fishy business

Pago Pago’s fishy business

By David North

PAGO Pago’s 3600 tuna cannery workers have a Washington established minimum wage of US$2.B2 an hour and are, in fact, paid a little more than that. America’s other factory workers have a minimum wage of $3.80 an hour, and most are paid more.

That wage difference is likely to persist and widen as a result of a fast-breaking political struggle which is both compli cated and one-sided.

The tuna workers, most of whom are from Western Samoa, work for two huge, multi-national corporations whose prod uct - canned tuna —is protected by US tariffs. Americans love canned tuna, they buy about $l.B billion worth a year.

The workers would like a raise. If they got 80 more cents an hour, the 3600 of them would share $5.76 million a year.

They probably will not get it. Why? • a powerful, well-connected, bi partisan, political coalition is working smoothly to keep tuna workers’ wages low. • no one speaks up for the workers • the issue is both so obscure and so complex that there has been no press attention the process is going on in the dark.

The firms involved are US-based HJ.

Heinz Company, which packs the Starkist brand, and Indonesian-owned VCS Samoa Packing, which has the Chicken of the Sea brand. The players on one side of the issue are: the Republican Governor of Samoa, Peter T ali Coleman, his Democratic rival, Congressman Eni F.H. Faleomaveaga, US Labor Sec retary Elizabeth Dole (who is married to the Republican leader of the U.S.

Senate), the rest of the Bush Adminis tration, Senator Robert McClure, of Idaho (the Republican’ specialist on the islands), the Democratic leadership of the House Labor Committee, and the wealthy tuna-packing industry.

On the other side are the silent and unorganised tuna workers and a trio of obscure Mainland labour leaders: one is in Washington, while the other two, both Irish-Americans, both Teamsters Union officials, work in Boston and New York.

Virtually all U.S, Mainland workers,

after a Reagan-imposed, decade-long

freeze in the minimum wage, got a raise in the minimum to $3.80 on April 1 and will get anther, to $4.25 an hour next April 1. Most Mainland workers are paid more than these rates, which tend to apply to only 4 5 per cent of the U.S. workforce.

In American Samoa, two years, a

board appointed by the Secretary of

Labor establishes the dozen or so differ ent minimum wages there.

The American Samoan economy re volves around Mainland tax-funded subsidies, and the Mainland appetite for tuna; the special minimum wage applies to both parts of the economy. Governor Coleman opposes an increase in the minimum wage for both the Territory’s

own employees and those working at the tuna canneries. If the minimum wage were raised sharply for the

government’s

workers, he would either have to lay off some of them or raise taxes, neither

politically desir

able. As for the tuna workers, his concern, and that

‘We have looked at the books ... American Samoa is the second most expensive place to pack tuna’

of Congressman Faleomavaega, is based on the threats laid on by the canneries: keep wages low or we will move jobs to other, lower-wage islands. In contrast to his position on the minimum wage, Faleomavaega has pressed the canneries to provide paid holidays and vacations for their workers but without results so far, American Samoa, lulled by generous U.S. funding and by the presence of the tuna plants, has an otherwise sleepy economy. The tuna plants are the only factories. Were they, in fact, to move away, the islands would have a major recession.

But that is unlikely. The tuna companies have two strong reasons for staying in American Samoa; it is the

cheapest place under the American flag to pack tuna and the flagged location gives them protective tariffs ranging from 6 per cent to 30 per cent; and they have tens of millions of dollars invested in their plants. But the threat to move, stressed recently by the closing of a small cannery in Puerto Rico, terrifies the politicians.

“We don’t think it is a bluff,” said one congressional staff. “We have looked at the books and know that American Samoa is the second most-expensive place in the world to pack tuna.” The most expensive is Puerto Rico, which pays the Mainland minimum wage.

Meanwhile, and apparently by acci dent, a long-standing provision in the U.S. Minimum Wage Act, previously applied to Puerto Rico, was applied to American Samoa when the 1989 amend ments went through Congress. This provision requires that an American Samoan employer wanting to be excused from the coverage of the Mainland minimum must open its books to show that it would be adversely affected by the application of the regular minimum wage.

“We do not know why the tuna packers are worried about it, unless they are unwilling to show the extent of their profits,’’said John Zalusky, a labour union official dealing with the matter.

Zalusky, one of the few people in Washington following the issue for the workers, is with the national labour confederation, the AFL-CIO.

If anything, the tuna industry seems to be more opposed to opening its long closed books in its Pago Pago operations than it is to granting a pay raise.

The American tuna industry is in a stronger financial position than it is willing to admit. While there has been a substantial growth in imports in the last two decades, in each of the last five years the American industry has secured 70 per cent or more of the American retail market. The New York Times has esti mated that Heinz, alone, had an operat ing profit from its tuna activities of U. 5.5145 million in 1989. A glance at Heinz’s annual report shows that its operating profits are about twice the level of the firm’s net profits, so this would suggest a net profit on tuna of $72.5 million.

Compare, then, the cost of the 80-cent raise for all the Samoan workers, not just those working for Heinz: $5.76 million a year versus $72.5 million. □