Sputtering

Unions

Two Samoas, two union actions, but two different approaches to worker disputes

By David North

TWO efforts to form unions have failed in the Samoas, more drastically in Western Samoa than in American Samoa.

In Western Samoa the object was the Yazaki plant which assembles electrical harnesses for autos, the action was an attempted strike, and the persistent strikers have been fired; there was virtually no off-island resources used for the workers.

In American Samoa, on the other hand, the action was a managed election on whether the work ers wanted to be represented by the Mainland Teamsters union, which fought a hard, expensive and ultimately losing battle. But no one lost his job, and management’s margin of victory was tighter than in previous, similar battles.

There are some similarities in the situations, and some differences. All the firms involved are owned by off-island interests; Yazaki by Japanese investors, and the two tuna canneries by United States and Thai corporations. The firms have come to the Samoas not to process local products, but seeking low wages. (In the case of the tuna packers low wages within the US customs shield, as canned tuna is protected by a US tariff).

Further, in both places Western Samoans

do the work, and in both, the political establishment came down hard on the side of management.

The principal difference is the wages; Western Samoans working for Yazaki get about 62 US cents an hour (1.24 tala), while in American Samoa their countrymen earn close to US$3.OO an hour.

The Yazaki strike was not well planned, or perhaps not planned at all.

According to Patrick Fepulea’i, the attorney brought in by the strikers after some of the workers had been arrested, neither he nor the government saw the strike coming. It was voted upon, almost spontaneously, at a meeting of about half the 1400 or so member Yazaki work force. No professional union organisers (like the Teamsters) were on hand when the strike started, and unlike the US Mainland, there was no strike fund established to help workers through the economic pinch that accompanies all strikes.

There is virtually no tradition of factory work in Western Samoa (Yazaki is a relative newcomer to the island), and the specific duties required are said to be vigorous; further, the tough Japanese style-management irritated some of the workers. There were reports that if a worker spent too long in a toilet stall, a foreman would bang on the door and demand the worker get back to the assembly line. All this and the low wages set off the work stoppage. (Management refused to return PlM’s repeated phone calls about the strike.) The strikers found they had few friends in high places. The Prime Minister, Tofilau Eti Alesana, criticised the strike as evidence of “foreign ideas”; the police roughed up the strikers and arrested seven of them. After the strike was underway, and losing supporters daily, two palagi union officials, one from Australia and one from New Zealand, appeared on the scene, in an effort to minimise the damage. Soon thereafter the strikers who had not returned to the

assembly line were fired by the company.

In the course of the dispute much was made of the significance of Yazaki to the Western Samoan economy, claims which shrink upon careful examination. For example, the statement was made repeat edly, by Western Samoan government sources, that Yazaki accounted for “more than 80 per cent of the nation’s exports”.

According to the World Bank, West ern Samoa exports of goods and services were running at the USS 94 million level in 1990, before the arrival of Yazaki, dropping to $BO million the following year. We were told the auto parts made by the company were worth about $3O million by the Western Samoan Depart ment of Economic Development, while a press report put the figure at “tens of millions of dollars”. Thirty million is not 80 per cent of 80 million.

Further, at the wage of 62 cents an hour, reported to PIM by Western Samoa’s Labour Commissioner, Tate Simi, the total wage bill for the reported 1400 workers, at 2000 hours a year, comes to about US$2OOO,OOO. This calculation of PlM’s was “roughly cor rect” according to Simi.

If one is thinking in terms of economic value to a nation, the size of the wage bill is Yazaki’s contribution to the islands, as all the raw materials are imported, and as Yazaki has a 10-year tax holiday. The actual value of the electrical harnesses may be $3O million as they arrive in Australia, New Zealand and Japan, but much of that value has no bearing on Western Samoa, as it relates largely to raw materials imported into Western Samoa, and profits, if any, that remain in Japan.

Labour Commissioner Simi is prepar ing a report for his boss, the Labour Minister, on the strike and its aftermath.

While he would not share his findings with us, he did indicate there was no pre existing legal framework for such a dispute in Western Samoa. In contrast, in American Samoa the National Labour Relations Board managed a represen tation election for the workers, using precedents dating back more than 50 years.