suits against Saipan garment manufacturing firms is unfortunate but understandable, according to Richard Pierce, spokesman of the Saipan Garment Manufacturers Association.

Pierce was reacting to reports that Seattle-based retailers Nordstrom, Cutter & Buck, J. Crew and Gymboree had agreed to a settlement that include a $1.25 million fund for an independent monitoring system of the factories, as well as unstated damages to workers, attorneys fees and public education campaign.

“Nordstrom made it quite clear that its desire was to end the negative publicity resulting from these suits as well as save a fortune ina legal cost,” said Pierce. “Unfortunately, this doesn’t resolve widely published but utterly unproven claims describing conditions in which the workers are being held as slaves.”

He said another matter that the settlement failed to address is federal responsibility for alleged abuses, he said. “It doesn’t serve the purposes of these attorneys or activists to point it out, but there are many federal officials who are responsible for enforcement of labor laws in the CNMI. In fact, the federal presence has increased over the last few years though enforcement activities have not improved. If they haven’t been doing their job, they’ll have to explain it in court rather than blaming the CNMI through the media and via third parties.”

“Our sympathies are with the retailers who have been handed millions of dollars in bad and undeserved publicity based on problems that were solved years ago, but still tainted by stories generated and recirculated to suit certain political ends,” he said.

According to Pierce, SGMA members involved in the cases are confident they will prevail in the court “when the real persons and real facts have to be presented.”

“It’s nothing for an official at the Office of Insular Affairs to feed these things to the national media who have mostly printed or broadcast without checking whether they’re true, but quite another to persuade a federal judge. So far the case filed in US District Court here on Saipan seems to be shrinking fast when put to this test,” he said in a press release.