This is the third in a series of articles responding to three front-page articles in the Denver Post by reporter Michael Riley which attack former Congressman and current Senate candidate Bob Schaffer for a fact-finding trip Schaffer took to the Northern Marianas Islands (“CNMI”) in 1999.

Schaffer’s schedule and findings

While Denver Post reporter Riley notes correctly that Bob Schaffer left the CNMI believing that allegations of abuse were largely unfounded, Schaffer approached the trip with real concern: Despite the fact that, according to Schaffer, “most of the reports (alleging violations) were loaded with references to anonymous sources…(and) many referred to abusive factories and people who were long gone by 1999, I did take the allegations seriously and they became the basis for the schedule I set for our team and the kinds of questions we posed and the many personnel records we requested and obtained.” The process by which Schaffer reached his conclusions is critical to understanding Schaffer’s serious intent of uncovering violations of human rights if they were indeed occurring.

According to Schaffer, “this is where my experience as a State Senator, doing investigation and oversight, came in handy. It took me only a day to learn how their guest worker system functioned, how they tracked workers, how the paperwork flowed, and so on. That made us very efficient.”

It has been confirmed to me by multiple sources that Schaffer explicitly refused to follow a schedule of factory visits proposed by the CNMI government or the garment industry. Schaffer did his own research on garment factories on Saipan and set his own schedule, particularly trying to visit factories where trouble might be found.

Schaffer, along with his wife, a congressional staffer, and two TVC’s officials (Andrea Lafferty and her father, the Reverend Lou Sheldon, who founded TVC), visited factories and interviewed workers, as well as visiting social service organizations and religious organizations, without a government or garment industry person accompanying them, so they could try to ensure maximum openness and honesty by the workers and others they spoke to. Some interviews of workers were done off-site, such as by visiting a factory with a pastor and seeing if the pastor recognized any of the workers from church, then contacting those workers away from the factory. This helped ensure honest responses and openness as the worker would have little or no fear of retaliation from a supervisor.

Schaffer personally visited somewhere between 6 and 10 factories (he doesn’t recall precisely), but others who were on the trip with him, including Andrea Lafferty, combined with Schaffer to investigate about 20 factories in total. Schaffer visited most factories more than once, except for the “model factories” which were sometimes ISO 9000 certified and which had a local representative from a major brand on site ensuring that working conditions exceeded all requirements.

Because Schaffer and his team intentionally went to factories without giving them advance warning, one factory initially refused to allow Schaffer and his wife in, not believing Schaffer to be who he claimed. They relented after a phone call verified Schaffer’s identity.

Additionally, according to notations made by Schaffer, he met with an attorney representing plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against garment companies, as well as meeting with the workers themselves and following up on their complaints. According to Schaffer, he also “tracked down workers who had participated in an anti-CNMI public demonstration” so he could speak with them about their grievances.

Labor conditions

According to both Bob Schaffer and his wife, there were two most common complaints by garment workers: First, there was not enough overtime work available (the same complaint which Andrea Lafferty noted that she heard most often several years earlier.) Second, they were too often served meals with rice when they preferred noodles. (Neither I nor Schaffer report this in an attempt to be funny. These were simply the two most-often heard complaints during Schaffer’s investigation.)

However, there was one factory, called “Little MGM” at which Bob Schaffer found and reported problems. According to my source in Saipan, Schaffer’s complaints were a key (though not the only) factor in the government closing down that factory. It was allowed to reopen later, under new ownership, and with more stringent “best practices” requirements than had previously been imposed in the CNMI. Schaffer said he observed and reported less-severe problems in a few other factories. These typically involved record-keeping and some concerns involving construction projects. One factory refused to grant Schaffer’s team access – which he reported to local authorities.

According to Schaffer, in his investigations “there were some complaints about management, and we followed up on every one of them.” Schaffer, through his translator, asked open, non-leading questions, such as “Do you feel the terms of your contract are being fulfilled?”, “Did you know you were coming here?” (i.e. to the CNMI rather than to the mainland of the USA), and “Are you free to come and go?” Those questions turned up no serious problems. Of what Schaffer did hear from workers, “the complaints were never claims of physical mistreatment or being forced to do anything. Instead, the complaint we got most, and the reason we heard most often from workers who had transferred to other factories, was that they were not getting as much overtime work as they wanted or believed they had been promised.”

“Forced abortions”

Not only was Schaffer unable to verify even one incidence of a forced abortion on Saipan, but people he met with, including both government and religious leaders, were shocked and offended at the suggestion. Church leaders made it clear that if such an occurrence were known to them, they would have taken every possible action to stop and prevent abortions from occurring. Government leaders made a similar point, including noting that Article I of the CNMI Constitution prohibits abortion there.

The Post article notes a “U.S. Interior Department investigation” pointing toward workers being forced to get illegal abortions or lose their jobs. Beyond the lack of evidence found by Schaffer to support these claims, I will show in a later article in this series that the relevant section of the Interior Department at that time was staffed by partisan political activists who were referred to the Justice Department for prosecution for their illegal partisan activities aimed at attacking CNMI’s labor laws and helping Democratic political organizations campaign against Republicans. (The Reno Justice Department declined to prosecute the more senior government employee, and proceeded against the more junior employee in a way that allowed him to escape trouble simply by quitting his federal government job.)

On May 18, 2008, the Catholic News Agency (“CNA”) distributed a news article regarding the “forced abortion” issue, including CNA contacting social services providers in the CNMI: “When contacted by Catholic News Agency, Angie Guerrero, Karidat Social Services’ director, confirmed Schaffer’s assertion that evidence on forced abortions is lacking. ‘We have heard that (of the claims of forced abortions), but none of the alleged victims have come out and said that they were forced to have abortion. So that’s all hearsay, because we can’t prove it; they’re only allegations,’ she said.

Considering Bob Schaffer’s personal views as a pro-life Catholic and the fact that he was on a trip with (and paid for by) the Traditional Values Coalition, it is surprising that mainstream media and liberal bloggers seem to believe Schaffer would have been anything less than a tireless champion for a worker who had been forced to have an abortion, had he been able to find such a person. The implication that Schaffer would have intentionally turned a blind eye to the issue could only come from reporters or Democratic activists whose world view simply doesn’t understand a pro-life position or a conservative with good and true motivations. These people can not accept that finding and punishing people who might force abortions would be of the utmost importance to Bob Schaffer (or anybody else), although an objective look at the issue and at Schaffer’s position would make such a conclusion (i.e. that Schaffer would care deeply about ‘forced abortions’) obvious.