The true story of a sweatshop worker in the American Samoa

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Comment by JAG'D Edge Media on August 22, 2008 at 6:47pm

Awesome thanks for the news

Comment by DJ Guardian on August 22, 2008 at 3:08pm

By BRAD WONG
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

SEATAC -- Wearing a black leather jacket, Ba Bui stands next to his 8-year- old daughter and their luggage, which is bundled with rope. His eyes scan the area. But the woman is not in sight.

A thin line of sweat quickly appears on his forehead. He has just slipped two crisp $1 bills into a machine to rent a luggage trolley at Sea-Tac Airport, one of his first acts in the United States.

Still, she is not there.

Hoai Nguyen, his 34-year-old wife, has been absent from his sight for 3 1/2 years. Outside, airport buses pass. He surveys the escalators, which hum near luggage carousel 7.

Only passengers from Asiana Airlines, which has just carried him and his daughter from Hanoi, emerge.

Suddenly, in Vietnamese, screams fill the dimly lighted baggage area:

"Mommy!"

"Daughter!"

"Husband!"


Meryl Schenker / P-I
Ba Bui embraces his wife, Hoai Nguyen, and their daughter, Hang Bui, at Sea-Tac Airport. Nguyen's family was given a special visa to come here.
Hang Bui dashes forward, her white tennis shoes flashing brightly. The little girl's arms are open. With one big jump, she locks her arms and fingers around her mom's neck.

Ba Bui, 38, wipes his watery eyes and folds his arms around the two.

Saturday was a good day for some of those whose lives were made miserable by an American Samoa sweatshop. Nguyen -- a victim of the largest human-trafficking case ever prosecuted on U.S. soil -- is beginning to enjoy her life once again.

She is safe and healthy. She can hold her daughter and hug her husband.

A few years ago, on that U.S. archipelago in the south Pacific, she and 300 Vietnamese and Chinese workers endured abuse, threats, unsanitary dorms, sexual advances and lack of food and pay at the Daewoosa Samoa Ltd. garment factory.

Kil Soo Lee, the former owner, had lured them to the factory with promises of earning U.S. dollars. The factory operated from 1998 to 2001 and sent clothes to manufacturers and retailers in the continental United States.

Factory guards fondled and slapped workers. In November 2000, a fight erupted and guards struck employees with plastic pipes. Blood stained clothing.

The workers had dreamed of earning more money than they could in their home countries.

Today, the factory is closed, and the U.S. government has convicted Lee of involuntary servitude and extortion.

Lee, who is bankrupt, and two Vietnamese government labor-export companies owe the workers $3.5 million in back pay.

Nguyen is owed about $10,000 for her work and for punitive damages. But this Saturday, at this moment, all that seems irrelevant.

"I am so happy," Nguyen says in English and with a huge smile. "My daughter grew up twice as big."


Meryl Schenker / P-I
At Sea-Tac Airport, Hoai Nguyen can't stop smiling at her daughter, Hang Bui, 8, whom she hadn't seen in more three years.
For 20 minutes, Hang Bui clings to her mother, who holds her off the ground. Their cheeks touch. The girl drapes her head over her mom's shoulder and gives her a kiss.

The girl's eyes dart left and right. She looks at buses, cars and Caucasians -- the Americans, as she calls them. Her head pivots up and down at one of the first Caucasian women she sees.

At the curbside pick-up area, Nguyen clutches her daughter's hand and plays with a yellow and red ring on the girl's finger.

Ba Bui, a welder, feels the cool Pacific Northwest air on his skin. "It's a little cold," he says.

Their connecting airplane, Asiana Airlines Flight No. 272, has landed earlier than expected and they move quickly through U.S. immigration and customs checkpoints.

Because Nguyen agreed to serve as a witness to help prosecute Lee, a South Korean man, the federal government granted her a special visa to live and work in the continental United States.

Family members qualify for residency and work, too.


Meryl Schenker /

Comment by DJ Guardian on August 22, 2008 at 3:02pm

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D07E1DA1130F933A25756C0A9649C8B63 taken from the NY Times

Sweatshops Under the American Flag

Published: May 10, 2002

Last month a court in American Samoa ordered a garment factory to pay $3.5 million to 270 workers from China and Vietnam. The court described workers cheated of wages, beaten and deprived of food, something that should never have occurred anywhere, much less on American territory. But while the exploitation in the Daewoosa factory was egregious, it is not isolated. On Saipan, the largest island of the American Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, federal investigators have documented mistreatment of workers.

