By Haidee V. Eugenio
Variety Assistant Editor

ABOUT a hundred Top Fashion Corp. workers demanding reimbursement of the $3,000 to $4,000 in recruitment fees they paid held a sit-in protest on Monday which led to a hostage situation when workers prevented office employees from leaving the premises. Seven workers were arrested and some alleged police brutality as several injured workers were rushed to the hospital. Police officers used pepper spray and electric shock on the workers.
“They pulled us by the hair and threw us against the wall…. We were not fighting them. Our eyes were already hurt so we couldn’t see anymore but they kept on pushing us…One police officer stepped on my shoulder and my lower back. My eyes still hurt,” one of about a hundred workers told Variety in an interview after they walked from their Tanapag barracks to Puerto Rico yesterday afternoon to seek help from Federal Labor Ombudsman Jim Benedetto and his case workers.
Variety took photos of the bruises sustained mostly by female workers in the Monday incident at Top Fashion.
Department of Public Safety public information officer Lei Ogumoro said the case is under investigation, but did not comment on the workers’ allegations that they were victims of police brutality.
Michael Dotts, the lawyer for Top Fashion, denied that there was any “police brutality” but the workers showed Variety, KSPN and the Federal Labor Ombudsman’s Office some of the bruises they sustained at the hands of responding police officers.
The incident came four days after Top Fashion general manager Jang Suk Lim issued a notice to all employees that the garment factory operations would cease on July 2, the 15th Saipan factory to close since the World Trade Organization lifted trade quotas in January 2005.
Top Fashion has about 300 resident and nonresident workers mostly from China.
Dotts confirmed to Variety that “about a hundred” employees staged a “sit-in protest” near the manager’s office on Monday and at around 5 p.m., he said, the workers “prevented” office employees, including the manager, from leaving the company premises in Tanapag.
Dotts said the workers barricaded the place.
“You can’t stop workers from getting out of the office…So the management called the police around 6 p.m. asking for assistance,” said Dotts.
Dotts and DPS said seven male workers were arrested at the scene and charged.
DPS’ Ogumoro confirmed that police received the call at 6:03 p.m. on Monday requesting police assistance at the Top Fashion factory in Tanapag.
“According to a police investigation, disgruntled employees had blocked all exits of the office and refused to let the management or any other staff members leave. Eight to 10 staff members were inside the office at the time,” said Ogumoro.
A representative of one of the agencies which recruited these workers was at the factory on Monday to meet with the workers, said Dotts.
The workers, in a separate interview, said the manager refused to talk to them about the reimbursement of the recruitment fees they paid.
Dotts said the Top Fashion management will be assisting the workers, especially those who just came in, to have a portion of recruitment fees they paid reimbursed.
“The management will make a certification to the recruiters, and there are several of them, stating that it’s not the employees’ fault that the factory is closing…so these workers can get the reimbursement of a portion of the recruitment fees. I know they paid thousands,” said Dotts, adding that workers will be paid for all the work they perform for the factory.
Dotts said because of the Monday incident, Top Fashion’s garment factory operations may shut down until Sunday and not reopen until Monday.
This is the second time in five months that worried garment workers – days after being told the factory they work for was closing – prevented people from leaving their premises and marched from their barracks to authorities. In December, Concorde Garment Manufacturing Corp. workers held a sit-in strike, took some individuals hostage including recruiters, then marched through the streets demanding reimbursements.
Workers hired just 3 to 6 months ago
Over 50 of the workers arrived on Saipan from China between three and six months ago, and paid $3,000 to $4,000 to work here for two to three years. But their contracts with Top Fashion were only for a year, though they supposedly could be renewed.
Despite the closures of at least 14 garment factories, the Department of Labor still allows remaining factories to bring in additional workers to Saipan – most of them pay thousands of dollars in recruitment fees and are paid an hourly minimum wage of $3.05.
“I paid 29,500 Chinese RMB. I came here six months ago,” a 29-year-old worker told Variety. She said the recruitment fee is supposed to cover three years of employment.
Benedetto told the workers gathered outside the MH II Building in Puerto Rico which houses both the Federal Labor Ombudsman’s Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to follow what police officers say whenever and wherever they see them so they could “protect” themselves.
Benedetto is set to meet again with representatives of these workers today.
Assistant Attorney General Dorothy Hill, counsel for the CNMI Department of Labor, said the department is aware of the “situation” and will open an agency compliance case to investigate the factory closure, among other things.
She said Labor will meet with Top Fashion workers this afternoon at their Tanapag factory.
Benedetto, in an interview, said his office had passed information to CNMI Labor and other local agencies regarding the large number of workers from China who were allowed in to Saipan – after paying thousands of dollars in recruitment fees – even though more than a dozen garment factories had already closed and thousands of workers had been repatriated or lost jobs.
“For me, allowing hundreds of workers to come in is an extremely unwise decision,” said Benedetto, adding that the local government “has not learned from history,” referring to a number of Concorde workers who arrived on Saipan even after the management knew the factory was about to close, and that Labor allowed the hiring of these workers.
Benedetto said the workers’ allegations of police brutality is outside of his office’s jurisdiction but he said he would recommend an investigation independent from the police, and may refer the workers to private attorneys if they want to file complaints against the police officers.
Almost all of the estimated 100 workers raised their hands when asked whether they would like to file a complaint against the police officers for “beating” them up.
The workers also told Variety that when Commonwealth Health Center nurses asked them who beat them up when they came in for treatment and they responded that it was police officers, they were refused treatment. In another instance, according to the workers, CHC personnel refused to treat them “because we couldn’t pay.”
According to Dotts, it was the Top Fashion management that brought the workers to the hospital because of injuries from “mace.”
‘Tell us what’s going to happen to us’
The Top Fashion management told the workers on Thursday that there would be no work from Friday to Monday, but asked them to come back yesterday.
But because of what happened late Monday afternoon, the company is not expected to reopen until next week.
“But they couldn’t tell us when we’re supposed to come back,” said one of the local workers interviewed. “We want to know whether we will be paid for the rest of the week that we’re not allowed to return to work because of what happened,” said the worker.
One of the local employees at Top Fashion, identified as Henry Iguel, prevented this journalist from talking to any of the nonresident workers gathered outside the factory premises yesterday afternoon.
Iguel threatened to “smash” this journalist’s camera after taking pictures of the premises, followed this journalist to the car, while continuing to criticize “what the media is trying to do” by reporting on the Monday incident at Top Fashion.