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Dr. Kristin Shrader-Frechette is the O’Neill Family Endowed Professor in the Department of Biological Science and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. In her most recent book, Taking Action Saving Lives: Our Duties to Protect Environmental and Public Health, she shows how campaign contributions, lobbyists and their control of media, advertisements, and PR can all conspire to manipulate scientific information, withhold data, cover-up pollution-related disease and death, and “capture” regulators. To circumvent this mis-information she urges citizens to become the change they seek. In the excerpt below Shrader-Frechette looks at public citizens can push for reforms.

…The first step, getting information about public-health threats, is both the easiest and the hardest… It is the easiest because it may require nothing beyond reading and thinking, something people can do daily. It is the hardest because…special interests sometimes distort available information. In addition, many citizens receive their information only from limited and perhaps biased sources. Often people fail to get opinions and evidence from the greatest variety of people and groups possible. Many citizens likewise have not made the lifestyle commitments necessary to remain informed about public health. Instead, they may spend too much time on activities like television. As a result, citizens may have a false complacency that allows unscrupulous groups to “whitewash” or “greenwash” their behavior. Whitewash of course, can arise from any agenda-driven groups-environmental organizations, churches, labor unions, corporations, and even government agencies. The greater the group’s economic or social power, the greater their potential threat to legitimate information-as the recent coverup of sexual predators in the Roman Catholic Church reveals…Because corporate groups donate about 80 percent of U.S. campaign contributions and spend about 100 times more dollars on scientific research than do environmental groups, their greater power and potential for abuse suggests that their behavior out to receive proportionate scrutiny from those seeking reliable information.

Cooperating with others is the second step… Cooperation is difficult because people frequently recognize its necessity only when they see some threat before them. Yet often no threat is obvious until after people have already cooperated and thus gained public-health information…One health related NGO is Bread For the World. Promoting food assistance and child immunization in developing nations, it offers “action kits” that show citizens how to support its food and public-health programs. It is a valuable source of both health information and cooperation. As this example suggests, however, cooperatively working with such an NGO is not merely a matter o paying annual dues or reading a book. It involves keeping informed, helping to educate others, and supporting ongoing group activities and meetings. It involves commitments of both time and money-organizing, leafleting, educating, canvassing, and other activities characteristic of deliberative democracy. Without cooperation through a variety of focused groups, like Bread For the World, it is difficult for citizens to obtain accurate information, to evaluate conflicting viewpoints, to succeed in alleviating societal problems, or to sustain and motivate their own efforts to do good. The reason? If the social model of gaining knowledge…is correct, cooperation and cognitive division of labor are necessary to make much information readily available. The U.S. founding fathers and mothers recognized this point and organized New England town meetings…Such cooperative ideals identify deliberative democracy not with structures or institutions but instead with processes of wide communication among various people and social sectors. These processes are necessary both to build democratic consensus and to debate and amend conflicting social proposals.

A third step…is evaluating health threats and alternative solutions to them. This likewise is something best achieved through open interaction with a variety of other people and points of view. Yet most citizens associate only with certain groups of people and typically hear only a few points of view. As a result, their evaluations of social problems are often incomplete. To understand public-health threats, people need to hear a diversity of opinions about them. they also need emotive, narrative, and scientific or factual understanding, as well as ongoing evaluation-vigilance and criticism…One way of exercising such vigilance, at least in scientific evaluation, is to look for the characteristic errors of private-interest science…Another way is to avoid acting on the basis of unevaluated opinions that have not survived the testing and analysis…This means that people..need to aim at evaluation that is open, transparent, empirical, accessible to all, and democrative…

Evaluation is particularly necessary if citizens who hope to reform life-threatening social institutions find themselves at odds with at least some members of those institutions. If they are eventually forced into whistle-blowing…or into civil disobedience…their actions will require special evaluation…

Most ethicists believe that whistleblowing is justified only if four conditions, analogous to those for civil disobediance, are met. (1) The policy seriously threatens the public. (2) It cannot be overturned within a reasonable period of time through normal, internal channels. (3) Whistleblowing is likely to be effective in overturning the policy. (4) The whistleblowing will not violate any higher ethical obligations. Failure to meet any of these conditions typically makes whistleblowing unethical. Often this means it is unfair to the accused or endangers the whistleblower.

