Schaffer says islands trip was fact-finding tour of sweatshops

By Lynn Bartels, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Friday, April 11, 2008

Former congressman Bob Schaffer says the night he landed in Saipan to review working conditions in the U.S. territory, he demanded an immediate tour of a garment factory he heard had an unsavory reputation.

A welcoming committee wanted to take Schaffer to his hotel, he said, but he prevailed. He said he found women working in a "sweatshop," and demanded leaders of the Northern Mariana Islands investigate.

"I was told that shortly after I left (the Marianas) that the factory was shut down," he said Friday, stressing he never verified the information.

The 1999 trip to Mariana Islands, arranged in part by now disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff's firm and a California-based religious group, received scant attention at the time.

But the trip has become an issue in Schaffer's U.S. Senate bid after the Fort Collins Republican held up the islands' guest-worker program as a potential model for Congress to consider as it studies immigration reform.

Schaffer's campaign manager, Dick Wadhams, said Schaffer visited the islands to see if reports about atrocious working conditions were true.

"Let me say as strongly and definitively as I can that Bob Schaffer did not know, does not know Jack Abramoff," Wadhams said.

But Democrats have ripped Schaffer for praising the program, despite documented abuses.

And they point to various newspaper reports and an internal Abramoff memo about an intense lobbying effort by the islands to make sure Congress didn't impose wage and labor laws on the islands. The islands hired Abramoff's firm to handle the lobbying.

Schaffer faces U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, D-Eldorado Springs, in November.

Schaffer viewed a number of factories during his four-day free trip, which also included sight-seeing and parasailing with his wife.

He said he selected the factories he visited, and chose some places mentioned in human-rights reports.

"We found varying conditions," Schaffer said. "We found some unsafe working environments and some were very well run."

He said he was able to talk to some workers privately about their conditions.

Schaffer said he also met with one of the attorneys who filed a class-action lawsuit, alleging slum conditions and abuses in paying the thousands of foreign workers recruited to work in the textile industry.

A 1998 Department of the Interior report found that workers who thought they were coming to the United States, not a territory, were lured there with promises of high wages, but received little pay and and often worked and lived in substandard conditions.

The report also told about workers who said that if they became pregnant they were forced to get an abortion.

Schaffer said he discussed that issue with the Catholic bishop and other Catholic leaders.

"None of them could confirm any examples or episodes of this," he said.

Schaffer singled out the Mariana Islands' guest worker program in an interview in the Denver Post published Monday.

Bloggers and liberal groups responded by pointing out the territory's treatment of guest-worker programs and Abramoff's role.

Taylor West, Udall's spokeswoman, ripped Schaffer.

"Report after report had already proven de facto slavery and forced abortions, but all Bob Schaffer claims to find are 'smiling, happy' workers. It's clear he was more interested in Abramoff-sponsored parasailing than any real investigation," she said.

bartels@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5327

• April 12, 2008

  12:18 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  Withheld_99 writes:

  Saipan has huge problems. There isn't anything "model" about it. Look it up - most workers are from China, they have no rights under Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands law, abuse of workers is common, etc., etc. The Udall spokesman wasn't lying (for once.)
  Schaffer was sucked in by the Abramoff machine, no doubt about it. So have a ton of others from BOTH parties. They all need to be ashamed, rehabbed, whatever.
  The real shame is that Colorado has the same lack of great candidates for Senate as the national parties have for President.

• April 12, 2008

  6:24 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  angka writes:

  Why does this article omit the numerous donations from Saipan business figures to Schaffer, such as the Tan Holdings (major sweatshop operator) money? Or his very public support for Gov. Benigno Fitial, who has fought reform in the CNMI at every step and was instrumental in keeping renewing Abramoff's lobbying contract? Or Schaffer's initial dismissal of reports of abuses as a "union fight?"

  There is MUCH MORE to this story. Please follow up!

• April 12, 2008

  8:06 a.m.

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  Froward69 writes:

  Stumping for Big Oil Bob...

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY6MhU....

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BliOre....

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaBL4X....

• April 12, 2008

  8:19 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  Froward69 writes:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BliOre...

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY6MhU...

• April 12, 2008

  8:27 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  Froward69 writes:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-DZsj...

• April 12, 2008

  10:09 a.m.

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  HolierThanThou writes:

  I love vacationing with the wife, relaxing while listening to the sounds of slaps, punching, and sobs as working stiffs are forced to endure 16 hour days of tedious labor earning no more than four cents an hour. Those margaritas taste so good as I think about the brackish water being gulped down by those poor suckers who thought they were going to America. Ha ha ha! Life is good!

  Those dumb laborers should have stayed in school and got a college education like me. But they chose to quit before finishing college. Everyone knows that a university education is free! If it ain't then you kids ought to be working to earn your tuition.

  Then I sleep well at night knowing that outside my luxurious hotel compound (thanks Jack!) there are women being raped by their managers. They live in squalid, rat-infested huts. So, a night in the comfy confines of a manager is a privilege for them. Not to worry if they get pregnant while being thousands of miles away from their husbands. The abortion clinic will take care of the problem.

  Yes! I call this a "Bob Schaffer" vacation in honor of the man who taught me that I can take a vacation from my conscience.

• April 12, 2008

  10:58 a.m.

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  The_Punnisher writes:

  I wonder what other " shops " in Saipan he visited too....

  http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigati...

  You are known by the company you keep. In other words, " Birds of a feather flock together ".

• April 12, 2008

  11:35 a.m.

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  truth_teller writes:

  How do you go on a fact finding mission when you do not know who is paying for the trip? That is fact number one.

  What did Bob do ab out it? Did he pass legislation? Of course not. It was a boon doggle. Did he do anything other than travel half way around the world?

  Why did the Department of Interior make up a story that there was forced abortions?

  Turn out the lights. It is over. You are not going to be a senator.

  Dick Wadhams has become the guy who can lose any senate race. He blew a 54 point lead in Virginia. Now he has blown it again. Maybe-just maybe-he has no idea what he is doing. Too bad. So sad.

• April 12, 2008

  3:51 p.m.

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  jackwoehr writes:

  Wadhams was a product of a different time, when the fiscal bankruptcy of deficit-spending neoconservativism wasn't yet obvious to the masses. He can't get traction anymore by grasping for the core constituency because as the economy evaporates, so does the unity of the religious vote.

• April 14, 2008

  9 p.m.

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  YellowCatRedCat writes:

  Unfortunately for Sweatshop Schaffer, this SquareState post proves him to be lying:

  http://www.squarestate.net/showDiary....

  Goodbye campaign!!

  Oh, and read the Denver Post articles, which give the issue a MUCH better fact-based investigation - links available here:

  http://www.squarestate.net/showDiary....