Congressman Faleomavaega announced today that he is setting the record straight in response to a June 1, 2010 editorial by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) entitled, “The New Cannery Row; Congress wants $18 million to offset the jobs it destroyed in Samoa.”

“Although the WSJ is a conservative newspaper, on-line it bills itself as a neutral site for professors, teachers and educators.  But when reporting about American Samoa, the WSJ failed to follow the basic canons of journalism 101 which require truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness and public accountability,” Faleomavaega said. 

“While it is disappointing that the WSJ would make up a story to suit its purposes and suppress information that does not, read on for the truth about American Samoa’s tuna cannery workers and minimum wage rates in the U.S. territory.”

“Contrary to the WSJ’s claims that ‘Democrats followed union orders and…raised the minimum wage for low-skilled Samoan workers,’ it was actually Republican Congressman Mark Kirk of Illinois who introduced an amendment to the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans’ Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act of 2007 which required the minimum wage in American Samoa to be increased in a phased manner until it reached the same level as the rest of the United States.”

“Republican Congressman Mark Kirk is now running for the U.S. Senate and is under fire for exaggerating his military record, but that’s beside the point.  The point is, it was Republicans, not Democrats, who pushed to include American Samoa in the minimum wage legislation and wore stickers on the House Floor stating ‘Something’s Fishy’ when Democrats initially exempted American Samoa from increases due to its unique economy.”

“Republicans went so far as to accuse Speaker Pelosi of accepting campaign donations from Del Monte in exchange for American Samoa’s exemption, which also turned out to be a right-wing fabrication.  Speaker Pelosi never accepted a dime in campaign contributions from Del Monte, and neither did I.”

“Even so, the Republicans got their way and American Samoa was included in the final legislation.  So, if the policy is a failure, it is a Republican failure, and the Republicans should make it right, not by asking Samoans to ride in the back of the bus, but by supporting legislation which puts American Samoa back to work and ends the outsourcing of American jobs to foreign countries.”

“This is why I supported a one-time increase of $0.50 cents per hour for Samoan cannery workers whose wages have been suppressed for some 50-years, and this is why I asked for 30A to be converted in a way that makes sense for American Samoa, especially considering that the collapse of our tuna industry is due to foreign competition from countries like Thailand that pays workers $0.75 cents and less per hour and as a result of a transformational shift in the way that Bumble Bee and Chicken of the Sea, two of the three major brands of canned tuna, have chosen to do business.”

“Both Bumble Bee and Chicken of the Sea outsource the cleaning of tuna to cheap foreign labor and then employ skeletal crews of about 200 employees in either Puerto Rico, Georgia or California for purposes of taking advantage of U.S. duty-free treatment.  The federal government has caught on to this un-American way of doing business and now neither Bumble Bee nor Chicken of the Sea can qualify for the USDA’s Buy America program because their canned tuna just isn’t made-in-America anymore.”

“StarKist, which the WSJ criticized, qualifies for the Buy America program because StarKist still cleans whole fish in America, and is the only major brand of canned tuna to do so.  But, as a recently released report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) proves, tuna companies that outsource the cleaning of tuna to cheap foreign labor operate at a $17 million per year advantage over StarKist, American Samoa’s largest private-sector employer.”

“Yet with a $17 million per year advantage, Bumble Bee and Chicken of the Sea are aggressively opposing Congressional efforts to level the playing field for working families in American Samoa.  Both companies have tried to discredit our workforce, as has the WSJ, which referred to them as ‘low-skilled workers.’”

“For the record, Samoan workers are not low-skilled.  Samoan workers built the U.S. tuna industry into a multi-billion dollar industry, and this is a matter of history.  While today many of our workers are from the neighboring island of Samoa, they are legal permanent residents, married to our U.S. nationals and citizens, and their children are also U.S. nationals, which make them a part of us.”

“So, shame on the WSJ for mocking our call for help.  On September 29, American Samoa was hit by the most powerful earthquake of 2009 measuring 8.3 on the Richter scale.  The earthquake set off a massive tsunami with waves towering over 20 feet high that wiped out entire villages and left American Samoa teetering on the brink of economic collapse.  One day later after doing business in the territory for more than 50-years, Chicken of the Sea closed its operations in American Samoa and outsourced some 2,000 jobs to Thai Union, its parent company in Thailand.  Chicken of the Sea then hired a skeletal crew of about 200 workers in Lyons, Georgia where it immediately paid stateside workers twice as much as it ever paid one Samoan worker, and this is not right.” 

“In the aftermath of these indescribable happenings, American Samoa needs action and we need it now.  We don’t want a handout or a bailout.  We want to work.  And we deserve equal treatment under the law, including decent wages comparable with the cost of living.”
 
“Why should Samoans be asked to work for $3.25 and less per hour when workers in the rest of the U.S.A. are paid $7.25 per hour?  The United States Territory of American Samoa lies 2,300 miles southwest of Hawaii, covers a land area of 76 square miles, has a population of less than 70,000 and a per capita income of about $8,000 per year.  Because of American Samoa’s total dependence on imported fossil fuel and household commodities and goods, our costs for electricity, fuel, food and home construction are the same, if not higher, than other states and territories in America.”

“And as for the WSJ’s remarks about the American taxpayer footing our bill, let me remind our conservative friends at the WSJ that the sacrifice of American Samoa in the Iraq war was disproportionate to the territory’s small size, as residents of the territory were 15 times more likely to be killed in action in Iraq than residents of the United States as a whole.  So shame on the WSJ for implying we are not carrying our fair share of the load and are undeserving of support.”

“As fellow Americans who proudly serve our country with distinction and honor, the color of our skin may be dark but our blood still runs red, white and blue.  Remember this the next time some journalist at the WSJ suggests otherwise,” Faleomavaega concluded.