Since 1999, I’ve been researching sweatshops, human trafficking, trade, globalization and a Culture of Corruption flourishing in Washington DC. My entry point into this study of human darkness was the sweatshops and labor abuse in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), a US Territory in the Western Pacific. I’ve documented this work in a long series of Diaries.
The CNMI abuse has reached a new level of villainy in the face of Congressional Action: H.R. 3079 in the House and S. 1634 in the Senate. These bills have some flaws, but it is critical they pass as soon as possible. Every delay prolongs the abuse, but more on that in a moment.
First, let’s discuss shark finning:
The above photo was taken by Alex Hofford for Greenpeace. It accompanied an article on the Greenpeace International Web site titled: "Shark Fin Mystery". Here is the caption that explains the photo:
A refrigerated warehouse in Pohnpei, FSM, in the foreground to the left is a pile of finless shark carcasses, to the right a moonfish and some marlin. In the background are frozen yellow fin tuna.
Now Pohnpei is one of the island states that make up the Federated States of Micronesia. In 2004, it was chosen to be the host the Commission for the Conservation and Management of Highly Migratory Fish Stocks in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean (aka the Tuna Commission Headquarters). It is a center of fishing in the Western Pacific Ocean.
It is also the headquarters of Luen Thai Fishing Ventures (LTFV). This company is part of the empire built by the Hong Kong based Tan Family. I have written about this family many times. They have built their empire on money raised from sweatshops, human trafficking and the stolen labor of thousands (This Diary provides more background).
For a long time I have suspected that they would run their fishing business in the same shadowy manner that they run their apparel and foot wear business. So I was not surprise to read this in the Greenpeace report (links added):
The story in Pohnpei
The refrigerated warehouse in Pohnpei belonged to a Hong Kong based company called Luen Thai. In addition to over 60 finned shark carcases, the warehouse contained a few hundred frozen yellowfin tuna, 6 marlin and 2 moonfish. I spoke to one of the workers, who told me that the company runs 13 Longliners. Each stays at sea for about 3 weeks, catches around 300 tons of tuna and in the process 2 tons of shark. The products section of Luen Thai’s website lists four species of tuna and eleven commercially valuable species of fish that are presumably frequently caught as bycatch.
Since this report, the LTFV site has been updated. Like all Tan Family company sites it includes the rhetoric of greenwashing when it comes to the environment and social justice. They did learn a few things from Jack Abramoff and the Republican Party and they really took that "how to say one thing while you’re really doing the opposite" lesson to heart.
But let’s get back to the "Shark Fin Mystery".
In China a soup made from shark fins is a delicacy. The Greenpeace report adds some details:
The fins are dried and sold for use in shark fin soup, a traditional Chinese dish which sells for upwards of US$100 a bowl. Hong Kong is the centre of the shark fin industry with 70% of the world’s shark fins ending up there. As the Chinese economy improves demand for sharks’ fins is increasing by 5% a year.
And as a Hong Kong based empire, you can bet that LTFV has a solid piece of the shark fin market. As Greenpeace reports, it is a lucrative business:
While the body of the shark is worth almost nothing, sets of shark fins sell for US$700 per Kg. That is 70 times the value of a kilo of tuna.
Now once the shark fins are removed they take up very little space on a ship compared to 300 tons of tuna, so many operations cut the fins off sharks, sometimes while they are still alive, and then toss the dead or dying sharks back into the sea. In 2005, this practice was banned internationally, but like all lucrative practices in hidden in the shadows of our global economy, exceptions were created to "legally" skirt the ban. After all, there is money to be made.
The loophole is for sharks you catch when you’re "trying" to catch something else. So, if you caught some sharks as a "bycatch" of your tuna harvest, you could keep the fins as long as you kept the shark carcass. Of course, there are some problems with this "exemption", which I’ll let Greenpeace explain:
The amount of sharks caught incidentally varies according to fishing method and circumstance. So, it is impossible to determine exactly how many sharks have been caught unintentionally. For Longline fishing vessels – which set a line up to 100km long, baited with up to 3,000 hooks - incidental catch ranges from almost nothing to around 20%. For Purse-seiners 40-50% is typical. When fishing vessels come into ports such as Pohnpei, they must show their logbooks,-a record how much of each fish species they have caught - to officials.
