Labor pains

Ours is a time when the old world is passing, and the new world is being born.

While visiting the plains of Jiangsu north of Shanghai in March early this year, former Saipan garment factory workers in that province referred to their own government offices as “Labor.” My host’s brother who worked for the police department was referred to as someone who worked at “Labor.” An imposing edifice in Sheyang that looked to me like the city hall, was pointed out as “Labor.”

It dawned on me then that with their experience of primary governance in the CNMI being through the Department of Labor, it rendered the word “Labor” to be synonymous to “Government.” This was confirmed upon my return when in assisting a friend get a police clearance, I was asked to drive to “Labor,” yet was directed to the Moving Vehicle Office and the Guma Hustisia (courthouse)! The Department of Labor and Immigration over at San Antonio has come to symbolize the regulatory power of the CNMI government for some of our less than English language proficient contract workers.

Not too long ago, Labor victoriously announced that the department has finally caught up on the backlog of labor applications and case processing. That was welcomed news except that anecdotal evidence was not as rosy as the announcement appeared.

A case familiar to the Director of Labor was that of a waitress who applied for transfer to be a house worker. The employer was informed that an advertisement had to be made on the position before the applicant could apply for it. So the position was advertised three weeks in a row, after which, the employer accepted the waitress’ transfer application, and proceeded with the paperwork. The receiving officer made a notation that the transfer application was late because the 45-day transition period expired due to the advertisement requirement.

The application was submitted in November 2008. After almost two months of waiting for the completion of processing, the waitress’ mother back home became ill so she departed for a 30-day trip expecting that the transfer request would be finished within a month. It was not.

Follow-ups made by employer got the response that the papers were in order but that new procedures were in place, thus, the delay. By July, the excuse was that the ID-making machine was broken but the employer was assured that there were no deficiencies in the application.

The waitress returned to Saipan in August and when her employer followed up her I.D., she was told that a medical certificate was missing. A fee was collected for a duplicate of the medical certificate at the government’s health office in the same building.

A month later, a notice of denial was received for UNTIMELY SUBMISSION. An appeal was made with the Director of Labor’s office explaining the circumstances surrounding the alleged untimely submission, and the Director saw the point, instructing the office to collect only the appropriate late submission penalty fee. At a cost of a few days multiplied by four bucks, the employer relented. When she went to the window to inquire of the exact amount, she was presented the Director’s notation of an amount of more than $200. Curious how the amount was arrived at, the officer raised an eyebrow and asked that he be given a day to clarify the matter.

It appeared that the director thought the untimely submission was for a renewal which would have necessitated a collection of late fees from the start of the employment termination period, but since this was a denied request for transfer, it required a hearing. A hearing fee also had to be collected. There was a two-month waiting line for the next available hearing slot.

Refusing to be victimized, the employer finally activated personal connections, and a hearing got scheduled within the week. To the credit of the assigned Labor hearing officer, a quick judgment was made to override the untimely submission decision, and to approve the application. The whole process took 11 months, and additional expenses.

A case of inefficiency nor of bureaucratic intransigence is not being alleged. In fact, the employer claims that Labor personnel were universally courteous and helpful. The federalization of the department was a foregone conclusion and everyone was only too willing to show how well they knew their jobs. The net result, however, were less than rosy.

Contracting of labor has been a consequence of the globalization of the processes of resource extraction, production, and distribution. Management headhunting in the last 40 years had been a lucrative industry, so why should not the hiring of the peons in factory lines be any different?

Today, a prominent defense contractor in the Middle East stands accused for bringing in Indian nationals to the Arabian Peninsula for promised jobs that the contractor could not deliver. It had collected fees from the aspirants for the advertised positions.

The case against abuses within the garment industry had a lot to do with the corruption of the hiring process, and the atmosphere that was established that allowed unscrupulous operators within and outside the industry to victimize many. Operators in Jiangsu are notorious for victimizing their garment factory workers to possible employment not only in the CNMI but also Japan and Korea, India and Pakistan, Madagascar and the Arabian Peninsula.

The existence of bonded servitude is as old as ancient civilization, and as pervasive today everywhere for as long as the culture of exploitation of resources—natural, technological and human—continues unabated as an inherent component of our globalized economics. Fueled by our addiction to mindless and needless consumer goods and services, and dependent on non-renewable energy source, the human journey has just crossed the threshold of massive shock therapy and a jarring of our corporate consciousness.

It is, of course, the easy course to look for someone to blame for the perceived and actual miseries of labor around the world. With the collapse of the big three automotive giants in Detroit, even organized labor in the United States has now found itself at the mercy of the capital sources and management forces it had long opposed.

The need for enlightened local politics is self-evident, as the rapacity of the global stock markets has painfully demonstrated its unreliability to sustain local economies. It may just be a footnote to say that Tina Sablan’s dogged insistence on transparency in governance, and Maria Frica Pangelinan’s enlightening discourses on processes, are hopeful signs at our local level, but alas, they are too few and far in between. A globalized economy is irreversible in a shrinking planet, so an authentic and an accountable local polity structure must become robust and broadly engaging. This requires intentionality and dynamism in our diverse cultures, and that could very well be our only salvation.