Organized action, the fourth step… is a natural response to the three previous steps…because individuals acting alone often can do little to help correct public-health problems, concerted and well-organized collective action usually is necessary. That is why the 50,000-member American Public Health Association (APHA) encourages “work in coalition,” including “advocacy and litigation.” Through organizations like “public-interest law groups” APHA says citizens can help exercise their “maximum responsiblity” for public health. Explaining its activities on its website, the APHA says it “has been influencing policies and setting priorities in public health for over 125 years.” It claims to serve the public not only “through its scientific practice programs” but also through its “advocacy efforts.” Showing how such advocacy and organized action can help overcome citizens’ feelings of fustration and powerlessness….organized action must build on small wins and on personal transformation-working to become virtuous onself, to become the change one seeks. Because it is so easy for advocates and any special interests to fall into bias, however, it is important to evaluate all collective actions from alternative points of view. This includes evalutating different proposed beliefs and actions, including doing nothing. In fact, organized and enlightened responses to the responsibility arguement require ongoing and iterative evaluation of alternative perspectices and actions. This continuing evaluation is important to help make oganized action less self-serving and more affirming to those who have been disenfranchised. As philosophers Hilary Putnam and John Dewey recognized, evaluation also is necessary to keep collective policies and actions inclusive, participative, and objective.

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I'm still tracking through the new labor law, and I'm still on the purposes. (Part 1 is posted at Post # 160.) There are some good statements in the purposes with which I agree, and a few more subtle assumptions with which I disagree.

On the good side, these statements:

"...a minimum wage rate may not be sufficient to attract citizens and permanent
residents to take a job for which they are qualified."

And this:

"Wage rates will not rise so long as cheap foreign labor is available."

And this:

"The Commonwealth has the responsibility to provide fair employment conditions
for foreign nationals, to use their labor for the purposes of economic growth
and stability for which it was intended, and to regulate labor practices in
order to protect against potential abuses."

But then the law seems to eschew the most obvious means of addressing these issues: 1) a higher minimum wage; 2) a real and enforced moratorium / limit on the number of foreign workers in the CNMI; and 3) application and enforcement of all federal labor laws; promotion of unions; and, most importantly, treatment of all workers equally.

The purposes section promotes the idea that locals need to have less competition to get the jobs they "should" have, and those jobs should be the ones for which they are "educated"--the management and professional jobs.




Some of the problems in this part of the purposes section:

"The Commonwealth's goal is to establish a regulatory environment so that jobs
are available for its qualified high school, college, and graduate school
graduates."

The market place generally favors the more educated worker with higher wages, but the under-educated (those who have dropped out of school before getting a high school diploma) can contribute valuable skills and labor to a healthy economy. They should not be ignored. The policy of the government should not continue this prejudice against blue-collar work!




Another problematic statement of purpose:

"If the job is reserved for citizens and permanent residents, then the
competitive economy will cause the wage rate to rise to a level that citizens
and permanent residents find acceptable."

The CNMI Labor Department has failed to classify jobs for the past 25 years, and has allowed employers to hire foreign workers at minimum wage for jobs like accountant and engineer! We do not need to "reserve" jobs for the CNMI local residents to push up the wage. We do not need to perpetuate a two-tiered system of labor-with local workers in designated (high-paying) segments and foreign workers in the other (low-paying) jobs. This type of system invites abuse. The preference for U.S. and permanent resident workers is legitimate and needs to be enforced. But we need to enforce that preference in all job categories, and not create a two-tiered system of labor. We need our work force to work together, not separately.

There is another way of addressing the issue of artificially depressed wages in professional, management, and skilled jobs. Besides increasing the minimum wage-which encourages greater participation by everyone in the labor market, the CNMI Labor Department can set ranges/brackets of reasonable wages that must be offered for certain types of jobs if foreign workers will be used. This is less problematic on an equal protection basis than barring foreign workers outright from jobs. If our minimum wage is 50% of the U.S. minimum, then the range for an accountant's position could be 50% of what accountants earn in the U.S. When the job is advertised, resident workers can see the potential for greater earnings than minimum wage. This doesn't make us competitive or on par with the lure of the U.S., but is does provide for a balanced and consistent wage structure. And this benefits everyone. Many people who live here want to stay and willingly earn less than in the U.S. in exchange for the many beautiful and beneficial offerings the CNMI offers. The resident work force that is attracted to the higher paying jobs in the local economy can get these jobs if they want.