If the weight of shark carcasses is within the expected range for the fishing method, the haul is assumed to be incidental bycatch. A further loophole surrounds the issue of the fins being cut from the shark’s carcass. Obviously, there should only be one set of fins per carcass. However, the assessment is made by weight, not number.
The weight of the fins as a proportion of body weight varies between different species of shark. The World Conservation Union (IUCN) estimate shark fins comprise, on average, 2 % of body weight. This means one would expect 20kg of shark fin for every ton of shark carcass. The US allows up to 5% total shark weight to be fins – this means that for sharks with a low fin to body weight, more than one shark could be illegally finned and dumped for each declared shark.
So let’s get back to that Tan Family warehouse on Pohnpei. Strange things started happening when Greenpeace ship Esperanza docked on the island and crew members started hanging around the warehouse asking questions:
The mystery
Legal shark fining is brutal, but no more so than commercial fishing and with incidental catch rates of 0.67% it has little commercial value. Moreover, shark carcasses reek and are almost worthless - so, why keep over 60 of them in a refrigerated warehouse on the harbour front? Curiosity got the better of us, so we asked the guys working there what they were going to do with the sharks. Initially no one could come up with an answer, then they said the carcasses were going overseas somewhere, perhaps to be made into fish balls. With transport costs being as high as they are this didn’t seem plausible.
By the time Maarten turned up with the video camera, the managers had arrived. They explained that the freezer was broken and that they planned to move the sharks. This made no sense, if the freezer in the warehouse was broken, why not rescue the high value tuna, moonfish and blue marlin? Instead the men set to work shifting over sixty worthless shark carcasses to a refrigerated van. The extreme responses to our cameras, suggest another motive.
Could the shark carcasses be resident incidental bycatch, always available to counted against fins caught illegally? Perhaps the 2 tons of shark was a reference to the weight of fins collected, and not total weight. This is not so unusual. Earlier this year two Spanish Longliners landed 8 tons of shark fins in Suva, Fiji. With an estimated value of US $5.6 million this far exceeds the value of the tuna they would have caught.
This story was familiar. In the heyday of their sweatshops on the CNMI, the Tan Family often kept items and conditions required by OSHA, the Department of Labor and even the inspectors of their clients at the ready to roll out when needed. There was air conditioning, but it was only turned on when the inspectors were in town. Same with supplying workers with face masks, breaks, overtime, lighting and the other attributes of a fair workplace. Time and time again workers told stories of abuse when the VIPs and inspectors were not in town—which was most of the time.
It was these abuses that led to the Tan Family receiving the largest fine in US Labor Department history, $9 million, back in 1992 (during the first Bush Administration). That was followed with another $1.3 million for other OSHA violations (Sweating it out in Saipan is a good overview of the company from the Hong Kong Standard). They ended the 1990s by agreeing to a settlement of a massive lawsuit on behalf of the workers against the Tan Family and major US clothing brands like the GAP, Target and others.
The Tan Family record of abusing their workers continues to this day.
Some may remember a Diary of mine from earlier this year about Buddi Lal Dhimal, a Nepalese Guest Worker on the CNMI so desperate by the culture of abuse that he set himself on fire in protest:
Yep, he was a Tan Family employee that the company condemned to the Kafkaesque Hell of the CNMI labor system. There are hundreds of other examples. Their active abuse of workers on the CNMI is ongoing. Currently the Tan Family are party to a number of lawsuits including one from the George W. Bush EEOC (you can review some of these case by downloading the PDFs here).
So, it really isn’t surprising to find that their fishing operation may be skirting the law as well. After all, the Western Pacific is a massive space and there is very little oversight of the fisheries there. The chances of getting caught are slim. I mean, Greenpeace can’t be everywhere and the US Government isn’t there by design.
As I’ve mentioned, I have been following this story for a long time. The Tan Family has their hands in many, many deals. For a very long time they were patrons to the Republican Party. In fact, they have moved millions of dollars to the GOP to defeat Democrats and establish one-party rule in the USA. They were key financers for Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay and their many, many schemes.
By 2005 both Tom and Jack were in trouble. Abramoff had been exposed and was on his way to an indictment. DeLay’s power in Washington had developed a steady leak. Still, the Tan Family had business before the 109th Congress and it was up to members of Tom and Jack’s network to carry the load.
