Uncle Sam’s indentured servitude

About two years ago, the federal government raised quite an uproar over reported illegal employment contracts in the CNMI garment industry. U.S. officials (mostly from the U.S. Interior Department) claimed that many CNMI Chinese garment factory workers were deprived of their civil rights, which they never really enjoyed back in mainland China in the first place.

According to these federal reports, our Chinese garment factory workers were forced to forfeit their civil rights as part of their employment contracts. They were, for example, allegedly not allowed to get married, view pornography, or “fall in love” (among other sordid activities).

Such practices, if true, are indeed appalling. They should be condemned. In a free society, adult workers should have every legal right to view pornography, fall in love, and get married (although not necessarily in that order).

Unfortunately, the United States government is itself not respecting the rights of its workers in at least one prominent area: the U.S. military. As one U.S. Army officer recently reported to me in a revealing e-mail: “That’s the intolerable thing about the military, Charles. You have absolutely no control over your life. They have total control. You are in essence a total slave, as surely as any black person in the South ever was. They can refuse you sleep, a place to sleep, food, and work you 24 hours a day if it suits their slightest whim [presumably at no overtime pay], and nobody cares what you think about it. Nobody will even ask you. All promises are worthless (i.e., you volunteer to come over here to fill a certain job, then once you are here, they snatch it away, without even an apology and put you wherever they please).”

Upon closer inspection and reflection, the institutions of the U.S. military are themselves bastions of indentured servitude, human rights abuses, and labor exploitation. And the draft–conscription–was one of the most egregious atrocities.

The draft, which was only abolished in the 1970s, basically amounted to forced slavery. It amounted to a blatant violation of the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

Remember the film “Full Metal Jacket”? The boot camp scenes on Paris Island were historically accurate. Does that kind of persecution regularly occur in the CNMI’s garment factories? I seriously doubt it.

In a very real sense, the CNMI’s nonresident workers are like economic soldiers for China and the Philippines. Their government, for the most part, looks to its overseas workers as economic patriots in the service of their country and national economy. The Chinese garment factory workers, as far as the Chinese government is concerned, are on “active duty.” The RP workers, of course, are “heroes.” These economic soldiers, however, are not subject to U.S. military labor abuses while they are on CNMI soil. Only the U.S. government can get away with such brutal practices, via federalization.