And yet another problem in the statement of purpose:

"The overall guiding policy with respect to foreign national workers is to
provide for a stable work force and protect due process rights without creating
entitlements."

It is that last bit--without creating entitlements--that I find troublesome. Our government has let in a huge number of alien workers over the past quarter century. They are not automatons, robots, who work and earn their pay and have no human life. They are people, with relationships, children, ties to our community. This bit of the purposes ignores the reality that has already occurred from the decisions of our leaders to allow this long-term alien population in the CNMI. Their children are U.S. citizens, born here. The children have entitlements that are shared by all U.S. citizens. These children, upon reaching 21, can petition their parents into the U.S. for green card (immediate relative) status. These children will vote in CNMI elections.

The fear that our local island population will be over-run by a "foreign" resident population is misdirected at the alien population. Our leaders have ensured this result by their decisions of the past, despite warnings, despite encouragements to have moratoriums on hiring foreign workers. It it too late to take back the CNMI from the natural consequences of the decisions CNMI Chamorro and Carolinian elected officials have made.

When I first arrived in the CNMI, we had a "permanent resident" law included in our CNMI code. It was repealed, on much the same thinking as now proposed in P.L. 15-108--the idea that the way to protect a cultural heritage is to deny others equal political status. This does not protect culture of any worthy kind. It only promotes evil.




One last bit before I close this long post:

"It is the intent of the Legislature that this Act shall not apply to persons
admitted to the Commonweatlh as tourists, or to persons employed illegally, i.e.
without the approval of the Department of Labor, or to those persons employing
others illegally in the Commonwealth unless specific provision has been made
herein."

The CNMI government is painfully aware that we have a human trafficking problem. Despite their repeated efforts to cover up current abuses and their insistence that the problem is a thing of the past, we keep seeing this. Especially in the sex industry--today's story is Club Jama. We've had the Red Heart Lounge, and the StarDust and Star Light nightclubs and others--all in the last two or three years.

When girls and women are trafficked into the CNMI they are almost always brought in as tourists, and then forced to dance naked or prostitute, kept locked in barracks or escorted everywhere they go.

Before P.L. 15-108, these girls and women could file labor complaints. And the Labor Department was fairly good at investigating. Now trafficking victims can't get this help. I think this is just another means the CNMI government is using to hide the reality of human trafficking in the CNMI. Workers, whether lawfully employed or tricked into unlawful employment, or foolish enough to agree to unlawful employment, are still laborers and deserve the protection of labor laws. It's not enough that the government may take up the case for the trafficking victims. They need easy access to a complaint mechanism that other workers have, too.



I'm not impressed by the purposes of P.L. 15-108. A law built on this foundation cannot be a good labor bill for the CNMI.

jmho.

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P.L. 15-108 is 71 pages long. So I'm going to comment on bits and pieces of it, as I plow through it. These are my initial thoughts. I may revise them as I get to other sections of the law. I may re-think my positions and analysis as information or other comments come to light.

And because the bill is 71 pages long, I won't comment on everything. I haven't formed any strong feelings based on the coverage yet. I've been somewhat amused by all of the back-and-forth debate, wondering how much of it is just over-reaction and how much is warranted.


So here goes--my first foray into P.L. 15-108:

I got to the bottom of page 1 without screaming. Already I didn't like what I was reading. The law begins as most laws do with a statement of "findings" and "purposes." These are often instructive in how the language of the law should be interpreted, so I like to read these.

But this one starts with a purpose of achieving more employment for resident workers. That would be good. But I didn't like the "finding" written into the law that Chamorros and Carolinians should get even more preference than U.S. citizens and U.S. Permanent Residents for training and hiring. I think the notion that such preference is desireable goes against the fundamental freedoms of our U.S. and CNMI Constitutions that provide for equal protection.

And I didn't like the inference that locals should be groomed for management only jobs. I'm not fond of the prejudice against blue-collar work. It crops up again and again here. I don't think it makes economic sense. It runs directly counter to what economists (quoted in our local papers from sources like Wall Street Journal and other reputable business-oriented publications) are saying is the bedrock of an economy that can grow and thrive. And I find the prejudice against blue-collar work morally offensive.

So by the bottom of page 1, I'm not liking this bill much.