In 2005 the main bit of business related to their garment business had to due with China’s entry into the WTO and the lifting of textile quotas on products from China. In the first few weeks of 2005 garments "Made in China" were flooding the globe. The US and the EU place temporary quotas on China to slow the flow. Fortunately for the Tan Family, those new quotas included an exemption for garments where the last 30% of it is "finished" on Hong Kong or Macau. And they just happened to have a few factories to take advantage of the loophole. [I’m still looking for the folks behind this Hong Kong exemption. Let me know if you have any information].
Another area of interest for the Tan Family is fishing. And it turns out that there was quite a bit of legislation impacting their fishing business in 2005-2006. In August of 2006, the Congressional Research Service (CSR) released a report on the subject: Fishery, Aquaculture, and Marine Mammal Legislation in the 109th Congress (PDF).
I found it to be a page turner. There are dozens of leads to follow up on and lots of connections between the Tan Family and some of the politicians they supported.
Back in 2006, those of us who were working to defeat Richard Pombo noted quite a number of donations that came to him through the Tan Family and their associates. We often wondered what Pombo did for the money. I now think it had something to do with a Bill he sponsored, HR 5946 which eventually became the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. (And yes, "Stevens" is Senator "Tubes" Stevens of Alaska. He was a major force in getting this Bill passed and his colleague Don Young was a co-sponsor, so I’m sure there are some ethical problems embedded in the law).
According to the CSR report there were many pieces of legislation that may have been beneficial to LTFV. For example:
Seafood Processing. Division B, Title IV, §402 of P.L. 109-13 revised requirements for H-2B visas allowing certain seasonal immigrant seafood processing workers to enter the United States through October 1, 2006. S. 2284/H.R. 4740 would extend the revised visa requirements of P.L. 109-13 through October 1, 2009; §7 of H.R. 5058 would provide for market-based adjustment of annual nonimmigrant visa numerical limitations.
Tuna. In the 109th Congress, §421 of P.L. 109-241 (the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Act of 2006) allowed U.S. tuna vessels operating out of American Samoa to use non-United States licensed and documented personnel to meet manning requirements for four years. Additional measures have been introduced:
• H.R. 629 would extend certain tax credits, beneficial to American Samoa tuna canneries, through January 1, 2016.
• S. 599/H.R. 2816 would modify the duty treatment of tuna to specifically identify tuna packed in pouches, and would eliminate duties on certain tuna products imported from cited ASEAN nations.
• Section 405 of S. 2012 and §6 of H.R. 4686 would reauthorize the Atlantic Tunas Convention Act of 1975 (P.L. 94-70; 16 U.S.C. §§971 et seq.) through FY2012; the House Committee on Resources reported H.R. 4686 (amended) on April 27, 2006 (H.Rept. 109-444).
• Title V of S. 2012 would implement the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Convention. On April 4, 2006, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation reported (amended) S. 2012 (S.Rept. 109-229); the Senate passed S. 2012 (amended) on June 19, 2006.
Marketing and Labeling. S. 1300 would replace mandatory country-of-origin labeling for seafood with a voluntary program. Section 2 of H.R. 3562/S. 1556 would make the Specialty Crops Competitiveness Act of 2004 (P.L. 108-465) applicable to wild harvested fish and shellfish.
Another bit of legislation revised and reauthorized was The Marine Mammal Protection Act. This is the law designed to keep Flipper out of your tuna as well as protect other marine mammals from harm. One bit of legislation caught my eye:
H.R. 3839 would amend the MMPA to repeal the long-term goal for reducing to zero the incidental mortality and serious injury of marine mammals in commercial fishing operations, and to modify the goal of take reduction plans for reducing such takings.
It was introduced by Don Young (AK-AL) and I do not think it got out of committee. Still, it is a great example of the Republican mindset: converting a real goal into an "aspirational" goal that allows the spirit of the law to be violated. It seems the Congressman from Alaska likes a little Flipper with his tuna melt, but I digress.
The legislation cited in the CSR report is only a start when researching corruption. It helps to point where to dig, but these laws are complex. Not every proposal became law and often the item of biggest benefit to a "funder" like the Tan Family is a small line hidden in the language of the Bill. And this does not even touch appropriations or actions from the Executive Branch.
I have dug enough to know that there is smoke here and so I’ll keep digging. I expect that more research will yield a smoking gun that will be a problem for some politicians in the 2008 cycle. I mean who wants to run for re-election on a record of helping Chinese fleets over fish the Pacific, shark finning, live reef fishing and "acceptable" levels of dolphin kills? This should make the races in Alaska a bit more fun.