American territories overseas are an attractive site for garment factories producing for the consumer in the United States. Minimum wage is lower than on the mainland -- $3.05 an hour in Saipan -- and products can come in without import quotas or tariffs and bear a ''Made in America'' label. In Saipan, 30 factories make clothes for dozens of American brands like Gap, Dayton Hudson and The Limited.

The 15,000 garment workers in Saipan are largely women from China. They pay recruiters and the factories up to $8,000 to obtain their jobs. Some have mortgaged home or farm to get the money. If they leave their jobs before paying the debt -- which takes years -- they saddle their families with a lifetime of penury. They therefore put up with whatever treatment the factory metes out. Recent scrutiny from Washington and anti-sweatshop activists has brought some improvements in health and safety conditions. But the high recruitment fees remain, as does the practice of cheating workers on overtime.

The Labor Department has recovered millions of dollars owed to workers. Two 1999 lawsuits against the contractors and the companies that buy their goods are proceeding in California and Saipan. But lawsuits have their limitations. The Daewoosa factory has declared bankruptcy, so its workers may never see any of the money.

More changes are needed, most importantly an end to the system of paid recruitment. But over the years the government of the islands has fought reforms. Bills to bring the Northern Marianas under mainland minimum wage or immigration laws have extensive support in Congress but have been blocked by the House Republican whip, Tom DeLay. Authorities in Saipan have argued that the island is being unfairly singled out when harsh working conditions can also be found in California and New York. There are sweatshops on the mainland, but in Saipan they enjoy official backing.

Comment by DJ Guardian on August 22, 2008 at 2:57pm

Tearing Down a Sweatshop
http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2001/06/peterle615.html

Peter Le calmed a riot at an American Samoan factory and ended an abuse

Friday, June 15, 2001


When Peter Le agreed to travel to American Samoa to translate conversations between an American doctor and Vietnamese workers, he never imagined he'd wind up in the middle of a riot.

But that's exactly what happened to Le, an analysis programmer at Duke Medical Center, who was present when Vietnamese workers at a sweatshop in American Samoa protested their working conditions in November 2000.

Le was contacted through Sweatshop Watch, a coalition whose mission is to eliminate worker exploitation. The author of the e-mail, a doctor stationed on the Pacific island by the U.S. government, informed him that many workers had been abused and were attempting to take legal action. She said she needed assistance from Le, who is Vietnamese and who is listed on the Sweatshop Watch listserv, to translate and interpret court documents to the workers.

"She told me that she was trying to help and couldn't because she didn't speak Vietnamese," said Le. "The workers came to her when they were in trouble."

According to Le, during his second week in Samoa, workers at the Korean-owned Daewoosa clothing plant got into an argument with a site manager. When the manager ordered them to continue working, the workers tried to explain that necessary materials had not arrived. The manager complained to the owner, who ordered him to beat the workers, which touched off the riot, Le said. According to a U.S. Department of Labor investigation into the riot, one worker was beaten in the face with a pipe and had to be taken to the hospital to have her eye removed.

When the Samoan police arrived at the riot, according to Le, workers were running around the site frantic and confused. Because many of the workers could not understand English, they did not follow police orders. Le quickly stepped in.

"I got on the PA [public address system] and translated what the cops were saying. I told them to move to the corner and stay calm," said Le.

Next, Le contacted the local newspaper and a California-based Vietnamese radio station to let them know what was happening. The news stories that followed eventually led to arrests and the closure of the factory.

"I don't take any credit," Le said. "I am a man of faith. I am just an instrument. God put me in the right place at the right time. He used me to help those people."

In Vietnam, citizens are offered jobs in other countries through the Vietnamese government. According to a report by the anti-sweatshop activist group National Labor Committee for Human Rights (NLC), citizens paid to the Vietnamese government a $4,000-$8,000 fee as well as a tax on their incomes to be employed in America for three years.

"According to Asian Newsweek, Vietnam's goal is to export up to a million workers by 2010," Le said. "Right now, they export around 200,000, and the government generates almost 1 billion U.S. dollars. To Vietnam, that's a lot of money."

Once the workers sign up, recruiters place them in various sites. The workers exported to American Samoa, which is a U.S. territory, lived and worked at Daewoosa. The net pay usually averaged out to $1.17 per hour if they were paid at all, Le said. The workers who rioted told Le they had not been paid for three months.

"It's like, to get a job, you pay me money. Then, after that, you pay me 12 percent of what you make in income taxes. There's no such thing as free enterprise in Vietnam," said Le.

In addition to being underpaid, the workers were beaten for missing curfew and fed meals consisting of cabbage and rice soup, the NLC report said. They also had to pair up in 3-foot-wide beds, said Le, who was unaware of these conditions before he arrived.

"The first week I was there, I basically did research of what was going on. I tried to talk with workers, but I couldn