Homestead mailing list

[Don Bowen <don.bowen AT earthlink.net>]

At 12/21/2004, you wrote:
> Rural Exodus for Work Fractures Chinese Family
> By JIM YARDLEY

Saipan is a in a common wealth of the United States.  As such they can in 
many ways set their own laws such as minimum wage.  There is very little on 
the island to exploit other than tourists.  So what they have done is set 
the minimum wage to $3.05 an hour and invited in the garment sweat 
shops.  Hundreds of women, mostly from mainland china come to Saipan to 
live in dilapidated barracks, work in conditions that even Dickens would 
find deplorable, all for $3.05 an hour with no overtime, minus room and 
board with no health coverage.  So to help out at home they turn to the 
other huge industry, Japanese tourists.

Japanese men seem to look for places of easy sex and the local tourist 
board turns a blind eye to garment workers doing a little outside 
income.  Just don't get caught if you are a woman,  Men get sent back to 
the hotel but women get sent to jail then back home.  And most of those 
women are married with a family back home and do this so they can get on 
the consumer goods wagon.

Don Bowen
Awl Knotted Up Woodworking
Valley Center, CA             http://www.braingarage.com