Last year, I identified the Abramoff 65, a group of Republican candidates that had multiple connections to Jack Abramoff and his web of scandals. This work had an impact in November and we defeated 20 of them.
As I put this list together, there were a few red flags that automatically got a politician on the list. A big flag was anybody who received money directly from members of the Tan Family and their key employees. Whenever I have found a Republican with this link it has always led to more scandal details. Now, I guess there could always be exceptions, but I have never come across a case of the Tan Family giving away a dime to anybody without a reason. Money is a tool for them and they have built an empire because they know how to use it to their advantage.
This year, their big legislative goal is blocking reforms to end their system of abuse in the CNMI. The current CNMI Governor and most of his team are former Tan Family employees and they do the bidding of their patrons as loyally as a well-trained dog fetching a stick.
And the current goal is to remove any long-time worker who might get rights through Federal legislation and replace them with constant churn of new workers who can never be vested with rights.
To that end, an active purge is under way. The CNMI Government is deporting long-time workers, denying them healthcare, housing, justice and even money they are legally owed. They are extending their vindictiveness to children who are US Citizens who have the misfortune to have a foreign contract worker as a parent. These kids face a choice to be exiled with their soon to be deported parents or to stay behind and fend for themselves on one of the world’s leading centers of human trafficking and sexual tourism. (And all of this is happening under our Flag and on American soil).
Recently, the corrupt CNMI Governor signed a new local law, HB 15-38, the Alien Workers Act that was designed to punish long time foreign contract workers. It is a vindictive, insane and self-destructive law. And yet, it is normal operating procedure for the CNMI Kakistocracy.
This letter to the Saipan Tribune by Jim Benedetto detailed many of the problems. Benedetto is the US Ombudsman for Labor issues. He gets to watch as the abuse goes on and on and on and on. His power is limited, but he has been able to save some people. His office and mandate should be expanded by any reform legislation.
There are thousands of cases of labor abuse in the CNMI. For some justice is a matter of life and death. For others it is a matter of basic human dignity. Behind these stories are people. Like you and me. For most folks they are invisible. I plead with you to see them. I ask you to be their voice in America.
Please help and join the workers and others in the CNMI who want to end the years of injustice.
A new blog, Unheard No More, has been created to help workers tell their stories and provide folks on the mainland with resources, tips and details they can use—you can use—to end these long years of abuse on American soil. Here is what you can do:
You can help the guest workers. Legislation has been introduced in the Senate, S.1634 and in the House, H. R. 3079. Both bills would provide improvement to the crisis in the CNMI. Yet some essential elements that effective federal immigration and labor legislation must include are lacking. They are:
• Granting an unobstructed pathway to U.S. citizenship through green cards to guest workers who had been working lawfully in the CNMI for at least five years as of January 1, 2007 and/or have been working lawfully in the CNMI for at least five years as of the date the legislation becomes law;
• Granting a pathway to citizenship for the immediate relatives of the guest workers who acquire U.S citizenship under this legislation;
• Granting immediate U.S. citizenship to parents of the U.S. citizen children in the CNMI on the date the legislation becomes law;
• Federalizing all CNMI labor, asylum, and immigration and visa programs;
• Requiring future foreign guest workers to complete exit interviews to ensure they have no unsettled labor and/or criminal cases; and
• Properly funding and staffing the U.S. Departments of Justice and Labor in the CNMI to ensure the safety and human rights of guest workers and the community.
Please be a voice for the voiceless guest workers.
Please contact key members of Congress, members of the House Natural Resources Committee, members of the House Subcommittee on Insular Affairs, and members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Ask them to amend the bills to include the essential elements listed above.
This Friday, December 7, a massive Unity March will be held on Saipan. Guest workers, relocated US Citizens and members of the indigenous Chamorro/Carolinian population will gather to protest the Alien Workers Act and to support extending Federalizing CNMI immigration, custom and labor laws.
Reports will be posted at Unheard No More. These are courageous people taking to the streets to demand justice. They have earned and deserve your support.
We used the stories of abuse on the Marianas Islands and exploited the real people behind those abuse narratives to win control of Congress.
In our 2006 bargain to elect Jon Tester, or Jerry McNerney or Kirsten Gillibrand or any of the other Abramoff 65 we defeated, we implicitly promise these workers relief and we promised the American people that we would clean up the mess of Republican corruption left on the CNMI.
It is time to keep our promise.
It is time to end this.
Let get this done!
Cheers.