Labour rights activists are targeting the major US clothing retailer The Gap in their effort to step up pressure against the labour practices of some US companies operating in the Pacific commonwealth territory of Saipan.

Several rights groups, including the California-based Global Exchange and Sweatshop Watch, planned to kick off a campaign against The Gap’s conduct in Saipan this Saturday by picketing the retailers’ outlets in New York, Boston, San Francisco, New Orleans and Washington.

The Gap’s New York store also would be picketed the same day by the Wetlands Preserve Environmental and Social Justice Activism Centre, which accused the retailer of damaging forests.

“The working conditions in factories making Gap clothing are intolerable and abusive,” said Medea Benjamin, co-director of Global Exchange. “The company needs to clean up its operations in Saipan by complying with federal labour laws; abolishing the use of contracts that deny basic worker rights; and establishing an independent monitoring system.”

Benjamin accused The Gap of egregious conduct in Saipan, although the San Francisco-based retail firm was one of 18 US retailers named in January in a one-billion-dollar lawsuit filed by 25,000 Saipanese workers over alleged labour violations.

The workers contended that they were never paid overtime despite working more than 40 hours a week, and many workers have complained of poor health conditions in Saipanese factories.

(Repeated calls to The Gap’s San Francisco headquarters Thursday were not returned, but The Gap previously had emphasised that its code of conduct compels subcontractors to pay overtime and ensure health and safety standards.)

“We hope that consumer pressure on The Gap will force the company to reform its business practices in Saipan, and then other countries will have to follow,” argued Nikki Bas, director of Sweatshop Watch. “The US retailers that purchase one billion dollars of garments from Saipan every year are responsible for living and working conditions on the island.”

Saipan, one of the islands in the US Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas in the Pacific Ocean, has drawn attention in recent months as labour groups underscored the lower minimum wages and lack of oversight Saipanese workers face compared to their US counterparts.

US firms enjoyed advantages in Saipan unvailable to them on the mainland, including a low minimum wage – only 3.05 dollars an hour, compared to 5.15 dollars/hour – and total freedom from US import tariffs and quota restrictions. Lax immigration laws also allowed firms to benefit from cheap labour from nearby Asian countries.

Many of Saipan’s labourers including 40,000 immigrants – mostly from China, the Philippines and Bangladesh – who, rights groups claimed, often signed contracts waiving their basic labour rights, including the right to join a union, before they begin work.

In recent months, some members of the US Congress criticised Saipan’s labour standards, and one Democratic representative, George Miller of California, last month introduced a bill designed to raise Saipan’s minimum wage and give US labor officials greater power to monitor conditions there.

“That the US Congress has tolerated there practices beneath the American flag is inexcusable, and diminishes our standing in the world community,” Miller argued last month.

President Bill Clinton’s administration has a particular political incentive to pursue the cause of improved labour rights in Saipan: his main nemesis in Congress, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas, has been reported to have significant financial dealings in Saipanese factories with poor labour records. (Last December, DeLay led a successful drive to impeach Clinton in the House of Representatives, although the Senate acquitted Clinton of two impeachment counts last month.)

The US Department of Labour recently stepped up its own activity in enforcing labour rights in Saipan, but were dealt a setback in February when a federal judge blocked inspectors from the Occupation Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) from entering a factory where dozens of workers had reported illness.

“OSHA almost always has a difficult time trying to inspect the factories in Saipan,” said Carmencita Abad, a former Saipanese factory worker who was fired for trying to form a union. “Many local officials turn a blind eye to the regular abuses that workers face. If the judges and other officials there won’t do anything, it’s up to the retailers here to pressure the factories to clean up their act.”

The campaign to pressure The Gap is the first one to target a single US retailer over Saipan’s conditions, although many other major firms – including Nordstrom, Sears, Wal-Mart and Express – also retail clothers manufactured on the island.

The Gap has shown its responsiveness to consumer protests and labour rights allegations before, when the New York-based National Labour Committee charged the retailer in 1995 with purchasing orders from a factory in El Salvador, Mandarin International, where child labourers worked for low pay in locked rooms.

After a number of demonstrations, Gap Vice President Stan Raggio signed an agreement with the National Labour Committee and two religious groups that would prod Mandarin to rehire fired union leaders and explore independent monitoring of The Gap’s Salvadoran subcontractors.

The Gap promised to resume production with Mandarin only when it was “confident that its orders will result in humane and productive employment in El Salvador,” Raggio pledged in the agreement. Yet Salvadoran workers last year argued that labour rights violations, including harassment of union leaders, continued at Mandarin even after the agreement.