At page two, I found this:

The Covenant envisioned the employment of foreign nationals in the Commonwealth in order to create an economic base that would provide the citizens of the Commonwealth the economic opportunities and standard of living that their counterparts on the mainland are able to enjoy because of the vast area and large population from which communities on the mainland may draw employees.

What does this mean? It sounds to me like we get rich off the backs of cheap foreign labor. And we don't dirty our hands with the work ourselves. And that's our glorious vision for the CNMI.

And this purpose is "esteemed" because it's written into our Covenant. It's a bedrock principal!


I've read the Covenant. I've read the committee reports that constitute the legislative history of the Covenant. No where is there any such purpose stated.

The Covenant provided for local control over immigration in order to avoid problems with too many foreign nationals coming into a small community. The worry was not that we needed labor to sustain our industry; we could get that with U.S. controlled immigration. The worry was that the U.S. controlled immigration would not be responsive to our small, local issues and would allow foreign labor to overrun the island and change its character.

How do I know this? I wasn't here then, but as I've said, I read the reports. None of the reports--the House Committee Report (#94-364), the Senate Committee Reports (#94-433, 94-596), the Marianas Political Status Commission Memorandum, the Administration Memorandum, all assembed in a handy Section By Section Analysis prepared by Herman Marcuse of the Department of Justice--mention anything about providing cheap foreign labor so the locals could use them to raise their standard of living. The only comment about the reason for local control over immigration is this, from the Senate Committee Report, echoed in the Administration's Memorandum:

The Immigration and Naturalization Laws (subsection (a) [of Covenant sec. 503]. The reason this provision is included is to cope with the problems which unrestricted immigration may impose upon small island communities. Congress is aware of those problems. See, e.g., Alien Labor Program in Guam, Hearing before the Special Study Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, 93d Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 19-25.

The vision of the CNMI's founding fathers was local control of immigration to limit the numbers of foreign workers. How badly did we screw up? Our government let in unlimited numbers of foreign workers, and we are overrun. And now our local population is a minority in its own place. That was exactly what the Covenant was supposed to protect against, but didnt work out.

So the "vision" now espoused in this latest law, because we can't admit that we made mistakes and didn't live up to the real vision, is one that our Legislators have concocted, not one that was built into our Covenant.

And it's an awful vision.

With this vision, I see the people of the CNMI standing on the back and necks of the poor foreign workers. While the people of the CNMI enjoy middle class life, the foreign labor eats the dust on the floor.

That's what these words say to me. That's what is hidden in the text of the purposes. That we must have a social stratification, where locals are the owners and managers and foreigners are the peons.

And it's wrapped up in red, white, and blue--saying that this is what they have in the U.S. and we want it too!

And that's another distortion. In the mainland U.S., all people can enjoy the benefits of the large populaton and industry that can be built with it, but all people are entitled to be treated equally, too. The workers in those factories are U.S. citizens who organize into unions and bargain for better wages and benefits. The owners can't deport them when they complain.

The stated purpose of P.L. 15-108 is designed to keep foreign workers in subjugation to us.

Is there some other reading of this purpose? Is it just a neutral saying that we need foreign workers because we don't have enough local labor force to maintain industries?

I don't think so, because then it would say that we are employing foreign workers to help us create an economic base, where all people in the CNMI could enjoy a better standard of living.

The specific design of this purpose puts the workers on the economic base side and the locals on the enjoying a better life. There's no shared work and no shared benefit. That's by design.

As a purpose for a law that governs how we live, we should be striving for a higher, more ethical way of life. This island if filled with "Christians." Christ argued for a living wage, not exaltation of locals over foreigners. Not special preferences at the expense of others. Christ was a blue collar worker--a carpenter.

We have a long way to go, and a lot of wrong thinking to overcome. Our legislators and Governor should hang their heads in shame for allowing this purpose to be included in P.L. 15-108.





As a small side note: I'm sure someone will say why didn't I address these comments when the bill was being considered. The simple answer is, I can't unless I receive a specific written invitation directed to me (and not the general public or general bar association, etc.). I work for an organization that has regulations prohibiting comment to influence legislation, unless specifically solicited. (And even when I receive a request, I'm sometimes too busy to put my professional time into it. This blog, I do on my own time.) Once a law is passed, it becomes fair game and I'm free to comment.

As another small note: It shouldn't take a comment from me for our Legislators to see how offensive these findings and purposes are. Or to read the Covenant and the historical documents and see what was really said, what the true purpose was.

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