Saipan Workers Can Sue as Class
Workers in Saipan?s garment industry won two major victories yesterday in U.S. District Court Judge for Saipan---an island in the U.S. territory of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and the site of much dispute over labor laws and practices in the past year. One ruling, in a suit against forty-eight clothing manufacturers and thirteen major retailers including Gap Inc., J.C. Penny Co. and Target Corp., carried through on an earlier ruling (see WIT for Oct. 18, 2001), and allows workers in the various factories to sue as one class based on the similarity of their experiences. The second ruling upheld the validity of a settlement by nineteen other retailers including Tommy Hilfiger Corp. and Liz Claiborne Inc., in which workers won $8.7 million and independent monitoring of compliance with strict labor codes on the island.