Island of sun, sand and exploitation

"WELCOME TO the Northern Mariana Islands..." the Internet guide to Saipan and its neighbours begins. "Come experience our bright turquoise skies, crystal clear waters, pristine beaches, flaming sunsets and warm tropical breezes along with the affectionate smiles and hospitality of island people anxious to provide you with the vacation dream of a lifetime."

Tourists on this 10-mile-long Western Pacific island usually get just what they are promised. They are largely oblivious to the presence of the 13,000 "guest workers" toiling day and night in the island's 32 major garment factories.

Tied to their machines for up to 14 hours a day, six or seven days a week, this army made up largely of young Chinese women has little time to enjoy the sunsets. The factories, tucked away up country lanes and behind other businesses, produce more clothing than Jamaica or Malaysia. Last year clothing worth an estimated pounds 660m was exported to the United States from Saipan, the largest of the Marianas.

For the first half of this century the Marianas, about 1,000 miles from the Philippines, were controlled by the Japanese. In 1944 the Americans invaded, losing 5,000 of their troops in the process and killing many more Japanese.

The islands were handed to the Americans at the end of the Second World War. Later, in 1975, they officially became a US commonwealth.

This special status brought the Marianas under the control of most United States labour laws, but to encourage economic growth, an exemption was granted from the US minimum wage. Saipan's minimum is now pounds 2 per hour compared with more than pounds 3 per hour in the US - though workers say even that lower level is flouted through unpaid overtime. The islands were also allowed tariff- and quota-free trade with the US.

The Marianas also have some control over their own immigration, and children born there have the right to be US citizens.

Once these rules were in place it was not long before their advantages were exploited by businesses, notably a Hong Kong-based tycoon called Willie Tan.

He realised Saipan was an ideal place to manufacture clothes - it combined low labour costs with easy access to the American market. In the past 15 years Mr Tan's business has flourished and others, some owned by Chinese and Korean interests, have grown up alongside it. Mr Tan now owns three Saipan factories, and has interests in a bank, a newspaper and a gaming machine business.

Big-name retailers, drawn in through intermediaries in Hong Kong, flocked to place orders. It was not only duty-free trade which attracted them; stiff competition for jobs among Asian workers dreaming of a new life in "America" kept the quality of goods consistently high.

Now a US Democratic congressman, George Miller, has introduced legislation requiring Saipan's factories to comply with all US labour and immigration regulations.

Legislation filed by two Democratic senators, Edward Kennedy and David Bonior, attempts to raise the US minimum wage and at the same time to eliminate Saipan's exemption from it.